''Főzelék'' () is a type of thick
Hungarian vegetable stew or soup, similar to
pottage. Főzelék is a special category in Hungarian cuisine, not quite like a
soup
Soup is a primarily liquid food, generally served warm or hot – though it is sometimes served chilled – made by cooking or otherwise combining meat or vegetables with Stock (food), stock, milk, or water. According to ''The Oxford Compan ...
and thinner than a
stew
A stew is a combination of solid food ingredients that have been Cooking, cooked in Soup, liquid and served in the resultant gravy. Ingredients can include any combination of vegetables and may include meat, especially tougher meats suitable for ...
. It is simply cooked, typically by simmering, not mashing. It is usually not cooked with meat, but bacon and spicy sausage may be added for flavor. Főzelék is often eaten as the main course for lunch or as a garnish for different meat courses. Főzelék was typically a home-made food and was considered an ordinary type of meal, so traditionally it seldom appeared on restaurant menus, but in recent years, as part of the culinary revolution in Hungary, főzelék has enjoyed a revival and is much more common to be found on menus; there are even places dedicated to offering various főzelék as main courses.
Etymology
Its name roots in the verb ''főz'' ("cook"), modified by the ''-(a/e)lék'' suffix which renders the meaning to the results of the verb. Thus the word ''főzelék'' approximately means "
omethingcreated by cooking". Hence in Hungarian a prefix is always used to make clear what the given főzelék is actually made of, e.g.: ''tökfőzelék'' (traditionally made of
marrow but
zucchini or other type of
squash is also becoming popular), ''babfőzelék'' (made of
beans
A bean is the seed of some plants in the legume family (Fabaceae) used as a vegetable for human consumption or animal feed. The seeds are often preserved through drying (a ''pulse''), but fresh beans are also sold. Dried beans are tradition ...
) etc.
Preparation
Főzelék can be made with a variety of ingredients including
cabbage,
potato
The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...
es,
sauerkraut,
tomato
The tomato (, ), ''Solanum lycopersicum'', is a plant whose fruit is an edible Berry (botany), berry that is eaten as a vegetable. The tomato is a member of the nightshade family that includes tobacco, potato, and chili peppers. It originate ...
es,
peas,
carrots,
kale,
kohlrabi
Kohlrabi (; pronounced in English; scientific name ''Brassica oleracea'' Gongylodes Group (horticulture), Group), also called German turnip or turnip cabbage, is a Biennial plant, biennial vegetable, a low, stout cultivar of wild cabbage. It is ...
,
lentil
The lentil (''Vicia lens'' or ''Lens culinaris'') is an annual plant, annual legume grown for its Lens (geometry), lens-shaped edible seeds or ''pulses'', also called ''lentils''. It is about tall, and the seeds grow in Legume, pods, usually w ...
s,
pinto beans,
squash,
spinach
Spinach (''Spinacia oleracea'') is a leafy green flowering plant native to Central Asia, Central and Western Asia. It is of the order Caryophyllales, family Amaranthaceae, subfamily Chenopodioideae. Its leaves are a common vegetable consumed eit ...
,
sorrel
Sorrel (''Rumex acetosa''), also called common sorrel or garden sorrel, is a perennial herbaceous plant in the family Polygonaceae. Other names for sorrel include spinach dock and narrow-leaved dock ("dock" being a common name for the genus ''Ru ...
,
yellow wax bean
Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In th ...
s or mixed vegetables.
It is usually thickened with
roux and/or
sour cream
Sour cream (sometimes known as soured cream in British English) is a dairy product obtained by fermenting regular cream with certain kinds of lactic acid bacteria. The bacterial culture, which is introduced either deliberately or naturall ...
, and some combination of the following may be added: chopped
onion
An onion (''Allium cepa'' , from Latin ), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus '' Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onion which was classifie ...
s,
paprika
Paprika is a spice made from dried and ground red peppers, traditionally ''capsicum annuum''. It can have varying levels of Pungency, heat, but the peppers used for hot paprika tend to be milder and have thinner flesh than those used to produce ...
,
bay leaf,
black peppercorn,
dill,
caraway seeds,
garlic,
lemon juice,
parsley or
vinegar.
[Gundel's Hungarian Cookbook, Karoly Gundel.]
If eaten alone it is often topped with
pörkölt,
fried eggs, smoked
sausage
A sausage is a type of meat product usually made from ground meat—often pork, beef, or poultry—along with salt, spices and other flavourings. Other ingredients, such as grains or breadcrumbs, may be included as fillers or extenders.
...
, Hungarian meatballs flavoured with garlic, called ''
fasírt'', and other
deep-fried foods.
See also
*
List of stews
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fozelek
Hungarian stews