Slow-Braised Beef Goulash

Steps

1. Cut the beef into 4 cm cubes and dry them well. Season them with salt and pepper.

   10 min

2. Brown them in the oil in a heavy pot in three batches, 4 minutes a batch. A crowded pot steams the meat grey and the sauce never gets its colour. Set the meat aside.

   15 min

3. Drop the heat to low, add the sliced onions and cook them 20 minutes, stirring now and then, until they collapse and turn sweet. This is the sauce — goulash is thickened by onion, not by flour.

   20 min

4. Take the pot off the heat, add the garlic, the caraway and both paprikas and stir 30 seconds. Paprika burns in seconds and turns bitter, so the pot must not be hot.

   2 min

5. Stir in the tomato paste, return the meat with its juices, pour in the stock and add the bay leaves. The liquid should just cover the meat.

   5 min

6. Bring it to a bare simmer, put the lid on and cook 90 minutes on the lowest heat, or in the oven at 150 °C.

   90 min

7. Add the peppers cut into strips and the potatoes in 3 cm chunks and cook 30 minutes more, uncovered, until the meat pulls apart with a spoon and the sauce has thickened.

   30 min

8. Taste for salt and let it stand 10 minutes off the heat. Serve with a spoon of sour cream.

   10 min

Serving suggestion

Boiled buckwheat or wide noodles take the sauce as well as the potatoes do.

Storage

Four days in the fridge, and it is better on the second day. It freezes well without the potatoes.

Notes

Do not let it boil hard at any point. A rolling boil tightens the meat fibres and ninety minutes will not undo that.