Comfort Food: Sausage Goulash

It feels like we've been eating "comfort food" consistently all winter....  We haven't, but we did explore our Eastern European sides and made goulash.  It was amazing; and it fed us for about 4 days.  Okay, maybe three days.



We never stick precisely to recipes, but after scrounging Pinterest for the tastiest looking pictures, we decided that The Cozy Apron's pictures were the best and, thus, we'd use this recipe as our base.

This decision was as much a desperate excuse to get out of the house as it was to eat something hot and potato-y, so we fought our way through the traffic problem that is Western Ave. north of North Ave. to get to Mariano's and picked up as many groceries as we figured we'd need if this horrid winter decided to snow us in again.

Of course, being the hungry things we are, we ate all of this cheese while we cooked. Just kidding, we only ate some of it.  Have you ever had hot pepper jelly with brie or cream cheese on crackers? NO?! What are you doing with your life?

Among those groceries were the following ingredients, loosely organized by level of "yum":

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 packages of various smoke sausage (we picked up 3 varieties and cut up a TON because it just looked that damned good. We tried an apple wood smoked sausage, a spicy variety, and a plain ol' version).  Slice it into rounds.
• 2-4 tablespoons butter, depending on how buttery you love your potato-y stews
• 1-2 cloves garlic (2 for small cloves, 1 for larger sections) - chopped or pressed
• 2 small onions - one yellow and one white, or two yellow
• 10-12 red potatoes sliced (we do not peel potatoes in my house, unless it's for a creamy mashed potato, because the skin is delicious)
• Plain and Hot Hungarian paprika to taste - at least 2 teaspoons
• 3/4 teaspoons black pepper - extra points if you grind it yourself
• 1 1/2 cup of chicken stock (you can make your own with bullion cubes, or buy it prepared)
• Chopped fresh parsley (it's more of a garnish)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil (to slightly carmelize/brown the sausage)

Per the Cozy Apron, we browned the sausage rounds in our big pan with a little olive oil first.  Yes, this is a teflon coated pan. No, I'm not happy about it - but we gotta use what we got!

We only let the sausage brown slightly as we wanted a softer texture.  You can absolutely crisp it up, if you'd like.
Move the sausage to a separate dish temporarily while you brown your vegetables.

 RJ loves having everything set up and ready to go before cooking, so he chopped the onion and garlic before browning them, as well.

I love the thin bamboo cutting boards you can find at HomeGoods, TJMaxx, etc.  They dry so quickly and are really resilient.
I also am in love with my Rada knives, which are hand made in Iowa: http://www.radacutlery.com/.  These were a gift from my dad a few years back.  Funny story - I got scissors stuck in my hand while cutting the tape on the package open. How ironic is that? Never cut towards yourself. Right.
They're amazing knives though - very versatile and lightweight.  I love the textured handles as they help me get a better grip.

Brown your butter, onions and garlic in the same pan you used for the sausage.  There was enough oil/grease from the sausage left in the pan where we didn't feel we needed to use the butter to brown the onion, but what's life without a little butter? (or a lot)  You want your onions to be a light golden brown - not completely translucent, but almost. In a nice, hot pan, this should take about 5 minutes.  We added a bit of the paprika at the onset of this process, but you'll want to add the bulk of it with the black pepper once things get cookin'.

Add the potatoes and coat them with the onions and garlic, letting the potatoes soak up the flavor for about 1-2 minutes, stirring frequently.  This will help cut your boil time down once you add the stock into the pot.

Add the chicken stock into the pot and let it sit, covered, until your potatoes are nearly soft (generally 10-15 minutes, depending on the thickness of your potatoes).  Add the sausage at this point, letting everything cook together for about 10 minutes, or until the potatoes reach your desired softness.

 During this process, you'll probably need a beverage.  One of the reasons we picked apple smoked sausage was that we picked up Angry Orchard's Traditional Dry Cider as our drink of choice for the night.  This actually turned out to be a fantastic idea, as the bite of the cider tasted amazing with the rich, saltiness of goulash.

We also tossed some heavily buttered pumpernickel bread into the mix - because what's a saucy meal without a little bread 'n' butter?  This was also a terrific idea, although we'd suggest toasting it lightly in the oven - which we forgot to do.

The finished product satisfied completely.  We let the potatoes get pretty soft and mashed them a bit into the stock - probably not the proper way to serve goulash, but man was the texture perfect for another sub zero temperature day.

 Side note: Please excuse the dark lighting in most of my pictures - I'm working on a new softbox/ring because winter is killin' me.  Hopefully you just like warm, dim lighting for all of its dreamy qualities!

Do you have a suggestion of a hearty dish we should try next?  I'm thinking eggs and chips will be dinner tonight....

Also - poll time: what is your favorite hard cider?  I personally prefer Bulmers....