When I was a kid we have a thing called Goulash which had ground hamburger, tomato juice, elbow macaroni and basically nothing else. I grew up thinking this was goulash until one day I got the brainy idea of going to Eastern Europe which I found out was actually in Central Europe. I'm not sure who decided that Eastern Europe should be in Central Europe but probably the same people that call Kentucky the mid-west when in fact it's in the east. Anyway I digress. The point was that I ate Goulash in several countries and it varies somewhat but for the most part it's very similar in Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary. It always has cubes of beef, sauce with tomatoes, lots of Paprika and various other things. Sometimes it has Hungarian soup noodles in it and other times it may have potatoes instead. We've been wanting to cook real goulash (gulyas in Hungarian) for a while so we did tonight. Overall it had a good flavour with Caraway seeds and Paprika but I'm going to make a few changes to make it taste more like it does in Eastern Europe (the one in Central Europe).

You might be surprised to find out that Goulash is actually a stew of sorts instead of elbow macaroni in tomato juice. The soup noodles are made from a very stiff dough of eggs and flour (no other liquids), squeezed into fingernail size pieces and dropped into boiling water. You can see Piper forming the noodles and Jade fishing them out when done here. It's a very easy process making them especially if you have a mixer.

The soup is made with a high galatin beef like blade steak cut into cubes and browned

in a dutch oven. Added are onions tons of paprika, caraway, tomato paste, garlic and a bit of salt. Later home made beef broth is added or chicken broth from the store and the whole thing is simmered for a couple of hours. Halfway through green peppers and cubed potatoes are added. More broth is added as needed and when done the sauce is soupy and the meat almost falls off the bone. Add the pasta and serve it.