Yeah, I’ve never heard it called goulash. My mom’s Hungarian so I seriously doubt she’d even think to call it goulash.
I had heard the word “goulash”, but thought it referred to some exotic European stew. It conjured up images of my father’s Ashkenazi Jewish cooking (that i never much liked).
Me either- although that’s probably because my father’s family is Austrian and we had German goulash , which is a thick beef stew served over spaetzle or egg noodles. I think the difference from Hungarian is that Hungarian is thinner and uses potatoes instead of noodles. That ground beef/macaroni/tomato sauce thing would be “macaroni and beef” to me - and I would have thought it was Italian- American as the version I know involves an extra thick “meat sauce”
German here. When my mother made goulash, she served it either with noodles or potatoes, sometimes both. The noodles and/or potatoes weren’t cooked in the stew, but separately. She also made goulash soup (with potato cubes, but no noodles), I don’t know if this was/is a German thing or if Hungarians do it too. I also don’t know if any of her recipes were authentically Hungarian, at least she used a lot of paprika powder.
ETA: and no, not ground beef. She cooked any goulash with beef cubes.
It sounds like “goulash” occupies a similar space to “brisket,” which means one thing for Ashkenazi Jews and another for everyone else.
Austrian here - pretty much this!
In Vienna, Gulasch (goulash) is a pretty serious thing, internet wars were fought about it (makes sense, given the austro-hungarian heritage) …
I may add that when making Gulasch, you have to make it in very generous amounts, and everytime you re-heat it, it gets better. Also there is somewhat of a (now mostly historic) culinary corridor:
day 1 and 2 : Its Gulasch
day 3 and 4 potatoes are added (Erdäpfelgulasch) or Cabbage (Szegediner Gulasch or Krautfleisch)
day 4 and 5 rice is added (Reisfleisch)
So, basically by making a huge pot of Gulasch you and your family historically ate the better part of a whole week - and given poverty and meat scarcity - the real Gulasch seems to be 80% onions to begin with … even though the classic Gulasch-meat was the least expensive beef there is, as it would be sitting on the oven for hours on end so having lots of fat and connective tissue in the meat was actually a feature and not a bug.
Also: Gulaschkanone, a classic in the Austrian Army (w/out doubt K&K heritage)
There seems to be a continuum for genuine goulash: original Hungarian → similar, but not quite the same in Austria due to common history → watered down in Germany → unrecognizable in the USA (ground beef? WTF?)
Yeah, the Gulaschkanone is also a staple of German military and also civil events.
I’d never made goulash before but decided to give it a go. One recipe I found was called Texas goulash. Made with ground beef.
I gave it a shot, quite good. I will be making it again.
Except that in both those cases, “brisket” really refers to the cut of meat, and it’s pretty much the same cut. Whereas i can’t see any connection between the things that (some) Americans apparently call “goulash” and the Hungarian one, and also, despite that, i bet the American one is a descendant of the Hungarian one is some weird way
I think the label “goulash” in a way is used the same way CHAMPAIGN is being used - as a somewhat generic “ballpark” descriptor for (in this case): meat-in-non-tomato-sauce.
Champaign is a city in Illinois.
Champagne is a place in France and a bubbly wine.
Thx, I studied there (UIUC) and that probably crept into my pre-conciousness
I’ll probably use the name goulash as some sort of stew with noodles.
Some things you buy at the grocery store are packaged in bags. And those bags usually have a built-in “Zip Lock” type seal. And those seals are junk. They hardly ever work. What’s up with that? I have a bag of almonds in front of me, and the stupid “Zip Lock” type seal on it has never worked. And now the almonds are stale.
The problem I often have, particularly with bags of cat treats, is that the “Zip Lock” seal is stronger than the bond between the “Zip Lock” component and the bag itself. So I go to open the bag, and I end up tearing the “Zip Lock” thingy off of the bag rather than simply breaking the seal. Then the bag no longer has a seal and I have to store it in an actual proper Zip Lock bag if I don’t want the cat treats to get stale.
Assuming you mean Champaign, after 2006 pretty much only French sparkling wines from that region can be called that. Some few California Sparkling wines were grandfathered in, but they use the same grapes and have to be labeled “California Champaign”.
I concur in this mini rant.
I had an otherwise marvellous cat who worked out the best way to get breakfast when he was hungry and I was sleeping, was to insert a claw into my nostril.
It woke me up, sure, but this not my opinion of how best to get the cat breakfast.
Don’t get me started. The deli at my supermarket puts my cheese and lunchmeat orders in ziplock bags, and then slaps the label generated by the scale OVER the ziplock, so it cannot be opened. The label is stronger that the bag plastic, which tears if you try to remove the label.
We have two dogs. Border Collie mixes. They have a doggie door for the day but we generally keep them in at night.
If one, Jax, needs to go out at night, he will come next to the bed and make a slight whing. It gets one of us to let him right out (we are very light sleepers). The other one launches her 60 lb self off of the floor onto my chest. Well that works too. I prefer the whing.
Our old cat would sit up on the headboard of the bed, and give you one tap. If you didn’t get up immediately, the second tap would hook a claw into your scalp. It took him no time at all to get us properly trained.