Pork Pörkölt (Hungarian Paprika Pork Stew)

Name: Pork Pörkölt: Hungarian Paprika Pork Stew Recipe
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h 30 min
Total time: 2 h
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Boneless pork 0.5 kg; Smoked pork fat (salo) 50 g; Onion 2; Green pepper 1-2; Tomatoes 2-3; Garlic 1-2 cloves; Sweet ground paprika up to 1 tsp (2 g); Ground caraway a pinch on the tip of a knife; Salt to taste; Water or meat broth 1/4 cup, plus a little more while stewing (50 ml); Potatoes (for mashed potatoes) for the side dish; Pickled hot pepper to taste; Parsley for sprinkling; White bread to serve

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Pörkölt (also spelled perkelt) is a Hungarian dish similar to a stew, made from juicy meat, onion and paprika. You could say it is less a single dish than a way of cooking braised meat.

Hungarian cuisine is rich in meat dishes, mostly pork and salo (cured pork fat). The opera “Countess Maritza” by Imre (Emmerich) Kálmán sums up the Hungarian attitude to meat in a single line: “If it’s meat, then pork; if it’s fat, then spicy bacon.”

Hungarian dishes are usually generously flavored with onion, sweet paprika and, of course, garlic. A unique feature of Hungarian cuisine is combining a soup and a main course in one dish. Take the famous lecsó (lecsó): onion, tomatoes, peppers and sausage. Goulash is pieces of beef, bacon, onion, paprika and potatoes. Pörkölt: meat (almost any kind), paprika, onion, bacon and garlic. Paprikash – is essentially the same, but usually made without fatty or tough meat, most often chicken, game or rabbit, with sour cream added.

Honestly, it is quite hard to tell these dishes apart, especially as the taste of so much paprika is not very familiar to us. But they are all very thick soups, the kind cooked in Asia and on the steppes. There are plenty of similar dishes. For example, Tatar-style azu, kesme soup, Georgian chanakhi, yahniya, and so on.

Or think of bograch cooked over a campfire , or Magyar goulash: goulash made from meat, sweet peppers, ground paprika, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots and spices, cooked over a fire in a cauldron. “Bogrács” is simply the Hungarian word for a cauldron, and you will often see the terms “bograch goulash” or “bograch gulyás”.

All of these are ways of making thick soups by stewing meat with vegetables, with practically no added water. Onion, pepper, garlic and always paprika go in during stewing. The usual side dish is tarhonya, a Hungarian pasta, or potatoes. Sometimes the potatoes go straight into the dish. This pork pörkölt is perfect for cooking over a fire, especially on a camping or overnight fishing trip.

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Ingredients

2 servings

For the pörkölt
Boneless pork 0.5 kg
Smoked pork fat (salo) 50 g
Onion 2
Green pepper 1-2
Tomatoes 2-3
Garlic 1-2 cloves
Sweet ground paprika up to 1 tsp (2 g)
Ground caraway a pinch on the tip of a knife
Salt to taste
Water or meat broth 1/4 cup, plus a little more while stewing (50 ml)
For serving
Potatoes (for mashed potatoes) for the side dish
Pickled hot pepper to taste
Parsley for sprinkling
White bread to serve

Step-by-step recipe

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Preparation

Prepare fresh young vegetables: onion, sweet green pepper and ripe tomatoes.
Cut the pork into cubes no larger than 3 cm.
Make sure the pork is very fresh, but not warm, freshly slaughtered meat. It should have no bones or tendons, only thin streaks of fat. Shoulder or leg is best, but you can also use pork tenderloin.

Onion and paprika

In a cauldron or deep sauté pan over medium heat, render the pork fat.
Remove all the cracklings and set them aside.
It is best to use smoked or Hungarian fat sprinkled with red paprika, which adds a note of flavor and aroma.
Peel the onion and chop it fairly finely.
Fry the onion in the fat until soft.
As soon as the onion starts to turn golden, reduce the heat to the minimum and let the onion and fat cool slightly.
Then add the sweet ground red paprika, up to 1 tsp.
Red paprika is the main flavoring: it determines the color and aroma of the dish.
Be sure to stir the fat so the paprika spreads evenly and doesn’t form lumps. Red paprika mixes into fat quickly.

Stewing

Right away, without letting the paprika boil, add the cut meat and stir.
Add salt and ground caraway, a pinch on the tip of a knife. At this stage the dish is fiery, blood red.
Add a quarter cup of water or meat broth. Stew the meat under a lid until all the liquid has evaporated.
Add a little more liquid and keep stewing the pork at the lowest simmer you can manage, for about 1 hour, until the pörkölt is soft and tender.
It is important to use very little liquid so the pork stews rather than boils. As cooks say, it stews in its own juices.
After that time, add the chopped green pepper, the tomatoes (peeled and seeded) and the chopped garlic.
Return the cracklings you set aside earlier.
If you like, add 1-2 small hot peppers. But it is better to serve hot pepper, fresh or pickled, on the side at the table.
Stew the pörkölt until fully cooked, about 20 more minutes. The finished dish should be quite thick, similar to braised beef with vegetables, with a pleasant dark red color.

Serving

While the dish stews, make mashed potatoes for the side.
Ladle the hot meat dish into deep bowls and add mashed potatoes and pickled hot pepper, or spicy pickles.
It also goes very well with previously prepared peppers in oil and cloves of fried garlic in their skins.
Serve the hot dish right away, before it cools. Be sure to sprinkle with finely chopped parsley and add fresh white bread.

Calories and macros

885 kcal

Serving ≈ 490 g

Protein47 g22% of kcal
Fat68 g71% of kcal
Carbs16 g7% of kcal

100 g182 kcalProtein 9.7 gFat 13.9 gCarbs 3.2 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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