Hungarian Sour Cream and Potato Soup

Today is a rainy dreary day, which in my mind calls for soup.

This is my Hungarian grandma's go-to soup whenever we were home sick, or needed some comfort food. When I made it this time I "beefed" it up a little to make it a whole meal instead of a first course, but it turned out delicious, and I'm here to share the recipe with you!

Ingredients:

5-6 (egg-sized) potatoes

4 1/2 cups water

3/4 cup sour cream

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

Vegeta (a European vegetable spice mix, similar to Mrs. Dash. The amount of this you'll use is very subjective. I like a lot.)

+ optional, but I used them in this time around

1 small onion sautéed in butter

7-8 breakfast-type sausage links fried up in a pan, then cut into chunks

Directions:

1. Fill large pot with the 4 1/2 cups water. Peal and dice potatoes into bite sized pieces, and place in water.

2. Add salt and pepper, and a tbsp of Vegeta. 

3. Bring the potatoes to a boil, then reduce to medium heat, and cook until cooked through (can easily stick a fork in the potato.)

4. If adding the sausage and onions, cook up those while the potatoes are cooking.

5. Also during this time, in a small pan on a low/medium heat combine the flour and oil to create a roux, your thickening agent. Heat  until the color gets slightly darker, then take off heat.

6. Once the potatoes are cooked through, add the roux to the pot.

7. Measure out your sour cream into a bowl. Ladle some soup broth into the sour cream and combine. Add another ladle, fully incorporate, then pour that into the soup. (Doing it this way will ensure that the sour cream doesn't clump up.)

8. Add your sausage and onions.

9. Taste your soup broth, add more Vegeta if needed.

Serve with some delicious bread (in the pictures you can see my homemade sourdough, yum!), and you're good to go!

This soup stores well in the fridge, and may even be better the next day!

And this is my Mary, the original woman behind this recipe!

She is most dear to my heart. <3

Hungarian Cold Sour Cherry Soup Recipe

One of the delights of Hungarian cuisine is Cold Sour Cherry Soup.  Yes, you read that right.  It is a dessert disguised as a soup.  For those of you who are wondering, yes, it is sweet.  Yes, you eat it before dinner.  Yes, for real.  Do you need this in your life?  Of course you do.  Read on to find out how to make this bowl of deliciousness.

Ingredients:

12 oz frozen sour/tart cherries (if you can't find frozen sour/tart cherries, you can use regular ones, but only add 1/2 cup of sugar, and simmer about 5-8 minutes longer)

12 1/2 cups of water

1 1/2 cups of sugar (1/2 if regular cherries)

2 cinnamon sticks

1 1/2 cups of sour cream

3 tbs flour

2 egg yolks

Optional - whipped cream and cinnamon

(Serves approx. 8)

Directions:

1. Pour frozen cherries into a large pot.

2. Add water, sugar and cinnamon sticks.  

3. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally, and simmer for 10 minutes.  (Taste the "broth", if it doesn't taste cherry-y enough, simmer a little longer.)

In the meantime...

4. In a separate bowl combine sour cream, flour and eggs.

5. Whisk mixture together until it is smooth.

6. By this time your cherry mixture should look like this:

7. Fish out the cinnamon sticks.

8.  Scoop out about a 1/3 cup of the broth (without cherries in it), and mix it into the sour cream mixture.  Mix it in quickly, and evenly.

9. Continue to add scoops of the "juice" to the mixture, until you bring the sour cream mixture up to a decent heat.  (You probably won't be able to get it as hot as the original broth, but try to get it hot.  If it's too cold, it'll separate, and create little floaty chunks that'll rise to the surface.)

10.  Slowly poor the sour cream mixture into the broth, while continuously stirring.

11.  Heat the soup back up a little bit, but be careful NOT to bring it to a boil, or it'll to cook the eggs, and curdle.

12.  In your sink, create an ice bath (ice and cold water).  Put the pot in it, and stir it, until the soup is genuinely cold.  If you don't cool it down enough, and place it in the fridge, it'll sour.

13. Place in the fridge overnight to chill.

14.  The next day you'll need to stir it together, as it'll separate a little, but that's normal.

15.  Serve in a bowl, with a little (or a lot of) whipped cream, and a dash of cinnamon.

Tips:

1. Hungarians make this with a variety of fruit (like apples), so feel free to experiment!  Just keep in mind, that the amount of sugar will probably change.

2. This recipe is NOT hard at all, there are just a couple things you have to pay attention to: 1; get the sour cream mixture hot before you add it to the broth, 2; don't let the soup boil once the sour cream mixture is added, 3; thoroughly cool the soup down before placing it the fridge.

3. Make sure it tastes like the fruit, not just "sweet".

And there you have it!  Please let me know how your's turns out, if you decide to make it!  Especially if you use other fruit!

Happy cooking!

Hungarian Gulyas Recipe

Hungarian Gulyas.

So often I see people post recipes for "traditional goulash" on Facebook, and it makes wish I could introduce them to REAL goulash, or in reality "gulyas".  Goulash is more comparable to refrigerator soup (ground beef, noodles, etc.) whereas gulyas is a hearty, traditionally made by men over a pit, beef-and-potato stew.  It's to die for!

For Christmas this year, Dan decided to make it for our family!  We don't have a fire pit, or a traditional pot called a "bogracs", but the man of the house made it, at it was amazing!  Here is my step-by-step tutorial on how to make your very own, REAL traditional Hungarian gulyas.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil

5 medium sized onions (finely chopped)

1 whole head of garlic (finely chopped)

2 Hungarian wax peppers (chopped)

3 lbs. potatoes

4 lbs. chuck roast (cubed)

1 parsnip (sliced)

5 carrots (sliced)

2 tomatoes (chopped)

Hungarian sweet paprika (1/3 cup)

Salt to taste

Black pepper to taste

Ground caraway to taste

1 bay leaf

Around 5 cups of water (don't add too much at once, rather as needed - start with three, then wait until after you add the potatoes - they absorb a lot of the water, add the rest then)

Yummy crusty bread (we got a sourdough at Panera)

1. First, we prepped all the ingredients.

 Cut the chuck into about 1 square inch cubes.

 Put the cut up chuck in a ziplock, and put in the fridge.

 Chop up the onions (and try hard NOT to cry) and set aside for later.

 We have been able to find Hungarian wax peppers at Publix.  

Cut them in half, remove seeds, and then chop 'em up!

 Dan got a mandolin in his stocking, and was more than happy to cut up the carrots!  Cut them up, and set them aside.

 Slice up the parsnip too.  Bag and set aside.

Chop up the tomatoes, bag and set aside.

Chop up the garlic AS FINELY AS YOU CAN, bag and set aside.

 Chop up the potatoes.  You can use any kind of potato.  Dan got these, because they didn't have to peel them, and they were small, hence less cutting.  You try to cut them to about the same size as the meat.

Dan put the potatoes in water, so they wouldn't brown, since we were cutting them a couple hours in advance.

2. Add ingredients one at a time

Choose a large pot, like a chili pot.  Place on burner, on a medium heat.  

Start with the 1/4(ish) cup of oil.  

 Once it's hot, add the onions.

 Add the garlic.

 Add the wax peppers.

 Mix all the ingredients, until the onions start to look "glassy".

 Add some salt.

 Add the pepper.

Add the beef.

 There it is!

 Start to mix it together.

 Add the paprika.  Make sure it's the sweet paprika, or you will have a VERY spice gulyas!

 That whole packet got put in there!

 Mix it around, until the beef starts to brown.

Add the tomatoes.

Add 3 cups of water.  (One recipe we found called for beef broth.)

One bayleaf.

Add parsnips.

 Put the lid on, but stir often.  After about 1 1/2 - 2 hours, (when the meat is cooked) we'll start adding the last couple ingredients.

Add the carrots.

Strain the potatoes.

 Rinse off the potatoes, to get rid of any starch that may have seeped out.

 Add the potatoes.

 Be careful of splatter!  Add 2 more cups of water.  We careful that it doesn't get too watery.  I'd wait to see how much water the potatoes sucked up.

It's all in there!  Let it all stew for another hour, again stirring it regularly.

A couple things you could add to your meal 

- Hungarians always have some kind of "pickled" veggies.  We opted for some pickles, and then Dan made a terrific cucumber salad!  (Which Aidan ate seconds, and thirds of.)  

- Of course, you'll also want to have that yummy crusty bread, to lap up any broth!

- You can also have out some "Pista", a Hungarian paprika paste, so you can customize the heat.

- The use of sour cream in gulyas varies by region, but as far as I'm concerned, there's always a little wiggle room for sour cream in Hungarian food!

Yummm

Look at that gorgeous color!

There's that yummy cucumber salad too!