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Hungarian Goulash En Casserole
4 onions 2 pounds veal Bacon fat 1 1/2 pints brown stock Pepper 1 pint potato balls 12 small onions 1 cup carrot slices 1 cup turnip slices Salt Paprika Slice the onion and cut the raw veal in cubes. Cook together in a little bacon fat, until brown. Transfer to casserole, pour over it the brown stock and season with pepper and paprika. Place in moderate oven (350 degrees F.). Add more fat to that in the frying-pan and brown in this the potato balls, small onions, and slices of carrot and turnip. Add the vegetables and salt to the casserole when the meat is partly cooked. Finish the cooking, adding more stock if necessary. This dish should cook two hours. If the broth is too thin when ready to serve, thicken slightly with browned flour rubbed smooth in water.
A straightforward braise, but the ingredient list gives quantities without much guidance on cut, timing or yield. A few notes.
- Veal cutUse shoulder or breast, not leg or cutlet. Two pounds of cubed shoulder holds up to two hours of moist heat; lean leg meat will be dry and stringy.
- Liquid measuresA pint here is 2 cups, so 1 1/2 pints of brown stock is 3 cups. The pint of potato balls means a pint by volume, roughly 2 cups of scooped or turned potato -- somewhere around three-quarters of a pound, since the balls pack loosely.
- OvenThe recipe names 350F, which is a reasonable temperature for a braise. It does not say whether to cover the dish; the instruction to add more stock as needed suggests some liquid will cook away over the two hours.
- PaprikaThe amount is not given. A tablespoon of sweet Hungarian paprika is a reasonable reading; here it goes in with the stock in the casserole, so there is no risk of it scorching in dry fat.
- When to add vegetables'Partly cooked' is undefined; roughly halfway through the two hours is the usual reading. Added at the start, the turnip and carrot collapse and the potato balls fall apart.
- Browning the vegetablesBrowning the potato balls and small onions in the pan drippings is doing real work here, not just colouring them. Get the fat hot and do not crowd the pan or they will steam.
- Bacon fatAny rendered fat or oil will serve. The recipe says only 'a little' for the meat and 'more fat' for the vegetables; 3 to 4 tablespoons total is a workable reading.
- ThickeningBrowned flour means flour toasted dry in a pan until nut-coloured. It thickens less than raw flour, so allow 2 tablespoons slaked in cold water for 3 cups of liquid.
- YieldNo yield is given; two pounds of veal plus the vegetables would plausibly serve about six with bread or noodles.