Marhapörkölt nokedlivel

The story

Pörkölt means roasted in Hungarian, from the verb pörkölni, and it is the dish most people outside Hungary call goulash. Hungarians keep the two apart: gulyás is a soup, while pörkölt is a thick stew of meat, onion and sweet paprika with very little added water. The food writer Carolyn Bánfalvi sums it up as gulyás without the broth. Tomato, green pepper and garlic are common additions; sour cream is not, because meat stewed with paprika and finished with sour cream becomes paprikás. Hungarian cooks also care about the order of work. The paprika goes into the hot fat with the softened onions before the meat, since that is what releases its flavor, and a long, gentle simmer does the rest. Beef, pork, chicken and lamb are all cooked this way, and so are game, tripe and liver. The usual partner is nokedli, small egg dumplings that Hungarians serve beside pörkölt or drop into soup; boiled potatoes and pickles are the other standard sides. The stew needs about two and a half hours on low heat, so mix the nokedli batter during the last half hour.