Goulash is a very simple dish. You want to taste the meat and you want to
taste the paprika. The good quality, top quality paprika. Which is not easy to get your hands on, even in Hungary. I think it is the most important for the Hungarian people and everybody eats paprika for all foods. You have to follow the traditions. Just cooking for
a few hours and give the love as well. Every second week we had the goulash soup at home. That's why I really like it as well. It's very rich. So it's not kind of something that is boring. Hi, my name is Istvan Szanto. I'm from Hungary. I'm the executive chef in Spago Budapest and
one of the most popular signature dish on our menu is the traditional Hungarian goulash soup. We collect the best ingredients for a
Hungarian goulash soup. We're going to cook it later. And in the market we can find the very nice
meat, beef meat and paprika powder as well. For a goulash soup we use some vegetables as well. So that is the flavor going to be much more rich. So actually that's the basic root vegetables
that is available all the time. And additional some garlic, it is very important. And we're going to buy some Spanish onions as well. That's going to be the base of the stew. We're going to use the beef cheek. That's one of the most tender part of meat
on the beef. So actually, this part of the muscle, the
cow used the most. So that's why it's much more tender. In the middle of the piece of meat, you can find the fiber part as well. It's full of collagen. So that gives the nice consistency of the soup. In general we cut nice, actually cubes and then we're cooking them together with the onion base. And it's very important to sweat the onion very nicely.
So it takes half an hour. This is a very important step, actually the first step.
But we have to take care because if the first step is not, not good enough,
the result will not be good enough as well. So for sure, when you are cooking, it takes time.
If you want to do something really nice. Everyone, I mean let it be just a simple tourist
from whichever part of the world, or let it be a three Michelin star chef from a famous kitchen,
everyone who comes to Hungary wants to taste the perfect goulash. Hello, I'm Zsofia Mautner,
Hungarian food writer based in Budapest. And I believe that a perfect
goulash is really the best step into the rich world of Hungarian cuisine. The terminology of the goulash is a complicated
issue because I think people normally, international people, are expecting to get a stew when they
order a goulash at a restaurant. But here in Hungary, if you're eating a goulash
or if you order it from a restaurant menu, you would probably get a soup, a goulash soup,
which is more liquid. So the stew which the majority of the people
would expect to when they order goulash, it's called in Hungarian cuisine, It's called Pörkölt. And the original classic goulash would be a dish cooked
in the eastern region of Hungary, cooked on open fire in a big kettle.
And it's also a more liquid stew, basically. Goulash actually used to mean
the person who was taking care of the cattle. The goulash meant actually a meat cooked by that person. We have the basic track, but at
every home it differs a bit. So you cannot taste two goulash soups
that is exactly the same. Paprika is another complicated issue. It's obviously the signature spice of
Hungarian cooking. Surprisingly it came into Hungarian cuisine relatively lately. So it came into Hungary during the Turkish occupation. You know first people liked to use it for decoration. And when it made its way into the mainstream everyone
started to grow and cultivate peppers. Now Paprika is our family and our tradition and our life
because I'm the fourth generation and I'm born into this family, to this Paprika family. My name is Dora Okvatovity. We are in the Fajszi Paprika Manufactúra. It's a small, handmade paprika manufacturer. I'm the CEO, and paprika is our life. This is our field. This one is the small field, it's just
around one hectare. We are near to Danube. This is the famous field, this Hungarian Szegedi 80-AS. This is a type of paprika. And this is the most typical in Hungary. And this is the most typical in Hungary. The paprika growing is very hard work because
we start every year around in the middle of March and they start with the seeding. And after that we have to hoeing and everything is handmade. It's very hard work. We can't use the machine for the harvesting
because the machine cut everything, the leaves and the green peppers and we can pick
just the perfect paprika by hand. This is the hanging paprika. After the harvesting, we put it
in the sack and they have to ripe here for six weeks and the paprika will be more sweeter.
And after that, we can do the grinding. There's huge difference between the different qualities of paprika. You have a first look on the paprika, you can immediately say a lot about the quality, because of the texture. If it's powdery or more coarse,
the smell, and then when you start cooking with it, then there is it's another really another world. So it should be very intense, fruity, clean taste. And then comes the secret tip of all the
Hungarian grandmothers. You would probably not read it in every recipe. And the secret is when you add the paprika,
you have to take the pan off the heat and put the paprika on the onions separately because
it gets very easily bitter and it burns very easily. So that's why you have this extra step. We kind of roast the piece of meat. So it became white, actually. We have to add some water. And we cook it only shortly with only little liquid
like a risotto when you make. So now, after 2 hours, the meat is nice and
cooked and we can add some root vegetables. So we mix together with the meat. We roast a bit. So our goulash soup is ready. All the elements are cooked. I like the goulash soup because
it's very intense and very rich in flavors. So maybe that's why the most of Hungarian people really like it. My opinion is the best goulash is the beef goulash.
But in a lot of restaurants it's made from pork or from chicken or anything else, and I say, my grandma made the best goulash in the world. My mission personally is also to show them through the goulash, to draw them in with the goulash, to show them this is our signature dish. Taste it. It's really good. And then explore the diverse Hungarian cuisine more because there is so much more beyond goulash.
