Pörkölt and Turoshcusa

Ingredients

• Veal 5 lbs
• Sweet Pepper 2 pieces
• Lard 5 oz
• Red Grape Juice 1 glass
• Spanish onions 2 heads
• Chipotle Pepper Paste 3 spoons
• Garlic 2 cloves
• Rice Noodles 10 oz
• Cottage cheese 15 oz
• Sour Cream 10 oz
• Salt to taste
• Black Cumin (Cumin) to taste
• Ground Black Pepper to taste
• Red Long Chili Peppers to taste

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1

Finely chop the onion and bell pepper. Add small pieces of bacon to a saucepan and cook over low heat for twenty to thirty minutes until a crust forms. The resulting cracklings will be used as a garnish, while the rendered fat will be used to braise the meat.

Step 2

Cut the veal into cubes approximately three by five centimeters. Instead of veal, you can use any other meat or offal for pörkölt: beef, pork, chicken, liver, or even tripe.

Step 3

Drain the fat from the cracklings into the onion and pepper. A good piece of bacon should yield enough fat to coat all the onions. If necessary, you can add some vegetable oil. Sauté until the onions become translucent. Then add the cut meat to the pan.

Step 4

Finely chop and add two cloves of garlic to the meat. Season with black and white pepper, as well as cumin, to taste. Mix thoroughly.

Step 5

Add three tablespoons of paprika paste to the meat (in Hungary, it is sold ready-made in tubes, but to make it yourself, you can blend dry ground paprika with vegetable oil).

Step 6

Simmer the meat for an hour and a half. Ten minutes before it's done, pour in a cup of wine. The wine should not be too aromatic so that it doesn’t overpower the taste of the meat and pepper. Cook the pasta in salted water. For turoshchus, homemade wide noodles cut into strips about five centimeters long are usually used. As a substitute for homemade, you can buy something similar, like Gold-Ei Landnudeln.

Step 7

Add the cracklings to the pasta. Mix the cottage cheese with sour cream (preferably with 15% fat content, but lower is fine too). Add the cottage cheese mixture along with the cracklings and stir everything well.

Step 8

Place the pörkölt on one half of the plate and the túrós csusza on the other. You can substitute the pasta with another hearty side dish, such as boiled potatoes.