Hungarian Venison Goulash or this case a Venison Porkolt, a thicker version of a goulash.

A Mark II recipe. Red wine, beef stock, mushrooms, onions, celery, carrots, tomatoes, parsnips, potatoes, red, yellow and green capsicum, garlic, black pepper, salt, hot paprika, sweet paprika, bay leaf, caraway seeds, and cornflour.

Cooked in a couple of large South African cast iron potjes, "Best Duty" no.s 3 and 4.

Fallow venison cuts being browned.

The onion and venison browned, all the ingredients are in and cooked over a number of hours.

Cooked over the coals.

The finished product.

The Nitro Express Venison Goulash Recipe Mark I

Ingredients:
Feeds: lots of persons!

Olive oil for browning the venison and onions
approx 3 kg of venison cut into cubes - this meat was cut off various pieces of venison, some already off the bone, some off the bone, shanks etc.
6 - 7 onions, chopped
6 cloves of garlic, grated
4 carrots, diced
3 parsnip, diced
6 stalks of celery, sliced
4 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
6 capsicum, in this case 2 green, 2 red & 2 yellow
6 - 7 potatoes, sliced into chunks
15 - 20 field or button mushrooms, sliced
50 gms Hot paprika
50 gms sweet paprika
8 teaspoons of caraway seeds, I ground these partially
4 bayleaf
1 litre beef stock
salt
black pepper
Red wine was substituted for water this time
6 or more desert spoons of cornflour - I wanted this goulash to be a thicker porkolt.

This is a much hotter mixture than Mark I and Mark III will back off the hot paprika a little.

This recipe has some of my own modifications.

Instructions:

1. Heat up oil in a pot and braise chopped onions until they brown.

2. Remove from heat and sprinkle with the paprika powder while stirring them. Leaving the onions on the heat while adding the paprika may result in bitterness.

3. In a separate fry pan or pot, add more oil and slightly brown the venison cubes. Many goulash recipes do not brown the meat but add it with the stock direct to the pot at this point. This allows the dish to be cooked in a single pot eg on a fire, but browning will improve the flavour and retain more juices.

You may have to brown them in lots, just add the browned meat to the onions and do another lot.

4. The meat and residual heat in the pot (if browning the meat and onions at the same time) will keep it hot and the meat will give off its juices. Add the grated or sliced garlic, the caraway seed, the bayleaves, some salt and black pepper, and pour the litre of beef stock in. I added red wine instead of water in Mark II. Extra stock may be needed to cover the contents in the pot and then let it simmer. I left it simmer for 50 minutes when I tested the venison and they were already cooked. A lesser period may be OK. The meat should be about 50% cooked.

5. Add the diced carrots, parsnip, celery stalks, and potatoes. Add more stock or wine if needed.

6. After aboout 30 minutes, add the tomatoes and capsicum for another 15 to 20 minutes until the carrots and potatoes are well cooked.

7. I added 6x desert spoons of cornflour, or more as it thickened to what I was looked for, pre mixed with water to thicken the goulash into a porkolt.

Like many spicy dishes goulash can be prepared and re-heated the following day and the flavour may be stronger and improved as well.

Perfect for a cold winter's day.