Pörkölt (perkelt, perkelt, pörkölt) is a Hungarian dish similar to stew, made from juicy meat, onions and paprika. We can say that this is not just a dish, but rather a way of preparing stewed meat dishes.
Hungarian cuisine is, first of all, diverse meat dishes, with a predominance of pork and . In the opera “Maritsa” by Imre (Emmerich) Kálmán Imre, the Hungarians’ attitude towards meat is very accurately stated, with just one line: “If there is meat, then there is pork, if there is lard, there is spicy lard.”
The taste of Hungarian dishes is usually richly and generously flavored with onions, sweet paprika, and, well, garlic, where would we be without it. Unique Feature Hungarian cuisine - a combination of the first and second in one dish. For example, the famous (lecsó): onions, tomatoes, paprika and sausage. – pieces of beef, bacon, onion, paprika and potatoes. Perkelt (pörkölt): meat (almost any), paprika, onion, lard, garlic. - essentially the same but, as a rule, without fatty and old meat, most often it is chicken, game, rabbit, and with the addition of sour cream.
To be honest, it is very difficult to discern the difference between such dishes, given that the taste large quantity paprika is not particularly familiar to us. But the essence of such dishes is very thick (thickened) soups, as is customary to prepare in Asia, in the steppes. There are many analogues of such dishes. For example, kesme soup, Georgian chanakhi, etc.
Pork tenderloin for pörkölt
Heat in a kettle or deep saucepan lard, and then select all the cracklings and set them aside. It is best to take smoked or Hungarian lard, sprinkled with red paprika. In this case, a note of taste and aroma will be added to the pörkölt. Melt lard in a saucepan
Peel the onion and chop it finely. Fry the onion in fat until soft. As soon as the onion begins to brown, reduce the heat to low and let the onion and fat cool slightly. Fry onions in fat until soft
Then add sweet ground red paprika to the pörkölt. Quantity - up to 1 tsp. Red paprika is the main flavoring additive in pörkölt, ultimately determining the color and aroma of the dish. Add sweet ground red paprika
Red paprika mixes quickly with the fat. It is necessary to mix the fat so that the paprika is distributed evenly and lumps do not form. It is necessary to mix the fat
Immediately, without letting the paprika boil, add the chopped meat and stir. Add chopped meat and stir
Salt the pörkölt and add ground cumin - on the tip of a knife. The color of the dish at this stage is fiery red and bloody. Add a quarter glass of water or meat broth to the pörkölt. Simmer the meat covered until all the liquid has evaporated. Add a little more liquid and continue to simmer the meat at the lowest simmer that can be achieved. It is important that there is very little liquid during the cooking process, and that the meat is stewed and not boiled. As the chefs say, it was stewed in its own juice. Add a quarter glass of water
To keep the pörkölt soft and tender, the meat should be simmered for about 1 hour. The meat needs to simmer for about 1 hour.
After the specified time, add chopped perkölt Green pepper, peeled and seeded tomatoes, chopped garlic. Add the previously removed cracklings. If desired, you can add 1-2 small pods of hot pepper. But better, hot peppers- fresh or pickled, add to pörkölt as a side dish before serving.
Step 1: Prepare the ingredients.
Rinse the meat thoroughly and well under running water, then drain it and cut into large cubes. Next, peel the onions, rinse them and chop them coarsely. Cut the sweet bell pepper in half, remove grains and all kinds of veins from inside it, wash and cut into small cubes.
In this dish we will need peeled tomatoes. To do this, prepare a container of boiling water and place the tomatoes in it for 20 seconds. This way, it will be much easier and easier for you to remove the skin from them. 
Cut the peeled tomatoes into fairly large slices. Step 2: Fry the onion.
Heat in a deep frying pan required amount vegetable oil, place the chopped onion there and fry it until soft. After that, add sweet ground paprika and just a little water to the fried onions. Mix the entire contents of the pan thoroughly and simmer with open lid on medium heat for some time. Step 3: Add pork.
Add chopped pork to the prepared fried onion, add salt to your taste and fry under an open lid for about five minutes. Then reduce the heat and cover the entire contents with a lid. So simmer and simmer over low heat for about 40 minutes. Step 4: Serve Hungarian-style pork pörkölt.
Add chopped tomatoes, peppers and garlic, previously passed through a press, to the meat. Add spices to taste, mix everything thoroughly and continue to simmer, bringing the dish until fully cooked, for about another 10-15 minutes. 
Hungarian style pork pörkölt is ready! Now you can divide it into portioned plates and serve it while it is still hot. Try it and you won't regret it! Enjoy your meal! If necessary, during the stewing process, add a little water to the dish, or even better, white table wine.
Dumplings are often served as a side dish for pörkölt. Boiled potatoes are also great.
If desired, you can prepare pörkölt from lamb, poultry, veal, hare, chicken livers and gizzards in exactly the same way.
Perkelt is probably the most popular Hungarian dish among the Hungarians themselves, which, together with, is probably more popular than. After visiting Hungary and reading several fairly authoritative books about Hungarian cuisine, I got the impression that bograch is more popular here in Transcarpathia than in Hungary itself. Even the Hungarian consul in Ukraine, on one of the next holidays of Hungarian Independence Day, on one Ukrainian leading TV channel, prepared nothing more than perkelt. It was a perkelt from a Mangalica, a special breed of Hungarian curly-haired pig, the meat of which the Hungarians love so much that the same consul takes it with him from Hungary to Ukraine. I confess that I grew up on very high quality pork, fed on natural products, the meat of such pigs is very tasty, although it comes from an ordinary pig, and I don’t understand the hype around Mangalitsa meat. I tried it, but I didn’t feel any difference at all with my native high-quality pork. So, with clear conscience, I suggest you cook, real Hungarian perkelt from pork. You can cook perkelt from beef. This is the second very popular look meat for perkelt. Perkelt is rarely prepared from other types of meat. There is also perkelt made from beef tripe and sometimes there is perkelt made from lamb. It is most often prepared from poultry and veal meat.
Also, real perkelt differs from random perkelt in that when it is ready, it has a uniform appearance, its sauce is dark and thick, such that it envelops the meat. This is exactly the kind of perkelt served in Hungary. And for this, you need a sufficient amount of paprika and patience. Real perkelt takes a long time to prepare, but its taste is worth it.
Unlike Paprikash, sour cream is not put into the perkelt itself, but very often it is served with a small amount of sour cream. It very successfully sets off the taste of intense perkelt and creates a good contrast. And also, great amount dishes in Hungary and this is also sprinkled with parsley at the end. This is the favorite green of Hungarians.
You can cook perkelt in a saucepan with a thick bottom or in a kettle. You can cook perkelt over a fire, like bograch. But in general, this is a dish that can and should even be prepared in advance, and then reheated before serving. Just perfect for everyday work! After all, like every stew, perkelt only gets better as it cools and reheats. You can cook it the evening before, or when you have time, leave it to cool, and the next day, just reheat it and prepare a simple side dish. Also, perkelt can be frozen. That is, you should cook it in larger quantities, the cooking time will hardly change, and you will have a spare dinner in the freezer.
Traditionally, perkelt is served with special kind pasta, tarhonya, which appeared on the territory of Hungary, most likely together with the Turks, there this product is called tarhana and there are many dishes with it. This is a type of pasta made from a very tight egg dough that is pressed through a sieve and dried in the sun. The process of preparing tarhoni is quite complex and difficult. In countries where tarhonya is common, you can buy it ready-made. I brought mine from Hungary. Perkelt can also be served with small dumplings, which are very easy to prepare at home. As a last resort, you can serve perkelt with potatoes. Sometimes they even add potatoes to meat. Especially when perkelt is cooked over an open fire and there is no way to cook the side dish separately.
When it comes to paprika, it is ideal to use Hungarian paprika. It can be found in online stores in Transcarpathia and, of course, in Hungary :-). This is the most aromatic paprika you can imagine. It can be sweet and savory, regular and slightly smoked. Hungarian smoked paprika, in my opinion, has a more noble aroma and taste than Spanish smoked paprika. As a last resort, you can use the paprika that you have on hand. The main thing is to make sure that it does not burn, because it will then add bitterness to the dish. In Hungarian cuisine, there is even a special technique for adding paprika to dishes; for this, a well-heated pan with fat, onions, and sometimes something else, depending on the recipe, is removed from the heat, paprika is added, stirred, and when it has warmed up well from heat the walls of the dishes and foods that have already been stewed or fried, add a little water and return to the fire. Paprika releases its flavor best when gently heated in fat, but it also burns very quickly, so you need to be careful. I have been cooking with paprika for a long time and know how to add it without removing the pan from the heat, but if someone has little practice, I advise you to use the Hungarian method of adding paprika. It's safer this way.
Well, perhaps this is all I wanted to write about the Hungarian perkelt. Everything is very simple, the main thing is to cook with love. Have a good mood and delicious dishes!
4 servings:
- 1 kg pork shoulder (you can use beef)
- 1 tbsp.
- 2 lard
- onions, cut into half rings
- 1/2 tsp. cumin seeds
- 1 3 tbsp. not hot paprika (ideally Hungarian) green
- 1 Bell pepper
- , remove the core with seeds, cut into cubes
- tomato, peeled, cut into cubes
Water, as much as needed to cover the meat completely
- Salt to taste
- 1/4 To submit:
Sour cream
bunch of parsley, finely chopped
And perkölt, and paprikash, and goulash have the same base, and the beginning of cooking is also the same. Differences in the amount of liquid. Pörkölt is stewed in its own juice, and very little water or wine is poured into it. Paprikash contains a lot of water, and very often sour cream or flour is added at the end. And goulash - well, you know, since it’s soup, there’s a lot of water in it. Pörkölt takes a long time to prepare, but paprikash can be made in 45 minutes. Goulash - depends on the meat, but you need to cook it for at least two hours.
Some types of meat turn out very well in pörkölt, others in paprikash. The classic ingredient in pörkölt is beef shanks. It is also made from other parts of beef, including tripe, venison, wild boar, and pork hooves. From pork knuckle you can make a very tasty pörkölt: there is a lot of fat in there that you don’t need to remove, it will turn out wildly delicious. But pork pörkölt is still considered a level lower than beef pörkölt. In general, you can make it from anything, just not from meat, which cooks quickly: everything will boil over. So it’s better to use the chicken for paprikash. Here is a recipe - but in spirit it is also more like paprikash.
More about the differences: you don’t have to put paprika in the pörkölt. That is, in Hungary they put it, of course, because they put it in all dishes. This will give additional taste and color, but you can do it without paprika. And in paprikash it is obligatory. And the difference is in the adding step (at least how I cook). In paprikash, you first fry the onion, and then remove it from the heat and add ground paprika (you must remove it, because the pepper burns quickly); mix and only then add meat. In a pörkölt, you put the meat on top of the fried onion, and add the spices later, when it produces juice.
I prefer to put not even ground pepper, but paprika paste. But in Russia it is almost impossible to find. And it’s also better to take Hungarian ground paprika. But in Russia there is ground pepper from the Austrian company Kotányi - this is even more or less normal.
So, perkölt. Cut the onion into small cubes and simmer over low heat for 10–15 minutes until it becomes transparent. It is best to simmer in melted lard. Then add meat. If we make it from shanks, the films must be removed, but the veins must be left. Cut the meat into cubes 3 by 3 centimeters. You can also use smaller ones, then it will cook faster. But when you cook longer, the taste becomes more intense. Throw the meat onto the onion, increase the heat and fry. When it gives juice, add spices: for 2 kg of beef - a pinch of cumin, salt to taste, a little black pepper, paprika and 2-3 cloves of garlic (you can finely chop it, or you can just chop each one into two or three parts: simmer it will take a long time, and everything will boil down anyway). Then add fresh bell pepper. The best thing is what in Russia they call ground in stores: it’s green-yellow, not multi-colored Bulgarian, it’s more aromatic. But in extreme cases, Bulgarian is also possible. You need to remove the seeds from the pepper and cut it in half or into four parts. Add another half tomato or whole tomato. Reduce the heat so that everything bubbles just a little, and simmer for a long time, at least two hours. If there is too little liquid during the stewing process, add a little water. When we feel that it is almost ready (we need to try), 15 minutes before removing from the heat, you can add a glass of dry red wine.
Pörkölt can be eaten on its own with bread or with boiled potatoes. Often eaten with dumplings. For half a kilo of flour you need two or three eggs (I usually take three) and salt: stir, add about 200 ml of warm water to make a sluggish dough. Then we put it on a plate and use a knife to take out small pieces of dough - directly into boiling salted water. When the dumplings float to the top, they are ready. We put them on plates and put perkölt on top.
They eat it with different pastas. For example, with penne. I once had a funny incident: they told me that in Tuscany they make an excellent wild boar stew with penne, and I somehow ordered it - and it turned out to be Hungarian pörkölt with pasta, actually one to one.
Pörkölt and turoshchusa are also good together. This is a dish of square or just wide noodles with bacon cracklings, cottage cheese and sour cream. I can’t find noodles like this in Moscow, so I buy lasagna sheets and just break them. I cook the pasta, then mix it with cracklings and cottage cheese, at the very end you add sour cream - and then there’s the perkölt.
Pörkölt (perkelt, perkelt, pörkölt) is a Hungarian dish similar to stew, made from juicy meat, onions and paprika. We can say that this is not just a dish, but rather a way of preparing stewed meat dishes.
Hungarian cuisine is primarily varied in meat dishes, with a predominance of pork and. In the opera “Maritsa” by Imre (Emmerich) Kálmán Imre, the Hungarians’ attitude towards meat is very accurately stated, with just one line: “If there is meat, then there is pork, if there is lard, there is spicy lard.”
The taste of Hungarian dishes is usually richly and generously flavored with onions, sweet paprika, and, well, garlic, where would we be without it. A unique feature of Hungarian cuisine is the combination of the first and second dishes in one dish. For example, the famous (lecsó): onions, tomatoes, paprika and sausage. – pieces of beef, bacon, onion, paprika and potatoes. Perkelt (pörkölt): meat (almost any), paprika, onion, lard, garlic. - essentially the same but, as a rule, without fatty and old meat, most often it is chicken, game, rabbit, and with the addition of sour cream.
To be honest, it is very difficult to discern the difference between such dishes, given that the taste of large amounts of paprika is not particularly familiar to us. But the essence of such dishes is very thick (thickened) soups, as is customary to prepare in Asia, in the steppes. There are many analogues of such dishes. For example, kesme soup, Georgian chanakhi, etc.
Pork tenderloin for pörkölt
Melt lard in a kettle or deep saucepan, then remove all the cracklings and set aside. It is best to take smoked or Hungarian lard, sprinkled with red paprika. In this case, a note of taste and aroma will be added to the pörkölt. Melt lard in a saucepan
Peel the onion and chop it finely. Fry the onion in fat until soft. As soon as the onion begins to brown, reduce the heat to low and let the onion and fat cool slightly. Fry onions in fat until soft
Then add sweet ground red paprika to the pörkölt. Quantity - up to 1 tsp. Red paprika is the main flavoring additive in pörkölt, ultimately determining the color and aroma of the dish. Add sweet ground red paprika
Red paprika mixes quickly with the fat. It is necessary to mix the fat so that the paprika is distributed evenly and lumps do not form. It is necessary to mix the fat
Immediately, without letting the paprika boil, add the chopped meat and stir. Add chopped meat and stir
Salt the pörkölt and add ground cumin - on the tip of a knife. The color of the dish at this stage is fiery red and bloody. Add a quarter glass of water or meat broth to the pörkölt. Simmer the meat covered until all the liquid has evaporated. Add a little more liquid and continue to simmer the meat at the lowest simmer that can be achieved. It is important that there is very little liquid during the cooking process, and that the meat is stewed and not boiled. As the chefs say, it was stewed in its own juice. Add a quarter glass of water
To keep the pörkölt soft and tender, the meat should be simmered for about 1 hour. The meat needs to simmer for about 1 hour.
After the specified time, add chopped green peppers, seeds and peeled tomatoes, and chopped garlic to the pörkölt. Add the previously removed cracklings. If desired, you can add 1-2 small pods of hot pepper. But it’s better to add hot peppers - fresh or pickled - to the pörkölt as a side dish before serving.