Tremendous Goulash

We need to talk about goulash. REAL goulash. Hungarian goulash. The TREMENDOUS one. Not — and I cannot stress this enough — not the sad American thing with elbow macaroni and a can of tomato soup that your school cafeteria served you on Wednesdays. That is NOT goulash. That is a crime against a beautiful Hungarian word. The Hungarians are weeping. They are weeping right now, somewhere in Budapest, because somebody in Ohio is calling something with ketchup and ground beef 'goulash.' SAD. A disgrace to a deeply serious stew.

Real goulash — and I've eaten more goulash than the entire population of Eger combined, look it up, I had people look it up — is a deep, dark, paprika-stained beef stew with onions, more onions, and then a few extra onions for good measure. ONIONS. The onions are not optional. The onions are the FOUNDATION. Some people, weak people, they cut down on the onions because chopping makes them cry. To them I say: cry. Cry into the pot. An old Hungarian woman cornered me once in a kitchen outside Debrecen and made me promise to do it this way. She had wooden spoons older than my entire career. The neighbor who taught her this lived to be 102. Could be a coincidence. Probably not. I am keeping the promise. The onions are paying you back later, with interest.

And the paprika. We need to talk about the paprika. You go to your grocery store, you grab the sad little jar of paprika that has been sitting there since the Carter administration, you dump it in the pot, you've ruined the goulash. The paprika has to be FRESH. The paprika has to be SWEET HUNGARIAN PAPRIKA. The kind labeled 'édes' on a tin from Szeged or Kalocsa. That is the rule. The Hungarians wrote the rule, the Hungarians get to set the rule. Most chefs are afraid to do this — they're afraid of the tin, they're afraid of the word 'édes,' they reach for the dusty jar because the dusty jar is comfortable — and that's why their goulash tastes like a wet sweater. We're not doing that. We're doing it correctly. Hands down.

That is goulash. Real goulash. Hungarian goulash. The kind that gets better the next day, and the day after that, although you will not have any leftovers — you will eat the whole pot, your family will eat the whole pot, the dog will lick the dish, the spoons will be licked, and you will sit there in stunned silence wondering how you lived this long without it. That chef on TV — you know the one — does this wrong every time. He uses the wrong paprika. He rushes the onions. He should be embarrassed. We're not him. We did it right. Tremendous.