Foreign Food for Students: Easy Goulash Soup

Having a cheap but diverse and fulfilling meal plan for students is an everlasting problem. So how could you expand the list of the dishes you can make with minimum effort, and yet add a little flavor to your repertoire? If you're searching for an easy-to-make foreign dish, you came to the right place.

Goulash Soup is one of Hungary's most notorious meals and that’s certainly for a reason. You can find all of the ingredients in the closest grocery shop (if it’s not in your kitchen already), and make a cheap and yet fulfilling meal without making a huge effort. And it’s always nice to have a new recipe up your sleeve, especially when we are talking about a most special foreign food suitable for students!

So what kinds of ingredients are we talking about? The first thing you’ll need to visit in the grocery store is the vegetable section. A couple of onions will give you the base of the soup, and you are going to build on that. Put in your basket a tomato too, and a couple of carrots, turnips, potatoes, and a clove of garlic. You are going to need some parsley too: you can either use fresh parsley if you want so you can add that to your basket at the vegetable section, but dried parsley will do just fine too.

 Moving to the spices, the first and most important thing is paprika. The heart of Hungarian cuisine is paprika, so it’s no surprise that you would heavily need it during the making of goulash soup. While you’re here you could also get some whole or grounded cumin, but this depends on your own taste. A little always helps with the taste but if you don’t have that at home you can spare a little money on it. The taste difference is just a small trade-off for that spared 2,5 euros.

The only things left to buy are fat or butter, salt, pepper, and meat. You are at a crossroads here. Beef or pork? Beef has a characteristic taste when used in goulash soup, but using pork is just as popular among Hungarian people, and it’s the cheaper option, so we’re going to go with that today.

Let’s have an overview of our ingredients:

• • 800g diced pork
  • 2 onions
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1 tomato
  • 3 carrots
  • 2 turnips
  • 4 medium-size potatoes
  • 2 tablespoon paprika
  • fresh or dry parsley to your liking
  • salt, pepper, and cumin to your liking

It’s time to put all these ingredients to work, and make the magic happen!

1. First of all, we have to prepare the ingredients. Peel and slice the onions, peel and crush the garlic, and after that clean and chop the tomato, the carrots, the turnips, and the potatoes. You want to put the tomatoes in salty water to keep them from turning brown until the time comes to use them!
2. In case you bought pork that isn’t already diced, remove the undesirable parts and cut the meat into dices.
3. On the fat/butter you have, cook the onions until they are tender, and then add your garlic.
4. After about 3 minutes put the pork and the paprika in the pot, season it to your liking, stir it well, and cook it until the meat starts to turn brown.
5. Add around 200ml of water (or you could use beef stock if you want that extra flavor, but it’s not that necessary), let it boil up, and cook until reduced by half.
6. At this point add the chopped tomato, carrots, turnips, and your parsley to the pot, and cover all of the pot’s contents with water. Let it boil for around 2 hours.
7. Lastly, put in the diced potatoes, fill up the pot with water if there’s still room, and let the soup simmer until the potatoes are cooked properly.
8. Enjoy!

As you can see, nothing complicated is needed to make this delicious and easy Hungarian food. As with every good soup, it takes some time to make it, but you can always do something else while it boils, and the end results definitely worth it!

Make this easy goulash soup for your family, share it with your friends and they will celebrate you for giving them such a special dinner!