Czech Goulash (Gulas) Recipe

It’s been a year since we went to Prague and discovered Goulash and dumpings at the Two Camels little restaurant in the back streets.

As usual I’m not a great food photographer but I thought I would share this recipe that we had for tea last night. I found it on a forum and the post was a few years old, but not seen anything similar anywhere else and it is fab. I’ve made a few alterations to the recipe to make it less oily and to omit the Tabasco which I seem to have an intolerance to. It’s pretty authentic, apart from I add mini potatoes and I make plain ol’ suet dumplings instead of the Czech bread ones because I am not very good at making them! Another great thing is it uses a load of stuff I already have, so even when we have no food in, we still have meat in the freezer and all the ingredients in the cupboard!

CZECH GOULASH – serves 2, cooking time 2 hours

You will need:
A large onion
Enough pork or beef for two people
Enough baby pearl potatoes for two people
Vegetable oil
2 tbsp Paprika
1 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp mustard powder
2 tsp salt
1 tsp parsley
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
A glug of Medium Nandos sauce (optional!)
2 Oxo cubes

1) In a big saucepan, put in a few tsps worth of vegetable oil and fry the onions a bit (technical, eh?).

2) Add the meat and brown it.
3) Add your paprika to make a lovely orangy colour. Then add the ketchup and mustard powder.
4) Boil the kettle. Once the kettle is boiled, add plain flour to the oil if there is quite a lot left in the pan. Keep sprinkling and mixing until the pan is dry (but not burning flour to the bottom of it). Then pour the boiled water over the meat until it is completely covered.

5) Add all of the other ingredients and turn the heat down a bit. Add the potatoes. Leave to simmer for 2 hours.

And that’s it! You might want to give it a stir every 20 minutes or so. If you find the sauce getting thick too early, just top up with more boiled water- you don’t want it burning to the bottom of the pan- I did that once and it tasted foul and set the smoke alarm off. If you are doing dumplings too, make them and float them on the surface of the liquid for the last half an hour of cooking time but make sure you put a lid on whilst they cook.

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