Cesky Guláš

Although the following dish has its origins in Hungary it has become a staple food of Czech cuisine and one of the most common dishes in Prague’s pubs through the years. The Cesky Guláš or just Guláš (pronounced “goulash”) is meatier than its Hungarian relative and is actually closer to the Hungarian dish Pörkölt than gulyás which is more of a soup. Good quality beef meat is cut into cubes (2,5 cm or 1 inch) and is placed in a large pot of water, along with some cooking oil, 3-4 chopped onions, a bit of marjoram, sweet paprika, salt and pepper where it is left to simmer for a couple of hours.

The stew is then served with some chopped raw onions, bread dumplings and some fresh marjoram on top. There are as many variants as there are cooks in Prague but the most common are : the pikantní guláš, which is a more spicy version of the original dish, and Vepřový guláš which follows the same pattern with pork meat in the place of beef. There are also plenty of vegetarian variations based on cabbage or potatoes. All of them have the omnipresent knedlíky (dumplings) as their supplement.