Magyar Konyha · The Hungarian Table

Hungarian Cooking Without Vegetable Oil

Step into the Magyar kitchen, where gulyás simmers over a slow fire, chicken paprikash turns silky with sour cream, and every pogácsa begins with real lard. Sweet paprika, patience, and the honest fats of the old country table.

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Zsír✦ Vaj✦ Libazsír✦ Kacsazsír
A deep bowl of rich red Hungarian goulash soup on a rustic table
✦ Gulyásleves
From the recipe collection
Zsír

Lard First

The Hungarian kitchen was built on zsír, snow white pork lard rendered slowly at home. It carries sweet paprika the way no refined seed oil ever could, and every pörkölt in this collection begins with it.

Libazsír

Goose and Duck Fat

Goose fat and duck fat, the quiet luxuries of the Magyar larder, roast potatoes to a deep bronze, enrich a summer lecsó, and give the old dishes their unmistakable depth.

Soha

Never Vegetable Oil

No seed oils, no shortcuts. Only butter, lard, and poultry fats, the traditional fats that the csárdás and farm kitchens of the Great Plain have trusted for generations.

✦
From Our Kitchen

Hungarian Recipes

Six beloved dishes from the Magyar table, from the bogrács to the cukrászda, each cooked with the honest fats that let good paprika shine.

Bogrács Gulyásleves, a rich red beef goulash soup with vegetables in a deep bowl

Gulyásleves

Herdsman's goulash soup

2 hr 15 min·6 servings·Medium

The dish that carries Hungary's name around the world. Beef and onions simmered slowly with sweet paprika in good lard, finished with root vegetables and pinched csipetke noodles.

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp lard (zsír)
  • 2 large onions, finely chopped
  • 600 g beef shin or chuck, cut into 2 cm cubes
  • 2 tbsp sweet Hungarian paprika
  • 1 tsp caraway seeds, crushed
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 Hungarian wax pepper or green pepper, sliced
  • 1 ripe tomato, chopped
  • 2 carrots, 1 parsnip, and 400 g potatoes, cut into chunks
  • For the csipetke: 1 egg, 100 g flour, and a pinch of salt

Instructions

  1. Melt the lard in a heavy pot or bogrács and soften the onions over low heat until golden, about 10 minutes.
  2. Pull the pot off the heat, stir in the paprika, and immediately add the beef so the paprika never burns.
  3. Season with salt, the caraway, and the garlic, cover, and let the meat simmer in its own juices for 30 minutes.
  4. Add the pepper and tomato, pour in about 2 litres of water, and simmer gently for 1 hour.
  5. Add the carrots, parsnip, and potatoes and cook 20 minutes more until tender.
  6. Knead the egg, flour, and salt into a stiff dough and pinch small csipetke straight into the simmering soup.
  7. Cook 5 minutes until the noodles float, taste for salt, and serve steaming hot.
Csárda Chicken paprikash, tender chicken in a creamy paprika sauce served over soft dumplings

Paprikás Csirke

Chicken paprikash with nokedli

1 hr 15 min·4 servings·Medium

Sunday lunch in its most beloved form. Chicken braised in a sweet paprika and sour cream sauce built on goose fat, spooned generously over soft butter nokedli dumplings.

Ingredients

  • 8 chicken thighs, bone in, skin on
  • 2 tbsp goose fat (libazsír)
  • 2 onions, finely chopped
  • 2 tbsp sweet Hungarian paprika
  • 1 Hungarian wax pepper, sliced
  • 1 ripe tomato, chopped
  • 250 ml sour cream, plus more to serve
  • 1 tbsp plain flour
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • For the nokedli: 2 eggs, 300 g flour, 150 ml water, and 40 g butter

Instructions

  1. Melt the goose fat in a wide pot and soften the onions slowly until translucent.
  2. Off the heat, stir in the paprika, then nestle in the chicken and season with salt and pepper.
  3. Add the pepper and tomato, cover, and braise over low heat for about 45 minutes, letting the chicken cook mostly in its own juices.
  4. Whisk the sour cream with the flour and a ladle of the hot sauce, then stir it back into the pot and simmer gently 5 minutes, never at a hard boil.
  5. For the nokedli, beat the eggs, flour, water, and a pinch of salt to a thick batter, then press it through a nokedli maker, or scrape small pieces off a wet board, into salted boiling water.
  6. Lift the dumplings as they float and turn them in the butter.
  7. Serve the chicken over the nokedli with an extra spoonful of sour cream.
Balaton Pike-perch fillet cooked in browned butter with fresh herbs and lemon

Balatoni Fogas Vajban

Pike-perch in browned butter

25 min·2 servings·Easy

The pride of Lake Balaton. Delicate fogas fillets dusted with flour and a whisper of paprika, cooked gently in butter that is allowed to brown until it smells of hazelnuts.

Ingredients

  • 4 pike-perch (fogas) or zander fillets
  • Salt and white pepper
  • 2 tbsp plain flour, for dusting
  • 1 tsp sweet Hungarian paprika
  • 120 g butter, divided
  • Juice of half a lemon
  • 3 tbsp parsley, chopped
  • A few sprigs of dill (optional)
  • Lemon wedges, to serve
  • Boiled potatoes turned in butter, to serve

Instructions

  1. Pat the fillets very dry, season with salt and white pepper, and dust with the flour mixed with the paprika.
  2. Melt 60 g of the butter in a wide pan over medium heat until it foams.
  3. Lay in the fillets skin side down and cook 3 to 4 minutes, then turn and cook 2 minutes more until the flesh flakes. Lift onto warm plates.
  4. Add the remaining butter to the pan and let it foam and turn a deep hazelnut brown, swirling constantly.
  5. Pull the pan off the heat, add the lemon juice, and let it hiss.
  6. Stir in the parsley and spoon the brown butter generously over the fish.
  7. Serve at once with buttered potatoes, lemon wedges, and dill if you like.
Piac Lecsó, a bright stew of peppers, tomatoes, and onions in a rustic bowl

Lecsó

Pepper and tomato stew

40 min·4 servings·Easy

Summer in a single pot. Sweet Hungarian peppers and ripe tomatoes stewed down slowly in duck fat with onions and paprika, eaten with fresh bread or a softly set egg.

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp duck fat (kacsazsír)
  • 2 onions, sliced
  • 800 g Hungarian wax peppers, or a mix of sweet peppers, cut into rings
  • 5 ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
  • 2 tsp sweet Hungarian paprika
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ½ tsp sugar, if the tomatoes need it
  • A pinch of hot paprika (optional)
  • 4 eggs (optional)
  • Fresh white bread, to serve

Instructions

  1. Melt the duck fat in a wide pot and soften the onions until sweet and golden.
  2. Add the peppers and cook about 10 minutes until they begin to collapse.
  3. Pull the pot off the heat and stir in the paprika, then return it to the stove and add the tomatoes.
  4. Simmer uncovered 15 to 20 minutes until thick and glossy, seasoning with the salt and sugar as it cooks.
  5. If you like, crack the eggs straight into the pot and stir gently until just set.
  6. Serve hot from the pot with thick slices of fresh bread.
Pékség Golden pogácsa biscuits fresh from the oven on a bakery board

Tepertős Pogácsa

Crackling lard biscuits

2 hr 30 min·24 pieces·Medium

The golden biscuit of every Hungarian bakery counter. A yeasted dough folded with lard and crisp pork cracklings, scored on top and baked to a deep bronze.

Ingredients

  • 500 g plain flour
  • 7 g instant yeast
  • 1 tsp salt, plus plenty of black pepper
  • 100 ml warm milk
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 150 ml sour cream
  • 100 g lard (zsír), soft
  • 150 g pork cracklings (tepertő), finely chopped
  • 1 egg, beaten, for the glaze
  • ½ tsp crushed caraway, to finish (optional)

Instructions

  1. Knead the flour, yeast, salt, milk, yolks, and sour cream into a soft dough and rest it, covered, for 30 minutes.
  2. Work the soft lard with the chopped cracklings and black pepper into a spreadable paste.
  3. Roll the dough into a rectangle, spread on a third of the crackling paste, and fold it in three like a letter. Rest 20 minutes, then repeat twice more with the remaining paste.
  4. Roll the dough 2 cm thick and score the top closely in a criss-cross pattern with a sharp knife.
  5. Cut rounds with a small cutter or a glass and set them on a lined tray to rise 30 minutes.
  6. Brush with the beaten egg and scatter with caraway if using.
  7. Bake at 200°C (400°F) for 20 to 22 minutes until deep golden, and eat them warm.
Cukrászda Thin Hungarian palacsinta rolled with a sweet walnut filling and dusted with sugar

Diós Palacsinta

Walnut crêpes

45 min·4 servings·Easy

The dessert of the old pastry houses. Thin palacsinta fried in butter, rolled around a warm walnut filling scented with lemon zest and vanilla, and dusted with sugar.

Ingredients

  • 2 eggs
  • 250 ml whole milk
  • 200 ml sparkling water
  • 200 g plain flour
  • A pinch of salt
  • 1 tbsp sugar, for the batter
  • 60 g butter, for the pan
  • 150 g walnuts, finely ground
  • 80 g sugar, for the filling
  • Zest of 1 lemon and 1 tsp vanilla sugar

Instructions

  1. Whisk the eggs, milk, flour, salt, and 1 tbsp sugar to a smooth batter, then stir in the sparkling water and rest 20 minutes.
  2. Melt a little butter in a crêpe pan, ladle in a thin layer of batter, and cook about 1 minute per side until lacy and gold. Repeat, buttering the pan between palacsinta.
  3. Warm the ground walnuts with the sugar, lemon zest, vanilla sugar, and a splash of milk into a soft, spreadable filling.
  4. Spread each palacsinta with the walnut filling and roll it into a neat cylinder.
  5. Turn the rolls briefly in the buttered pan to warm them through.
  6. Dust thickly with icing sugar and serve warm.
A cook working at a warm stove in a busy home kitchen
Our Kitchen

The Kitchen Behind Texyla Konyha

Texyla Konyha is a small home kitchen devoted to the cooking of Hungary, where lunch begins with soup, paprika is measured with a generous hand, and nothing worth eating is ever hurried. We write these recipes down the way they are still cooked in family kitchens and roadside csárdás, patiently, precisely, and always over honest fat.

Our only house rule is an old one: lard rendered slowly on the back of the stove, butter from the dairy, goose and duck fat saved carefully from the roast, and nothing else. Vegetable oil never comes through our door, because it never sat on the tables we learned from.

Jó étvágyat, may it feed you well.