Hovězí guláš

The story

Hovězí guláš is the Czech beef stew served with sliced bread dumplings or a thick piece of bread. Goulash came to Czech kitchens from Hungary, the dish's original home, and here it is a thick, dark sauce of onions, sweet paprika, caraway and marjoram around tender cubes of meat. It is usually made from beef, pork or game, and this version uses beef. Cooks favor beef shank, called kližka, whose connective tissue melts into the sauce over two or more hours of simmering, and they use plenty of onion, often as much by weight as the meat. The sauce is thickened at the end with a spoonful of flour or with breadcrumbs or grated stale bread. Some cooks braise the beef in dark beer, and many top each plate with rings of raw onion and pour a chilled Pilsner alongside. At village pig slaughters, the zabijačka, guláš was the high point of the day, made with offal as well as meat: liver, heart, kidneys, spleen or tongue. A pot of goulash keeps four to five days in the refrigerator. Make it a day ahead, reheat it gently, and serve it with the bread dumplings from the vepřo knedlo zelo recipe or with small potato pancakes.