6 recipes
A hearty Central European cuisine that pairs kettle-cooked dishes of steppe origin with paprika, and Ottoman and Habsburg legacies with rich pastries and cakes.
Read its storyHungary's national soup: beef slowly simmered with plenty of onion and sweet paprika, made hearty with potatoes and carrots.
A classic Hungarian home dish of chicken legs braised with onion and sweet paprika, finished into a velvety sauce with sour cream.
A Hungarian street-food favorite: yeasted dough fried until puffed and crisp, topped with garlic oil, sour cream and grated cheese.
A Hungarian home classic of peppers stuffed with meat and rice, slowly simmered in a gently sweet-and-sour tomato sauce.
A colorful Hungarian summer dish of peppers, tomatoes and onion slowly cooked with paprika, a close cousin of Turkish menemen.
Thin Hungarian crêpes lightened with sparkling water, served plain with jam or Gundel-style with a walnut filling and chocolate sauce.
The Magyars arrived in the Carpathian Basin from the eastern steppe in the late 9th century. The clearest trace of their nomadic past is cooking in a kettle hung over an open fire (bogrács). Even gulyás, now known worldwide, takes its name from the cattle herdsmen (gulyás) who cooked meat and broth in such kettles out on the plains.
In the 15th century, King Matthias Corvinus's Neapolitan queen, Beatrice, is said to have brought Italian cooks and new ingredients to the court. In the 16th and 17th centuries central Hungary spent around a century and a half under Ottoman rule; Buda was an Ottoman city from 1541 to 1686. This era established coffee and the tradition of stuffed vegetables and cabbage rolls (töltött paprika, töltött káposzta), and paprika most likely spread to Hungary via the Ottomans and the Balkans. The thin-stretched dough of rétes (strudel) is often linked to Ottoman yufka and baklava, though this is not certain. Later, under the Habsburgs, Viennese and French influence brought grand cakes and creamy sauces.
The Great Hungarian Plain (Alföld), with its cattle, pigs and kettle cooking, is the heart of the cuisine. Along the Tisza and the Danube, the fish soup halászlé is beloved, and the friendly rivalry between the Szeged and Baja styles is famous. Lake Balaton is known for freshwater fish, and Tokaj in the northeast for its sweet wine. The areas around Szeged and Kalocsa are the main centres of Hungarian paprika production.
The building blocks are onion, ground paprika and fat. In the classic method the onion is softened slowly, the pan is taken off the heat and the paprika stirred in; if it scorches it turns bitter, so this moment matters. Pörkölt is a thick, meaty stew, while paprikás is a creamier version finished with sour cream. Lard is traditional, but sunflower oil or butter works perfectly at home. Főzelék, vegetables thickened with flour and cream, nokedli, small egg dumplings, and palacsinta, thin crêpes, are everyday staples.
For a first try, paprikás csirke, chicken in a paprika and sour cream sauce served with nokedli or plain pasta, is perfect and teaches the onion-and-paprika technique. Next, make gulyás soup to get to know kettle cooking; it is excellent with beef. For something sweet, palacsinta is easy and universally loved.