Mom’s Secret Stash: Hungarian Goulash

I am so glad no one tagged me for the cookbook meme. Thing is, I don’t have a shelf of favorite cookbooks. Around here, it’s always been more about making it up on the fly then it’s ever been about following a recipe. Even in baking, we twist and tweak till half the time we’re not even sure where we started. And I have to confess I can’t remember the last time I googled a recipe online and actually followed it.

That’s not to say we don’t have cookbooks around here — we do — it’s just that our cookbooks come in three odd varieties:

1) The texts from Chopper’s culinary school.

2) The occasional book someone’s given us as a gift. (We’ve probably got, all-told, about five of these.)

3) Cookbooks that have been in my family forever, and I mean eons.

Like this one:

Only my junior high copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is more trashed than this, and I read that baby six times.

And catch that price: 35 cents. NEW. Do I even dare ask what fashions were popular the year Mom bought it?

Now, here’s what I didn’t realize until a recent browse though The Round-the- — Cookbook: This cookbook contains recipes that I grew up believing were family recipes. All this time I thought family recipes originated on index cards in Mom’s handwriting with multitudes of grease, butter, oil, vanilla, and tomato sauce stains. But no. Now, all I can think is: Hey! Mom! You cheated!

Right. Like no one else’s family recipes have ever come out of a book.

I’m sure some of ours didn’t either — in fact, we’ve got a cake recipe that I’m pretty certain originated with my grandma on Dad’s side — but at the moment, it’s looking like I’ve discovered the secret stash: Mom’s ancient cookbook collection, and point of origin for many a favorite childhood dish.

Let’s take a peek inside and see what we find.

First up, from the tattered tome pictured above: Hungarian Goulash. And here, in one of its more recent incarnations, is the family recipe card:

Now, I’ve made this recipe several times, and here’s the thing: I’ve always thought that it was Mom who was really vague about writing down the ingredients. I mean: “1 Can tomato sauce.” What sized can? Regular or honkin’ big? And what about the noodles? Shouldn’t I know if I need one bag of noodles or two?

Turns out, the original recipe is pretty vague too. Then again, maybe tomato sauce only came in one size way back when.

No worries though, because here’s the thing: with a recipe like this, it doesn’t matter. So long as you have lots of everything on hand, you just add more of whatever you need till it looks like you’ve got enough of everything.

Like paprika. Last time I made this we started off with four pounds of beef instead of three, so needless to say, the paprika mix ran out before the beef did. Good thing we had three containers of paprika in the spice drawer because it’s all about mixing more, and more, and still more — what ever it takes till the beef cubes are coated.

Next step. Four pounds of beef seem like too much? Fine. Add a second can of tomato sauce. But not a honkin’ big can, because then you’d have to go back to the store for more beef. Unless you’ve got more in the fridge, and then I say, why not? Go for broke.

Then what? Simmer that baby. Covered, uncovered, it’s no big deal, just let it cook for a nice long time till you’ve got this big pan full of chunky paprika tomato stew. When you’ve got the noodle water boiling and dinner’s just around the corner, add the sour cream. How much sour cream? Lots. Or rather, enough. Enough till it’s thick and creamy and bright paprika red. Could be a pint. Could be two pints. Just have enough, just in case.

Then, it’s noodle time. One bag or two? Well, that’s when you gotta ask yourself a question:

Do I feel hungry? Well, do ya, punk?
How big an army’s showing up for dinner, and how much space do I have in the fridge?

If the dinner squad’s small and so’s the room in the fridge, then stick with a single bag. Store the rest of the goulash sans noodles and cook more noodles up next time. If you’ve got a hungry battalion at the gates, then, hell, go for three bags. You don’t need to stir them all into the goulash pot at once. Save a portion for the end of the meal when someone asks for fourths.

Oh, and last but not least, if you’ve got a hungry brood of seven and a love of leftovers like some moms I know: Definitely go for broke. Six pounds of beef and about those tomato sauce cans? Honkin’ HUGE.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 at 5:04 pm and is filed under recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.