Making Viennese Bread Dumplings

Scoots moves into his new place

Picking up the story from the upcoming "the goulash backstory" below, I need to start at the very beginning. Sometimes a meal begins with a story. In the case of this goulash, that's particularly true.

I arrived to help Scoots move into his new place and found myself making him goulash with bread dumplings.

Trust, the experience of making dumplings is actually really fun, and it made me want to eat them all the time.

Yum!

They have a completely homey, welcoming feel and make you want to eat stews all the time! I’ll preface the recipe by saying that, ideally, you want to be able to cook the well-formed dumplings in the stock of the stew you are making as you go. However, often chips of bread will pop off into the stew, so in order to avoid the stew becoming full of pits of bread, you can boil them separately.

This action will make for a clearer stew, but not necessarily as flavorful of a dumpling. I tried doing something in between: boiling them first, letting the bread flake off in the rolling boil, and then placing them with a gentle “plop!” into the simmering goulash. The results were outstanding, and Scoots informed me that days later he ate the goulash and dumplings for lunch, and the meal reheated just wonderfully tasting like a million bucks! Gotta love feedback like that.

Boil Them Loosely in Your Pot

Viennese Bread Dumplings

Ingredients

2 c of diced white bread, use more or less in order to ensure consistency. Read rest of recipe of better detail. (I’ll be honest, I used all sorts of different dry/stale bread I had and it came out just beautifully; no need to obsess about the color of the bread, unnecessarily).

3 tolive oil

2 eggs

¾ c milk

3 T freshly chopped parsley

1 small onion

Freshly ground salt and pepper to taste

If really sticky, boil separately in a pot of water. If the dumplings are holding together well, then place gently in the goulash. As the goulash should be simmering nicely, they can sit in there for the last 10-20 minutes of cooking, so long as you keep turning them.Soak the bread cubes in a mixture of the eggs and about half the milk for at least 30 minutes. Be aware that depending on your bread, the dumpling “batter” can get soggy, so adjust the amount of milk based on how soggy the mixture gets as you add in the liquid. If after 30 minutes you can easily form balls of bread dumplings from the milk-soaked bread cubes, you are on the right track. If not, do what I did: add in bread crumbs. It was a messy job.

Well-formed Dumplings

Arriving with Bread Dumplings—Soaked for at Least 30 Minutes, I made my way into Scott's new kitchen to destroy it with the mess that is Viennese Goulash. 

The dumplings will soak up much of the liquid as you cook them, becoming really tasty. An added benefit? As they cook in the stew and stock, they will thicken the soupy flavorful liquid, making it into what you may know as goulash. Take the time, get creative, and make bread dumplings out of a bunch of old bread you have lying around or on your counter or in your freezer. It’ll surprise you how tasty you can make bread that starts out so stale and lousy.

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Here's the goulash backstory:

Again, Scoots found himself in need of a new apartment. After sending out an email announcing he’d be having a housewarming party on Feb 18th, I replied back, “Does this mean we won’t be seeing you until mid-February?”

No reply.

That’s because he is so busy running his own company that he basically only texts now. This modern technology thing has gotten waaaay out of hand. But after three days of texting back and forth, it became clear that he had moved into his new place ages ago, hadn’t really unpacked, and frankly, needed a hot meal and someone to help him put the giant, heavy top on the base of the dining room table and begin unpacking tons of shipping boxes. A cold December night seemed like the perfect opportunity to help out.

So I texted that he should pick something he’d like to have me make and then we’d cook it on the new stove in his rental. Turned out he secured a unit with a gas stove, and it was a fine kitchen for making bread dumplings. I mean, really! Who asks for Austrian Goulash and Bread Dumplings!?

Scoots has a penchant for that sort of hearty meal, probably because he’s an amateur competitive swimmer, so he can really work up an appetite. I usually can only bring myself to walk to and from the car, so I was less than compelled to make such a huge meal, but onward and upward I always say. I never make Germanic cuisine, and frankly, with THE SUDDEN RISE OF THE SCANDINAVIAN RESTAURANTS AND CUISINE, I figure Germany/Austria/Hungary are next on the food writers’ “discovery” tour, so I decided to get a jump on the competition.

German/Austrian/Hungarian cuisine is the next big thing. You read it here first.

At any rate, a few texts later, and I was off to the store to purchase what I needed for…

Viennese Beef Goulash/Wiener Rindsgulasch

Ingredients for the Goulash

3 T Olive Oil

1 ¾-2 lbs. shoulder or shank (beef cubed for stew, basically)

1 c finely chopped onions

1 T fresh chopped garlic

2 T tomato purée

2 T Hungarian paprika

1 t freshly ground caraway seeds (use a mortar and pestle for the best results)

1 t marjoram

2 bay leafs

2 c stock (I used chicken, but you could probably use beef as well)

freshly ground salt and pepper

zest of ½ lemon

Heat the oil, brown the beef. With a slotted spoon, remove the beef, brown the onions. At the end of the browning, toss in the garlic. Grind the caraway seed and marjoram. Add the ground spices, paprika, and tomato purée directly into the pot with all of the stock. Stir well, add salt and pepper to taste, grate in the zested lemon as the stock comes to a boil. Turn down to a simmer once it reaches a boil. Let the goulash simmer slowly until the meat is soft (approximately 1-2 hours, depending on the meat/fat content ratio).

At the end of the cooking, you will have a liquidy soup. This liquid may have boiled off a bit, so you can feel free to add in more stock, if you need to in order to make the dumplings, and in so doing, thickening the goulash.

Scoots can attest that it was a real wintery treat. The only thing that would have made it better would have been to have been out hunting rabbit in the Tyrolian hillsides, opening the cabin door, dusting off the powdered snow from our boots, and sitting down to a piping hot bowl of this treat.

Oddly, this meaty bowl serves really nicely with crisp, fresh greens.

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