We have collected three of the easiest and undeniably the most characteristic Hungarian dishes you can easily try at home. They could be made within fifteen minutes and are very budget-friendly. They use many ingredients you might already have at home. These recipes are delicious in themselves, but they are also recipes that you can easily customise to your taste. Try them and conduct your own culinary experiments to create the perfect dish for yourself or your loved ones.
Lángos ( sour scone)
The dough can be made within 5 minutes, and frying should take about 10 minutes. If done correctly, it is very delicious with a slightly crunchy outside and soft inside. You can put spices in the dough or put almost anything on top. In Hungary, the most common way to eat it is to brush the dough with garlic and then add sour cream and grated cheese on top. If you crave real delicacies, you can put Bolognese ragout or bean goulash on it. Some places even make it with sausages in the dough.
Ingredients:
400g plain flour
½ pack baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoon pizza seasoning (not necessary)
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons kefir (fermented milk drink)
1 ½ – 2 dl water
Method
Mix the flour with the baking powder, salt and spices. Add the oil, kefir, then add the water and make the dough. Cut it into small pieces and roll them on a floured surface with a rolling pin to flatten and stretch them into 1-2 cm thick discs. Place them in a generous amount of hot oil and fry them first on one side and then on the other. Place them on a paper towel to drain off the excess oil. You can then add toppings such as sour cream and cheese to your liking.
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Mákos guba (bread and butter pudding with poppy seed)
Mákos guba is one of the essential Hungarian Christmastime meals. People in Hungary believed that the many poppy seeds would bring lots of money and luck in the following year. However, it is a delicious and filling dessert for any occasion throughout the year. The first printed Hungarian cookbook in 1695 had a very similar recipe of mákos guba in it. This is a base recipe to try out, but you can add more flavours to it. Some people, for example, add ground walnuts or marmalade, but the most common way to serve it is to pour some vanilla custard on top.
Ingredients for 5 servings:
25 dkg ground poppy seeds
10 dkg powdered sugar
10 pcs crescent roll/bread/bun
1 pack vanilla sugar
15 dl milk
Method
Cut the crescent rolls into discs or break the bread and buns into small chunks. Heat the milk with the vanilla sugar. Mix the poppy seeds with the powdered sugar. Sprinkle the bottom of a bowl with the sugar and poppy seed mixture and dip the bread or crescent roll pieces in the warm milk, so that it soaks some of it up, but it should not fall apart. Place a row or layer of the bread or crescent roll pieces in the bowl and sprinkle it with the poppy seed mixture. Repeat this process until the until you run out of the bread or crescent roll pieces. If you want you can put it into the oven for a little, but it is not necessary. Finally, sprinkle the top with poppy seeds and sugar or drizzle vanilla custard on top. Enjoy.
[dnh_embed link=”https://dailynewshungary.com/weirdest-hungarian-dishes/”][/dnh_embed]
Dödölle (potato dough with sour cream)
Dödölle is one of the traditional, nutritious dishes of Hungarian cuisine. It was once regarded as the food of the poor because it was often consumed by people of the lower class, and it is also cheap to prepare. It is known all over Hungary, but almost everywhere it is called differently, or the recipe is slightly different. It can be eaten as a side dish, or as a standalone dish with sour cream, for example.
Ingredients for 6 servings:
½ kg potatoes
1 medium head onion
200g fine flour
salt and pepper to your liking
5 dl sunflower oil
150 g of sour cream (to taste)
Method
Peel the potatoes and cook them in water until they become soft. You can add salt to the water to give the potatoes a little flavour. Take the cooked potatoes out and mash them. Chop the onions to small pieces and add the onions and the flour to the mashed potatoes. Season it with salt and pepper and mix the ingredients together. After it is mixed, shape the dough into large discs or small pieces (whichever you prefer) and fry them in hot oil. You can serve it as a side dish or add sour cream on top and eat it as a complete dish. You can let your creativity loose and add other things on top to make it even more delicious.
The lángos far far away from scones. Google Johnny cake.
The mákos guba is not butter pudding. But nothing like this picture. It is so black, cant even see the bread from the poppy seeds
Lángos takes at least 2 hours to make.
Can’t even make the dough in 15 minutes
The translations and descriptions are a little off but sure I’ll try this fast track langos sometime. Didn’t know you could do it without waiting around for yeast! Oh and isn’t it more of a savoury doughnut if you really need to translate it.
I referred to lángos as scones because this recipe uses baking powder as the leavening agent, just like scones, while usually doughnuts are made with yeast, but you are right, it is a sour dish. And yes, the original lángos recipe would also be made with yeast, but with this one, you should be able to almost immediately fry it.
Mákos guba, in essence, is somewhat similar to bread and butter pudding, although it is simpler. You can add as much poppy seed to it as you like, personally I like it very similar to whats in the picture.
I know these dishes might not mean the same exact things, I tried to make approximations to the best of my knowledge. Usually, dishes are quite hard to translate as they are unique to their own culture and might even be unique to each family :).