Polish pork goulash: tender meat, thick dark sauce, plenty of onion
Goulash from pork shoulder browned in batches over high heat, with plenty of onion, paprika and marjoram, stewed for an hour and a half. The sauce thickens on its own from the collapsing onion; flour is only for the browning. With potato dumplings, buckwheat or bread.
Your own work in that: 35 min.
- Browning 25 min
- Stewing 90 min
- Seasoning 10 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneDry and dust the meat
Pat the pork cubes dry with paper towel, season with salt and pepper and dust with flour, shaking off the excess. Dry meat browns; wet meat boils.
Ingredients: 1000 g pork shoulder · 4 pcs onions · 3 cloves garlic · 2 tbsp plain flour · 3 tbsp lard · 1 tbsp sweet paprika · 1 tbsp tomato paste · 500 ml stock · 2 pcs bay leaves · 4 pcs allspice berries · 1 tbsp dried marjoram · ½ tsp caraway seeds · 1½ tsp salt · 1 tsp black pepper
Dried cubes, lightly dusted with flourBrown in batches
Heat the lard in a heavy pot over high heat. Add the meat in a single layer, in three batches, and fry without stirring for 2 minutes until the underside is brown, then turn and brown the other sides. Each batch takes about 5 minutes, about 15 minutes in all. Set the browned meat aside on a plate.
TipAll at once means boiling in its own juice: grey meat and a watery sauce. Three batches cost a few extra minutes and make a different goulash.
One layer, high heat, brown crustSoften the onion
Lower the heat. Soften the sliced onion in the fat for 10 minutes, until soft and golden, scraping the browned bits off the bottom. Add the garlic for a minute. Off the heat, stir in the paprika and tomato paste.
TipThere should be a lot of onion: it collapses and thickens the sauce better than flour.
Onion golden, the bottom of the pot scraped cleanAdd liquid and stew
Return the meat with its juices, pour in hot stock to the level of the meat, add the bay leaves, allspice and caraway. Bring to the boil, cover and stew over the lowest heat for 90 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes. The meat should fall apart under a fork.
TipInstead of the hob: oven at 160 °C, pot covered, 2 hours. Nothing catches.
Stock to the level of the meat, then only timeSeason
Add the marjoram rubbed between your palms, adjust salt and pepper. Sauce too thin? Simmer 10 minutes uncovered. Too thick? Add stock.
After 90 minutes: meat tender, sauce thick and darkServe
With kopytka, Silesian dumplings, buckwheat or bread. With a pickled cucumber or cabbage slaw. Better the next day, freezes without loss.
Over potato dumplings, with a pickled cucumber
Before you start
Which meat?
Shoulder: it has fat and connective tissue that soften over 90 minutes of stewing and thicken the sauce. Loin and leg stay dry even after three hours of stewing.
With mushrooms or peppers
300 g mushrooms fried separately, or 2 peppers in strips added for the last 30 minutes.
With wine or beer
Swap 200 ml of the stock for dark beer or red wine. The sauce gets deeper, and with beer slightly bitter.
