This isn’t fancy but it’s my comfort food. My family has been making this and calling it macaroni since before I was born. It’s a super simple recipe that I cook mostly in the winter. Across the Midwest US this is known as (American) Goulash.
I start with 1 Kg (2 lb) ground beef, a large onion, 600 g (4 cups) of macaroni elbows (or other unit pasta), two 798 ml (27 oz?) cans of crushed or diced tomatoes, dry basil, dry oregano, garlic powder, salt, and the secret ingredient, ketchup.
I dice up the onion, heat up a deep frying pan, add a bunch of butter (30 ml, 2 T), and toss in the onions frying them until they start to caramelize. Then I add in the ground beef and fry it until there is no more visible red and I think it’s mostly cooked. Next I add in all of the diced/crushed tomatoes, a palm full (seriously, that’s how I do it…maybe between 15 ml and 30 ml (1T and 2T) each of dry basil and dry oregano, around 5 ml (1 t) of garlic powder, and around 10 ml (2 t) of salt. Finally, I add a good squirt of ketchup (maybe…250 ml, 1 c). I stir it up, bring it to a simmer, and turn the heat down to hold the simmer.
Next, I boil the elbows until they are al dente. When the elbows are ready I drain them and shake the colander to get rid of as much water as possible then dump the elbows into the sauce and mix. From there it goes straight into bowls.
Between you and me, I think it’s actually better the next day fried in a frying pan with butter but that’s just me…and my father…and my son.
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Curious. In Australia we would use spaghetti and call it spaghetti bolognaise (our national dish). I thought goulash was a type of stew?
You’re not wrong, traditional Hungarian goulash is indeed a slow simmered beef stew, but it has (imo) a pretty interesting story!
Throughout the Middle Ages, goulash migrated around, integrating itself into the flavors and tastes of lots of other old world cultures, like Albania and even Ethiopia, who still have their own version of goulash too which also resembles a type of stew.
In the mid-too-late-19th century many Hungarians migrated to The United States, so in keeping tradition, goulash integrated itself into the tastes and flavors of American culture, and thus what we see above was born. Even different regions within the states have their own version. In the Midwest (states like Minnesota, the Dakotas, Michigan) it can resemble more of a casserole, whereas the southern states, it could include chicken and rice.
What connects them all is really that it’s a comfort food, made in a single pot, and best eaten with family!
In NE it’s referred to as American Chop Suey
That’s really interesting! I once ate yak goulash in Bhutan - it was delicious.
Gulyás is not a stew! You are thinking of pörkölt, that’s what most other nations call “goulash”. Gulyás is a soup.
I used to add peas, corn and chopped carrot to this to get my kids to eat their veggies.
Shred some Colby + Parmesan over the top.
I still make it this way even though they’re adults now, it’s just the family bolognese. 🤷.spaghetti bolognese with peas is super underrated IMO
TIL that Goulash is Beefaroni.
There is an Austrian version of goulash, that’s basically beef stew.
Only in the midwest. If you call this Goulash to a Hungarian person their heads would explode.
Thats just beef macaroni my dude. Calling it goulash without paprika is probably a gonna be a food crime to many.
My family has always called it macaroni. A coworker from Michigan told me that they call it goulash so I started calling it goulash as a joke. I’ve updated the title of this post (Lemmy is awesome in that regard) a couple of times to incorlorate feedback from the community.
Only slightly related but my new favorite nickname for this dish, which I learned from the top recipe link Google gave me, was “Slumgullion”
That suggests a slum origin which would probably be fitting. With the price of ground beef these days it isn’t really poor food anymore.
My family calls is macaroni. An American coworker pointed out that the call out goulash so I started calling it that as a joke.
thanks for including the recipe.
my dad has made a version of this since before i was born (45 years). he prefers the shell macaroni, but any will do. and rather than ketchup, his secret ingredient is a coupla cans of mushroom soup.
calls it “cowboy surprise” (also goulash), and i agree that it hits the comfort button.
Oh, that’s interesting. I will use whatever kind of unit pasta I have around. I’ve used various tubes and swirls. Does he use big shells of small ones? I always find them very delicate.
Do you pan fry it the next day? I have several times made it, put it in the fridge, and saved it for the next day. My son, now 14, loves it pan fried. I learned that from my father and passed it down to my son.
the best thing is getting a hankering in the middle of the night and just pulling the large pot out of the fridge, onto the counter, and shoveling it into the mouth. filthy. i love it.
small shells.
When I was growing up, my Mom made this a lot, and she called it ‘chop suey’. That’s also what my grandmother called it before her.
Same here, American chop suey. I think ours had celery.
it has nothing common with goulash. just call it american.
A staple in my house growing up, we literally called it “shit” and it included kidney beans.
Looks similar to my recipe except for the ketchup, I’ll have to try that. I usually add a few diced habanero peppers to give it some heat
Damn, that looks delicious! Would goulash be categorized as a kind of pasta? It seems to be of Hungarian origin though
This is just macaroni. They call it goulash in Michigan and other states. It is different than Hungarian goulash. I just call it goulash because one of my coworkers told me that it was goulash. My family calls is macaroni.
That’s why my mom called it goulash! Those
Michigandersmidwesterners. I was confused when I saw what proper/original goulash was.I had never heard it called anything but macaroni until my coworker from Michigan called it that. I thought it was funny and adopted it. That may be how it spread.
Adding pasta to goulash isn’t unheard of. Usually, you eat it with bread but pasta makes a decent substitute or change to it. I would never go so far as to call goulash a pasta dish. The amount of pasta used in OP’s picture is also more than I would say is common. And pasta doesn’t work with every type of goulash either. There are many different kinds of goulash.
But as OP has said the dish isn’t a traditional goulash. It’s missing the key ingredient paprika. Basil and oregano aren’t spices commonly found in goulash (EDIT: Oregano probably is fine since marjoram is more commonly found and they are very similar). And I also haven’t seen ground beef being used. These are what make me think this isn’t a goulash, not the pasta.
My mom had a similar recipe that I still make to this day. She called it poor man’s bolognese (it sounds better in Estonian) . Basically it was just ground beef, tomatoes, macaroni and seasoning. You added ketchup after cooking though. It’s a really quick and simple meal when you have like half the ingredients for bolognese or the cheese is 7 euros like it is now.
Sounds very similar to Johnny Marzetti, an Ohio-area dish.
I cook the same dish with small variations (i change herbs and spices from time to time and sometimes add crushed tomatoes instead of ketchup) pretty often too. Quick and tasty. That’s hardly a goulash though.
Not a real goulash but they call it goulash in Michigan and other places. My family has always just called it macaroni. I started calling it goulash as a joke when one of my coworkers told me it was goulash.
Do you pan fry it in butter the next day?
Usually I just microwave it. But I’ll try to fry it next time. You’ve just unlocked a memory lol. When I was a child my mom fried yesterday’s pasta and I ate it with a sprinkle of sugar.
There you go!
I love it fried in butter so that it’s just a little bit crispy. So good.
When I was a kid I would make friend macaroni sandwiches.
That looks amazing. My mom made something similar when I was a kid.
Back when I was a kid this was a cheap meal. My family was not flush with money so this was a regular meal. I came to love it and have passed that love on to my son. I expect that he will pass it on to his son when the time comes. It’s funny that the simplest of meals can become such a comfort food.
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Looks great! Here we skip all the fancy fresh ingredients, just elbow macaroni, ground beef, onions and drown it in ketchup. And we call it “junkie stew”.
Yes. This is quick and dirty comfort food. I do all of the prep including filling a pot with water. As soon as I start cooking the onions I turn the water on. I can generally have the sauce ready to dump into the noodles by the time the noodles are done cooking. It’s better if you let the sauce simmer for a while but you can slam it together in 15 minutes once you have the prep done.
My mom always put kidney beans in hers. She wasn’t the BEST cook.
I love kidney beans…maybe just not in macaroni. Your mom was probably just trying to trick you into eating beans.
