Recipe
🍽️ DINNER
Gulyás (Herdsman’s Goulash)
The original goulash: a paprika-red beef and vegetable soup-stew born over open fires on the Hungarian plain.
Hungarian · easy · serves 6
prep 20 min · cook 100 min
~565 cal · 43g protein · 28g carbs · 30g fat · 5g fiber · 7g sugars · 10g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Gulyas takes its name from the word for a herdsman, and that is exactly what it was: the meal the mounted cattle drovers of the Hungarian Great Plain cooked in a bogracs, a kettle hung over an open fire, centuries before it became the national dish. What the world calls "goulash", a thick stew, would puzzle a Hungarian, because real gulyas is a soup, brothy and generous.
Its soul is paprika, and Hungarians are exacting about it: sweet, deep red, and freshly milled from their own harvest, stirred in off the heat so it never scorches and turns bitter. Beef, onions, potatoes, and often little pinched dumplings called csipetke round it out, with caraway and a green pepper carrying the background flavour.
It is cooked slowly and outdoors whenever there is an excuse, at harvests and village gatherings, and eaten with crusty bread. The plains where it was born are treeless and open, and gulyas still carries that sense of a fire in a wide landscape and a pot that feeds everyone who wanders up to it.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally gluten-, dairy-, nut- and egg-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 6
2 lbs beef chuck, large cubes
3 yellow onions, diced
3 tbsp sweet Hungarian paprika
1 tsp caraway seeds, crushed
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 Hungarian wax or bell peppers, sliced
2 tomatoes, chopped
3 potatoes, chunked
2 carrots, chunked
3 tbsp lard or
Instructions
1
Sweat the onions in the fat until deep golden and very soft, almost dissolving.
2
Take the pot off the heat and stir in the paprika, then the beef, caraway, and garlic.
✎ Chef’s note
Always add paprika off the heat. It scorches and turns bitter in seconds against a hot pan, which would ruin the whole pot.
3
Add a splash of water, cover, and stew on low for 45 minutes, letting the meat cook in its own juices.
4
Add the peppers, tomatoes, and 6 cups water and simmer 30 minutes.
5
Add the potatoes and carrots and simmer a final 25 minutes, until everything is tender.
6
Season and serve in deep bowls. Gulyas should sit halfway between a soup and a stew.
Great Plain kettle cooking.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Great Hungarian Plain. The pot is as important as the paprika. A bogracs, a cauldron with a bail handle, hangs over an open fire and everything is built in it in one direction, onions first and softened slowly, and the paprika is stirred in off the heat so it does not turn bitter. Herdsmen cooked this way because they had no kitchen, not because it was picturesque.
🗺️
Hungary. The names are not interchangeable. Gulyas in Hungary is a soup, thin enough to drink, while the thick stew foreigners call goulash is closer to porkolt or, with soured cream stirred through, paprikas. Paprika itself arrived late, working its way into the cooking only through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so nothing about it is ancient Magyar.
🌍
Europe. A surprising amount of European cooking is under five hundred years old. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, maize, beans and chocolate all crossed from the Americas after 1492, and none of them was trusted quickly: the potato took most of the eighteenth century to be accepted as food rather than animal fodder across much of the north.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Hungary
LecsóHungary’s summer pepper stew: sweet peppers and tomatoes melted down with golden onions and a generous spoon of sweet paprika.
BundáskenyérHungarian "fur-coat bread", slices dipped in seasoned egg and milk and fried golden.
LángosA plate-sized disc of deep-fried dough rubbed with garlic and heaped with sour cream and cheese, Hungary's market-day treat.
Browse all Hungary recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Pot or saucepan.
Storing it: Soup keeps 3 to 4 days refrigerated and freezes well. Reheat gently and loosen with a little water or stock if needed.
Make it a Hungary meal
Dobos TorteDessert
LángosLunch
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Frequently asked questions
What is Gulyás (Herdsman’s Goulash)?
The original goulash: a paprika-red beef and vegetable soup-stew born over open fires on the Hungarian plain.
Where does Gulyás (Herdsman’s Goulash) come from?
Gulyás (Herdsman’s Goulash) is a Hungarian dish from Great Hungarian Plain, Hungary.
Can Gulyás (Herdsman’s Goulash) be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Gulyás (Herdsman’s Goulash) recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Gulyás (Herdsman’s Goulash) safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Gulyás (Herdsman’s Goulash) take to make?
About 120 minutes total (20 minutes prep, 100 minutes cooking), serving 6.
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