Serbian Goulash – Гулаш

Goulash is a meat stew widely popular through Balkans. It is one of the staples of traditional Serbian cuisine deservingly holding its place among many other great traditional dishes: stuffed cabbage roles (Сарма), bean casserole (Пребранац), bean stew (Пасуљ), meat or vegetable casserole (Ђувеч), sauerkraut casserole (Подварак) and sataras (Сатараш) to name a few. As it is the case with most traditional dishes, every household has its own recipe or at least a personal tweak to the recipe. My mother use to make a great goulash and that is where my love for the dish was born. I loved soft and tender meat texture mixed with dark aromatic sauce. Although it is normally served with mashed potatoes my preference was with freshly baked bread that allowed for dipping and sponging, divine!

It is difficult to replicate my mother’s recipe since everything was done by feel: from ingredient selection, amounts, cooking temperature to cooking time. I loved the taste but there is no way to replicate that.

For quite some time I was on a lookout for a good, reliable recipe and I found it! It is a simple, traditional style recipe made by a chef, trained and worked in many Serbian restaurants. What better reference could someone get than that? Unlike western style restaurants often dominated by big names, fancy décor and exotic, colorful dishes Serbian restaurants are recognized primarily for the taste and quality of food they serve, above everything else. There is no substitute for good tasting food and I just hope that attitude holds and prevails in the future!

My big thanks go to the chef for taking the time and making the recipe widely available! I knew it is going to be outstanding even before I tried it!

If you speak Serbian and prefer to follow chef’s video recipe you can find it here, otherwise stick with me and my preparation description down below. The recipe is very affordable, consists of few simple, inexpensive ingredients and is very easy to execute. It is a low intensity, slow cooking process that will take about 3 hours of cooking time.

My family loved it and my daughter could not stop talking about it. She said it was like having a steak with the bonus of a plentiful delicious sauce.

This is a dish that is great for reheating and the flavour only gets better after it stays a day or two in the fridge. That is if you can manage to keep it that long.

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Serbian Goulash - Гулаш

The best Serbian beef stew!

Course

Main Dish

Cuisine

Balkan, Serbian

Keyword

Beef, goulash, stew

Prep Time

30 minutes

Cook Time

3 hours

Servings

people

Ingredients

• 1.4 kg beef chuck roast or blade roast
• 700 g yellow onion chopped
• 1 L beef stock
• 3 tbsp Italian tomato purée (passata)
• sea salt season to taste
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp sweet paprika
• olive oil

Goulash Gevirc

• 80 g smoked bacon finely cut in small 5 mm (1/4") cubes
• 1/3 cup Italian parsley finely chopped
• 10 garlic cloves finely chopped

Course Main Dish Cuisine Balkan, Serbian Keyword Beef, goulash, stew Prep Time 30 minutes Cook Time 3 hours Servings people Ingredients 1.4 kg beef chuck roast or blade roast 700 g yellow onion chopped 1 L beef stock 3 tbsp Italian tomato purée (passata) sea salt season to taste 1/2 tsp black pepper 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes 1 tsp sweet paprika olive oil Goulash Gevirc 80 g smoked bacon finely cut in small 5 mm (1/4") cubes 1/3 cup Italian parsley finely chopped 10 garlic cloves finely chopped

Instructions

Goulash Gevirc

1. On a cutting board mix together finely chopped parsley, garlic and finely cut bacon. Hold the knife by using two handed chopping motion and run the knife over the mixture repeatedly to mince it. Store minced mixture in a sealed container in the fridge.

Goulash

1. Trim excess fat tissue from the meat and cut the meat into ~1" cubes. Pay attention to cut against the grain whenever possible. This will shorten the muscle fibers and in turn make pieces easier to chew through.
2. Chop the onions. Note: The amount of onions required in the recipe is min. 50% of the weight of the meat. More than that is better, but it definitely should not be less than 50%.
3. Coat the bottom of heavy large pot with olive oil and on top of it spread the even layer of chopped onions. Top it up with the layer of cubed meat. Put the pot on stove, cover and without stirring cook over medium high heat (8 out of 10) for 15 minutes.
4. Using a flat bottom wooden spoon stir the mixture. Cover and without stirring cook for another 15-25 minutes. If dry add about 1/2 cup of stock before covering the pot. Note: You want to finish off this phase with meat starting to stick to the pot bottom and fond starts forming. That is what will govern if you should cook 15 or 25 minutes. Keep close eye to it to prevent excess burning.
5. Stir the mixture and add about 1 cup of stock. Deglaze the bottom of the pot, cover, reduce heat to medium low (2 out of 10) and cook for another 130 minutes. Gently stir every 15-20 minutes and incrementally keep adding beef stock to maintain proper moisture level. Note: Do not flood the goulash by adding the stock all at once! Keep adding stock little at the time, as needed. You should maintain meat pieces being about 60-70 % submersed in the liquid.
6. Season the goulash with salt, pepper, sweet paprika and ground hot pepper flakes.
7. Stir in Goulash Gevirc, tomato passata and the remainder of the beef stock. If you run out of stock and you find the sauce is too thick add some water. Cover the pot, wait until it starts simmering and then cook for another 15-20 minutes.
8. Taste the goulash and adjust seasoning as needed. This is a very important step that you should not miss! The dish contains fairly large quantity of sweet onions and meat and likely will require larger amount of salt from what you would intuitively anticipate.
9. Serve warm over a bed of mashed potatoes or polenta.

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