Porkolt (which is actually a beef) recipe (higher carb)

(Bob M) #1

I tried this recently. Cooked on Sunday, ate last night (Tuesday):

I did not use bacon, and instead used pork fat and bacon fat (from Fire in a Bottle’s high sat fat pork). I doubled the recipe, and even so, this was barely enough for 5 people. I did not use the caraway seeds (don’t like them).

I cooked in the oven (at 300F) for 1 hour, top on but cracked open. Took top off and let simmer for quite a while, at least 1.5+ hours, to get thicker. The tomatoes add water, so that needs to cook down.

We cooked on Sunday, cooled, put in fridge. My wife put it in the crock pot to reheat while we were out, maybe an hour or so. Ate Tuesday evening.

I served over “riced” cauliflower, cooked in (a lot of ) butter.

We also added sour cream to it, and this went well with the flavor.

Highly recommended. A bit higher carb (tomatoes, onions), but very good nonetheless.

I see someone in the comments suggested adding red wine. That would probably be a good addition, but I did not do that.

#2

YAY!!! Pörkölt is great, I love it though it’s not carnivore, good thing I am not that either just try to stay close :smiley:

We make the basic version in this household, meat, salt, onion, lots of paprika, fat, just like Mom did her stews.
Hungarians makes stew from nearly anyting (I wouldn’t touch tripe but tripe stew is very popular for some reason). I made stews while a vegetarian as well as there are meatless ones…
Of course it’s a bit individual what else put into a stew but the basic one is already great. But it’s hard to make beef stew without at least thinking of red wine, it’s a very common and popular variation, maybe it’s the norm, at least if a chef does it…? But it’s really good without extras. Sour cream is awesome with it, I don’t use it for every little bowl but it’s good indeed.

Of course I don’t eat vegetables with it, I eat everything with eggs. Other stews are fine alone but I find beef stew so rich (and expensive) even with sour cream that I use my trusted eggs in some form.

I only put tomatoes (well, puree) into egg stews but many people love to put it into nearly everything.

Bell peppers? Oh my. It’s not lecsó :smiley: I never use that but I am a savage as I barely put any into my lecsó (rip. since I tried carnivore and dropped vegetables almost completely, I don’t do veggie dishes. not like there isn’t a meaty version of it) and that dish is based on it normally… :smiley:
But yep, people use bell peppers too in dishes together with tomato (it’s usually not bell pepper but some other capsicum, I never know how to call that slimmer yellow one… but people loving hotness use some kind of hot pepper). Tomato goes with beef stew way better if you ask me and I still never would put any into it.

Yay for pörkölt! I don’t know about other folks’ stew, I only know ours and I am quite happy with it.

Use paprika according to taste. I thought I use a lot but it’s nowhere around the amount written in the recipe, that’s, like 8 times as much! I don’t really know a thing as too many paprika in a stew but my amount is totally enough and well, it’s a carby stuff and why to overuse it…
I use the most paprika (by FAR) for my egg stew, 30g (a bit more than 3 tablespoons, maybe?) for 30 eggs but that dish uses more than 2 liters of liquid too… For meat, it’s way less. And I think one should make a stew using way more than 1.5 pounds of meat, 2.5 kg (somewhere above 5 pounds) beef was a cute amount even if not much but we did it on open fire (that’s the best way) and anyway, each to their own. I made super quick pork stews using a tiny meat in a pan when I didn’t want to wait for 1-2 hours for my roast to get ready… :smiley:

I try not to get carried away even more. But I so, so love our stews :smiley:

(Bob M) #3

I normally agree with you about bell peppers: I try to avoid them. In this case, after we had cooked this, I could not tell there were bell peppers in it at all. They basically disappeared. (Though I would like to try a version without the bell peppers.)

I thought the same about the amount of paprika: it’s way too much! But I used 8 tablespoons for the doubled recipe, and it turned out really good. I assume getting good paprika is important, though I’m not sure mine was great.

Tripe and hot pepper sound good. I wonder how tripe is after cooking for a while? I’ve been wanting to cook tripe for a while… The hot pepper, I’d like that, but I don’t think my kids would.

I definitely liked this, it’s a keeper.

I’m sure if it’s a national dish, there are probably more ways of making it than people.

#4

Indeed but this dish doesn’t have that too bad. I wrote about lecsó already (it’s an onion, tomato, pepper dish, quite simple), well many people takes it very seriously and could fight with others if it’s about the One Only or Best Way to do it! (Normal people understands we like it differently but many people don’t.) Everyone and their mother makes it differently :smiley: Even I disliked Mom’s and vice versa and I typically liked everything she made!
I only eat my own version while I never ever ate a bad pörkölt in my life :wink: Except when I was desperate and used chicken breast… Very lean meat isn’t a good idea except rabbit but a domesticated rabbit raised to be food has enough fat, probably…
I have read pork shoulders and beef leg makes the best pörkölt (if we want a pork or beef one, I mean). I don’t know but they are brilliant at it indeed. But beef neck worked wonderfully too…

I looked at recipes on a Hungarian site. They used 2-5 tablespoons paprika for 5 kg meat… 2 sounds a bit little to me but the upper limit sounds fine.
The recipe above uses about twice as much paprika per meat as sausage recipes and they use a lot! Maybe I should try it once with a tiny amount of meat, I am curious but it sounds very overkill…

I just buy normal first class Hungarian paprika, it’s beautifully bright red and tastes very good :slight_smile: Of course it’s easy for me here, good paprika is easy to find and quite cheap…

(Bob M) #5

I have heard the quality of paprika makes a difference, which is perhaps why they use so much in the recipe?

I’m not sure exactly what “beef stew meat” is in the US. I assume it’s cuts of beef they get when they’re processing other meat, but I’m not sure. This is what I used. But I could see something like pork shoulder, which has a relatively high fat content, being good. And there are probably a lot of other beef cuts (chuck?) that would do well here.

I guess if you add enough fat when you’re cooking the onions, and let this cook enough, you could use relatively lean beef too. I’m just getting back into making stews. I made a lot of them this winter, but they’re harder to make in the summer (no one wants an oven on in the house for a few hours).

By the way, how do you pronounce “pörkölt”?

  1. Pour Colt?
  2. Pork olth?
  3. Pork ohlt?
  4. ?

It’s the ö that’s throwing me off, I think.

#6

I can’t add much fat to my stews or anything else, it never works. The fat must be in the meat. But I can never know if I can handle a leaner meat, some are just great for a stew. Like beef leg, it’s quite lean but works.
I only add 10g lard per 100g (a small) onion, much more than that and my food would be greasy, ew, not so satiating either… Of course, it’s individual, much added fat never worked for me.

I have no idea what those words should be pronounced :smiley: But google translate pronounce it well :slight_smile: Pork has o, not ö :slight_smile: It’s more like the vowel in pearl. Yep, that is close enough.

(Bob M) #7

Thanks, I’ll have to go to Google translate.

When this was finished cooking, I gave some in a container to my mother, who lives in an in-law apartment in our house. She ate it the next day (and we ate ours 2 days later). She said it was great.

This is definitely a keeper of a recipe, and I’ll continue to use as long as tomatoes are in season. Once they are no longer in season, I’ll drop those.

I’ll also manipulate the level of the paprika, and maybe buy some online, to see what effect that has.

#8

From my deep understanding of this dish (half a dozen Youtube videos) they all seem to pronounce it as

Pur-Coat

Absolutely making this thing!

#9

Both ö sounds the same… As far as I know, coat sounds nothing like that.