Goulash Stew

We are renovating a house this summer, and so far, it's a disaster zone. We have loose boards on the back porch, and some red wasps took up residence there. The other day, my husband got stung by a wasp, so I brought him a frozen steak for the swelling around the sting. So, we had a partially thawed round steak that needed to be used.

I looked in Fannie Farmer for a recipe that used round steak, and I found this one that I wanted to make. There was a very similar one called Hungarian Goulash, and only after I started making this and realized it barely has any vegetables did I look at the other recipe and see that it had more veggies! But, I stuck with this one and made a veggie side dish. I paired it with squash and cabbage saute (recipe tomorrow).

Here's the ingredients I used:
2 tbsp. organic butter
2 onion
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp. paprika
1 lb. beef round (Fannie uses 2, but I had a package with about a lb, so that's what I used)
3 c. chopped fresh tomatoes (or a 16 oz can)
1/4 c. sour cream *AT ROOM TEMPERATURE*
salt to taste (FF suggests 1/2 tsp)

Two of these, any size. FF says large, I used medium.

Slice thin.

Saute 10 mins. in butter in casserole or dutch oven (cast iron of course)

Meanwhile, cut round steak into chunks (I tried for 1 1/2 inch).

After 10 mins, add paprika, garlic, & salt. Cook 2 mins more.

Remove onions from pan, add meat.

Turn to brown on both sides.

Put onions back in with meat.

Add tomatoes, stir pot, cover and simmer for 2 1/2 hrs.

Here it is when done.

*Now add the 1/4 c. sour cream. Unfortunately, I did not heed Fannie's advice to add it at ROOM TEMPERATURE, and instead of melting nicely and making a creamy soup, it kind of congealed and refused to melt no matter how I stirred it. So it looks kind of weird, but it tasted good!

With weird sour cream speckles.

I was a bit afraid that the steak would be tough, since I'd had the same cut recently (made into chicken fried steak) and it was a workout for the jaw. But this time, it had plenty of time to cook slowly and get nice and tender. Fannie suggests eating it over noodles, but I just ate it as stew. I could see it being very good with rice, too.

And a side of sauteed squash and cabbage.

I may make the Hungarian Goulash next time, since it's very similar but I won't have to make a vegetable to go on the side. Plus, aside from the sour cream fiasco, this was really good and worth making again. I even made it on a day when I was doing a major canning operation, and it worked out great. I just put it all together and let it simmer on the back burner for 2.5 hours while I did the canning. Since I was canning tomatoes, I ended up with about 2 c. of extra juice, so I threw that in the goulash to make it more soup-like so I wouldn't have to make noodles or rice. I also added about 6 oz. of pepper juice I had from my preserving endeavors. But none of this is necessary. The pepper juice did give it a bit more veggie flavor, though.