• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Forager Chef

Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

  • Home
  • About
  • Mushrooms
    • Mushroom Archive
    • Posts by Species
      • Other Mushrooms
        • Lobster Mushrooms
        • Shrimp of the Woods
        • Truffles
        • Morels
        • Shaggy Mane
        • Hericium
        • Puffball
      • Polypores
        • Hen of the Woods
        • Dryad Saddle
        • Chicken of The Woods
        • Cauliflowers
        • Ischnoderma
        • Beefsteak
      • Chanterelles
        • Black Trumpet
        • Hedgehogs
        • Yellowfeet
      • Gilled
        • Matsutake
        • Honey Mushrooms
        • Russula / Lactarius
          • Candy Caps
          • Saffron Milkcap
          • Indigo Milkcap
      • Boletes
        • Porcini
        • Leccinum
        • Slippery Jacks
    • Recipes
      • Fresh
      • Dried
      • Preserves
    • The Basics
  • Plants
    • Plant Archive
    • Leafy Green Recipes
      • Leafy Green Plant Varieties
    • Ramps
    • Wild Herbs and Spices
      • Spruce and Conifers
      • Pollen
      • Prickly Ash
      • Bergamot / Wild Oregano
      • Golpar / Cow Parsnip
    • Wild Fruit
      • Wild Plums
      • Highbush Cranberry
      • Wild Grapes
      • Rowanberries
      • Wild Cherries
      • Aronia
      • Nannyberry
      • Wild Blueberries
    • From The Garden
    • Nuts, Roots, Tubers and Grains
    • Stalks and Shoots
  • Meat
    • Four-Legged Animals
      • Venison
      • Small Game
    • Poultry
    • Fish/Seafood
    • Offal
    • Charcuterie
  • Recipes
    • Pickles, Preserves, Etc
    • Fermentation
    • Condiments
    • Appetizers
    • Soup
    • Salad
    • Side Dishes
    • Entrees
    • Baking
    • Sweets
  • Video
    • Foraging Videos
    • Lamb and Goat Series
    • YouTube Tutorials
  • Press
    • Podcasts
  • Work
    • Public Speaking
    • Charity and Private Dinners
    • Forays / Classes / Demos

Honey Mushroom Gulyas / Goulash

Jump to Recipe Print Recipe

Venison goulash or gulyas with honey mushrooms recipe Honey Mushroom Goulash / Gulyas has been in the works for years over here, and I’m excited to finally share it with you. It’s without a doubt, one of the best things I’ve had with them, and, it’s pretty traditional, more or less. I know I’ll get some contentious comments about my creative liberties here, so, before you send me a turf burning email about how your grandma makes a true gulyas, know that this is based directly off a family recipe, from Hungary, just with the addition of venison shoulder instead of ground beef, and honey mushrooms, because honey mushrooms. 

Edible honey mushrooms or Armillaria mellea

Some nice honeys, the stems were trimmed down a bit for this recipe, if you have large stems you can save them to make duxelles.

What a goulash or gulyas is, like so many recipes with deep cultural connections, is a little open for debate and interpretation. Some like it thick, some like it thin, some like it sparse, others loaded with vegetables. My recipe here is a loose, juicy stew with chunks of vegetables based off a family recipe from Hungary a friend of my girlfriends family brought over to a potluck one day. I’d never met the man that brought over the goulash, but once I spoke to him, heard the accent, and saw his crock pot of family secrets, I grilled him a bit on what he considers a proper gulyas. 

Venison goulash or gulyas with honey mushrooms recipe

Young honey caps will be the best here.

Brief ingredient history 

I’m not a goulash scholar, but I do know my ingredients. What I find interesting about goulash/gulyas in particular is that it’s a dish deeply cherished in Eastern Europe and Hungary, but it’s made from mostly new world ingredients, placing it, in the form we know it, around a couple hundred years old. The key ingredients here: peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and paprika (also a pepper) are all ingredients from the Americas, probably added to an existing, simple stew of meat and roots like carrot, celery root or parsley root scented with aromatic seeds like caraway, (you can still see mentions of the old roots being used in some recipes) which were already common soup and stew staples in the region. As an aside, potatoes seem to be a point of contention in some places, with millet probably being the first grain that was added to bulk out the soup. 

Soup, not a thick stew 

Honey mushrooms are the big addition here, and this recipe is chockful of them, a good 6-8 oz, depending on your harvest. Honey mushrooms are enjoyed in Eastern Europe, and they are the perfect candidate here. Besides adding some good texture and a pop of dark color in a sea of red, honeys are perfect for soup because they need long cooking, plus, they have another function: they help thicken the soup. I like the consistency of my gulyas on the thicker side of soup, but not stew thick, just velvety enough so that you want to slurp up every last drop of broth. The paprika and tomato give a little bit of body, and, combined with the natural mucilage of the honey fungus, make for a velvety soup born to be mopped up with a piece of sourdough. 

Venison goulash or gulyas with honey mushrooms recipe

Venison goulash or gulyas with honey mushrooms recipe
Print Recipe
0 from 0 votes

Venison Gulyas with Honey Mushrooms

A semi-traditional gulyas made from venison shoulder or other meat, paprika, vegetables and honey fungus.
Prep Time30 mins
Cook Time45 mins
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: American, Hungarian
Keyword: Honey Mushrooms, Venison
Servings: 4

Ingredients

Stew

  • 2 lbs venison pork, or beef shoulder, cut into stew chunks
  • Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper
  • 4 tablespoons bacon grease or lard
  • 2 tablespoons sweet paprika
  • 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
  • ¼ cup tomato paste
  • 8 oz 1 large yellow onion ½ inch dice
  • 8 oz 1 large russet potato* peeled, 1 inch dice
  • 6 oz 1 medium celery root or parsley root (optional, additional potato can be substituted) 1 inch dice
  • 8 oz Hungarian wax peppers* or 2 large bell peppers, any color but green, 1 inch dice
  • 6 oz 1 medium carrot, 1 inch dice
  • ¼ cup dry white wine
  • 6 oz fresh young honey mushrooms young buttons left whole, large mushrooms quartered*
  • 2 large cloves garlic
  • 6 cups meat stock or water
  • 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme or a pinch of dried thyme
  • 2 dried bay leaves

Finishing

  • 8 oz Sour cream
  • 2 tablespoons heavy cream or 1 tablespoon milk
  • Ground caraway to taste
  • Sliced green onions

Instructions

  • Season the venison or other meat with salt and pepper and spread out on a tray or cookie sheet. Refrigerate the meat overnight to dry it out and improve browning (optional but recommended)
  • Heat the grease in a soup pot, then brown the meat well. Add the onions, stir, and cook for a minute, then add the tomato paste and paprika and cook a few minutes more. Grate the garlic directly into the pot or mince it. Add the wine, then the remaining vegetables along with the honey mushrooms, along with the stock and herbs. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes, or until the meat is tender.
  • Cool the stew and reserve.
  • For the caraway sour cream garnish, mix the sour cream with the caraway, cream and a pinch of salt and reserve. Garnish the stew with fresh sliced green onions and a dollop of the sour cream.

Notes

The potato is optional here, if you want, make the stew without potatoes, adding cooked millet at the end instead.
Hungarian wax peppers can be spicy.
If you are at all sensitive to heat you will want to use bell peppers.
Honey mushroom stems can be used here, but only use the tender portions or a few inches under the cap. Tough honey stems can make good broth or duxelles.

Venison goulash or gulyas with honey mushrooms recipe

=

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit

Related

Previous Post: « Wild Mushroom Tacos
Next Post: Mugolio: Pine Cone Syrup »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jacqui

    November 5, 2020 at 1:43 pm

    The honeys here just flushed this week, fast and furious as always, so, luckily I missed a lot that were already past prime when I noticed them. I have rather little self restraint and might have brought home way more than I could have processed if they had all been at the perfect stage.
    Also, I am trying to get my freezer under control, so I made this with a tonne of honeys to complement the last bag of dromedary that has been lurking there since my last trip to Tunisia, and a big jar of frozen roe deer stock and meat scraps. I’m not sure it’s legal to mix camelids with cervids, but there you have it.
    And it was great. Thanks so much for the recipe!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




Primary Sidebar

Pre-Order MY BOOK

Categories

Forager Chef

Forager Chef

Instagram

foragerchef

🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Last entry. I’ve saved t 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Last entry. I’ve saved the smallest, fern gulliest plant for last. 

False Mermaid Weed (Floerkea proserpinacoides) is a good little plant Sam Thayer showed me. It’s tiny, as in all the photos are from me on my belly, in a wet ditch. It’s so small it’s hard to get the camera to even focus on it (see pic with my finger for scale). 

Mermaid weed likes wet areas, like ditches and spots that hold a bit of water (perfect mosquito habitat😁). 

Like chickweed, Floerkia greens are like nature’s Microgreens. They’re in the Limnanthaceae, (a new-ish group of brassicas) and like the Toothwort form earlier this week, you’ll taste a strong mustard-family flavor in a mouthful of their tender stems. 

They’re literally wild mustard sprouts, and, unlike other wild sprouts (garlic mustard 🤬) they stay sprouts, and, they actually taste good. 

It has a wide range over much of the eastern and western U.S., and is listed as secure globally, but is endangered in some states and shouldn’t be disturbed in those places. 

I’m lucky enough to have some large colonies near me so I do clip a few handfuls each year-my annual reward for removing some of the garlic mustard nearby, that, along with atvs, dirt bikes, and contamination from local water pollution, is one of the biggest threats to this tiny green. 

#floerkiaproserpinacoides 
#wildsprouts #mustardsprouts #ferngully #tiny #foraging #mermaid #🧜‍♀️
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Virginia Bluebells (Merten 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are one of the most beautiful harbingers of spring I know, as well as one of the most delicious. 

They’re in the Borage family, along with the namesake plant, Comfrey (which I only eat a few flowers of occasionally) and Honeywort. 

The flavor of the greens, like borage, has a rich flavor some people might describe as mushroomy or fishy, but after a just a few moments of cooking (30-60 seconds) they get mild and delicious, with a subtle bitterness. It’s a good bitter though-nothing like dandelions or garlic mustard that aren’t fit to be in the same basket, let alone on the same plate. 

The shoots are sweet and delicious, much more mild than the greens. As they can grow to be over a foot long, they’re almost more of a vegetable than a leafy green, depending on when you harvest them. 

Bluebells love moist, rich soil, but you don’t have to go to the woods to get them. Many people know Virginia Bluebells as a garden plant, and they can make a great edible addition to your landscape.

#virginiabluebells #foraging #ephemerals #springwildflowers #wildfoodlove #mertensiavirginica
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / White Ramp (Allium burdickii) 

If you’re in a ramp patch you might occasionally see some with white stems (pic 1,2). These are a cousin to the more common variety with much larger leaves and red stems (pic 3,4,5)

Allium burdickii is not as common as the red-stemmed variety, and in every ramp patch I’ve been in, the white ramp is heavily outnumbered. 

Where I harvest, I like to leave them alone, and mark the areas where they grow with sticks or middens on the ground so I can go back in the fall and help them spread their seeds. I also try and remove garlic mustard when I see it-a much more imminent threat in my mind to ramps than foragers out to gather some leaves. 

2020 was a banner year for ramp seeds, and you can still help the plants right now (pic 7) as some seed heads are still full and would love for you to give them a shake as you walk by. 

#alliumburdickii #ramps #ephemerals #foraging #spring
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 #4: Erythronium leaves E 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

#4: Erythronium leaves 

Erythronium (Trout Lily) are another ephemeral that I see widespread in my ramp patches, there’s at least 32 species world-wide, with at least one endangered species in MN (Dwarf Trout Lily). 

They’re a beautiful, delicious plant I eat every year, but I can’t recommend serving them to the general public. Plenty of people say these are edible, but also emetic if eaten in “quantity”. 

I can tell you, at least with E. albidum and E. americanum I’ve eaten, that some people are much more sensitive than others, so if you want to make a salad to serve people, make sure they’re comfortable eating it, and use a few leaves as a garnish. 

Funny enough, I didn’t learn about these from a foraging book. Like knotweed, I learned about them from one of my favorite chefs: Michel Bras, one of the most influential chefs of the turn of the 21 century. 

Any chef that works with wild plants owes a debt to Bras. His book, although a little dated now, still teaches me new things all the time. While flipping through the book I also caught a recipe using tansy flowers 😳 that I’d probably pass on. 

The whitefish crusted with sunflower seeds is a dish of mine from 2012, and an example of how I eat the leaves: a few at a time, as a garnish. 

#troutlily #erythronium #michelbras #ephemerals #foraging
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwor 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) is another beautiful spring wildflower that loves to grow in the same habitat you’ll see ramps and spring beauty. 

Its small at first, but grows to a worthy size for eating as it flowers. It’s related to cabbage and mustard greens (Brassicaceae) and eating just a few leaves will give you a potent, spicy pop of mustard-family flavor reminiscent of horseradish. 

Eaten in combination with other things, like in a salad, the flavor becomes submissive and you’ll barely know it’s there. 

Some people eat the spicy roots shaped like canine teeth, but for the work I hardly think they’re worth it. 

A great wild spring green for the salad bowl-eat them leaves, tender stem, flowers and all🤤. 

#cutleaftoothwort #cadamineconcatenata #ephemeral #springedibles #foraging #wildfoodlove
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #2 is Virginia water 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #2 is Virginia waterleaf, and, I’m cheating a bit as it’s semi-ephemeral. The plant comes up in spring and goes to flower, but gives a second harvest of fresh growth in the fall, where other ephemerals I know do not. 

This is a great starter wild green-easy to recognize with the splashes of white on the leaves that may or may not be present. After you learn it though, don’t be surprised if, like me, you eventually pass it up for more delicious greens nearby. 

The plant gets tough quick, and the flavor is..meh, so I usually have small amounts of very young greens in blends of blanched and sautéed mixes. 

My favorite part is the wee flower buds, that, if you get at the right time, can be harvested in decent quantity and are good steamed as they’ll soak up oil sautéed. 

#hydrophyllumvirginianum #waterleaf #foraging #fueledbynature #weedeater
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Footer

Privacy

  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2021 · Foodie Pro & The Genesis Framework

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.