Ingredients (Serves 6-8)

• 1kg diced meat, (mixture of 800 g Gravy beef and some 200 g of diced pork)

• 1 - 2 marrow bones (optional)

• 1 -2 bacon rasher or speck

• 2 large onions, chopped

• 1-2 cloves garlic, crushed

• 1 tomato, chopped (add more to taste)

• 1 capsicum, chopped

• Fresh chilli to taste

• 2 carrots, sliced

• 3 medium potatoes, diced (add less to taste)

• 3 heaped tbsp paprika powder (1 each sweet, smoked, hot)

• 1 tsp salt (more to taste)

• Dash of cold milk (added to individual plates when serving) to cool the soup down and make it creamier.

Nockedli (Spätzle/Noodles)

• 1 egg

• 3/4 cup plain flour,

• pinch of salt and

• enough cold water to form a dough that is firm enough to pass through a nockedli sieve (see pic 2)

Method

Fry onion, garlic, bacon/speck in a little oil.

When onions are glassy, take off heat and add paprika and chillis. Stir and add diced meat, and bones.

Cook on low heat slowly (15 minutes or more), to seal meat and create a lot of juice. (This is the most important step in the whole soup, if you rush this, your soup will taste watery!)

Add tomato, capsicum and carrots, about 2 teaspoons salt, cover with water and boil for 30 mins - 1 hour (until the veg are as soft as you want).

Add diced potatoes and boil until potatoes done.

Make dough for nockedli and push through sieve into boiling soup. They are cooked when they rise to the top.

Serve with crusty white bread.

Note

The traditional noodle for this soup (called csipetke) is made from one egg with as much plain flour as it will take to make a firm dough. Take lump of dough into one hand and pinch off tiny bits that you drop into the boiling soup. This is very time consuming and nockedli as above will do.

Some of the really famous Hungarian chefs could be identified by the way they pinched the dough for the little noodles. That was before WW2. Nowadays you don’t get these noodles in the gulyas soup any more when you eat out in Hungary.

Thanks to the Author’s mum for getting this into print: Ingelore Elizabeth Győry, who may be pestered for the entire book of recipes of exotic meals she cooked for her family over the years.