Tag Archives: tomato paste

Meat and Poultry

Hungarian Beef Goulash

Goulash is a rich, fragrant Eastern European stew that is excellent accompanied by homemade noodles, rice, dumplings, or potatoes.

Ingredients for Hungarian Beef Goulash

1 lb. stewing beef
2 T fat
2 sliced onions
1/2 tsp salt
1 T paprika
2 T flour
1 cup tomato puree
1 cup beef broth
1/2 cup sour cream

Preparation for Hungarian Beef Goulash

In a heavy skillet or pot, sauté the stewing beef in fat over medium heat until browned. Add the sliced onions and stir until translucent. Add the salt and paprika, stirring until the paprika releases its fragrance. Lower the heat, cover, and simmer for one hour. Stir frequently to prevent sticking.

Stir in flour and brown lightly. Add the tomato puree  mixed with the beef broth. Simmer for one hour longer, or until meat is tender.

Remove from heat and add the sour cream, stirring until smooth and warm.

Serve with rice, noodles, potatoes, or dumplings.

Servings: 3

Hungarian beef goulash

Meat and Poultry

Sauerbraten

A type of sweet and sour marinated beef; oh so tender and with a very special and distinctly-flavored sauce. Good served with cooked rice, noodles, potatoes, or dumplings of any sort.

  • 4 lbs. beef bottom round or rump, approx.

For Marinade:

  • 2 cups red wine vinegar
  • 4 cups water
  • 1 large sliced onion
  • 5 peppercorns
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 2 whole cloves

For Sauce:

  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 4 tbsp butter
  • 2 carrots, sliced
  • 1 onion, quartered
  • 1 tbsp tomato paste
  • 1 tbsp sugar, or to taste
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup sour cream

Marinate meat in fridge for 2 to 3 days, turning occasionally. Remove meat from marinade, straining and reserving marinade. Pat meat dry and dredge with flour. Brown in butter. Add 1 cup strained marinade, sugar, carrots, onion, tomato paste and salt.

Cook covered until meat is very tender (about 3 hours). Remove meat and force sauce through a sieve, and skim off fat. Add the sour cream, mix well and reheat. Slice the meat thickly and serve covered in sauce.

Meat and Poultry

Mom’s Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

This recipe for cabbage rolls is the basic Eastern European version that we knew as kids: a savory melding of rice and ground meat rolled in cabbage leaves and smothered in thick tomato sauce. It was always served with sour cream.

Mom would make a whole turkey pan full of cabbage rolls, enough to feed the six of us and more for at least  two or three sittings. As the leftovers sat and aged in their sauce over the next few days, the taste intensified and filled out… I always preferred leftover cabbage rolls over freshly made ones.

There are endless variations of cabbage rolls. One Ukrainian version is pickled cabbage leaves (sauerkraut style) stuffed  with fried onions, ground meat, and buckwheat and baked in a meaty broth instead of tomato sauce. Similar cousins  are rice and lamb stuffed grape leaves in Middle Eastern cuisine.

Ingredients for Mom’s Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

  • 1 head of cabbage
  • 1 lb. mixed ground beef and ground pork (either half and half or slightly more beef than pork)
  • 1 finely minced onion
  • 1 cup cooked rice
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1-1/2 t salt
  • 1/4 t pepper
  • 1 large can tomato soup + 3 T ketchup*
  • 1 cup water
  • Sour cream for serving

Core cabbage. Place in large pot of boiling water with a splash of vinegar. Cook 5 minutes. Remove from heat, drain and let stand 10 to 15 minutes to cool. Sauté onion in a little butter. Mix together the ground beef, onion, rice, salt and pepper. Separate cabbage leaves. Shave off the ribs. Put a large spoonful of meat mix at the base of each leaf and roll up tightly. May fasten with toothpicks. Place in an oiled oven pan, nestling the rolls together so they won’t unroll. Mix together the tomato juice, catchup, and water. Pour over cabbage rolls. Bake, covered, at about 325 F for 1-1/2 hours.

These are best removed from the oven and let sit to settle and thicken the sauce a bit before serving. Place bowls of thick sour cream on the table, and mound a large tablespoonful of the cream on each cabbage roll before eating.

* Mom always swore by Aylmer’s tomato soup instead of tomato puree for making real Cabbage rolls., but it wasn’t always easy to find.

cabbage for cabbage rolls