A watercolour of a deep red paprika stew with potato chunks and browned cubes of tinned meat
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from Goulash

Paprika and potato goulash

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Vegetable oil (sunflower or rapeseed).

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
3
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
0.35 L
Active
15 min
Total
30 min

Ingredients

Ten grams of paprika is not a typo. Goulash is a paprika dish and being timid with it produces a pan of beige.

  1. Luncheon meat cubed and browned in a dry pan until the edges are dark. Out.
  2. Oil in, dried onion, four full minutes on a moderate heat. It should swell, soften and start to go golden. This is the base and it cannot be hurried.
  3. Pan off the heat, then paprika and garlic in and stirred hard for twenty seconds. Paprika burns at frying temperature and burnt paprika is bitter all the way through.
  4. Back on. Passata, stock cube, 300 ml water, vinegar.
  5. Drained potatoes in, broken roughly in half. Fifteen minutes at a simmer, crushing a few against the pan to thicken.
  6. Meat back for the last three minutes.

Taking the pan off the heat for the paprika is the one piece of technique here that people skip and then wonder why it tastes acrid.

Serves 3.

What this was adapted from

Goulash: the Hungarian stew built on onions cooked slowly with a great deal of paprika

  • beef shin braised for two hours → tinned luncheon meat, browned

    Braising meat is not available on a single burner with limited fuel. Tinned meat gives salt and fat immediately; what is lost is the gelatine that thickens a real goulash, so the potatoes have to do that instead.

  • fresh onions, a lot of them, cooked down slowly → dried onion flakes

    Goulash is as much an onion dish as a meat one and this is the substitution that costs the most. Use more dried onion than seems right and give it real time in the fat.