Szolnok Goulash Festival Awaits Lovers of Traditional Cuisine

The Szolnok Goulash Festival (in central Hungary) will be held between September 8-9, 2023. This year they are also looking for the Goulash Queen or King, who will put the best dish in front of the jury.

Goulash is one of the most characteristic dishes of the Hungarian Great Plain and the country itself.

The cultural event, created in 1999, with the aim of preserving and promoting goulash as a traditional Hungarian food, has been a colorful addition to the town’s program.

The city’s location at the mouth of the Zagyva river on the banks of the Tisza, in the heart of the Great Plain, has made it an important cultural and economic crossroads for centuries.

In addition to the goulash food tradition, the cultivation of folk music and art from within and beyond the border has been given a prominent role over the years. Representatives from cross-border regions and traditional associations from the Carpathian Basin present their folk art, together with the gastronomy and tourism values associated with it.

In addition to creating cultural value,

the presentation of the various regional features by the teams cooking goulash has played a significant community-building role for years.

Visitors can also enjoy concerts, shows, children’s activities, crafts, and stalls. In addition, a cooking competition for dishes with interesting names will also be held and students will be cooking together as well.

To let you in on a little secret of traditional goulash: the special combination of fat, onions, ground paprika, salt, and fresh meat, is cooked as simply as possible and then mixed with a little or a lot of liquid. It is not worth wasting any more time on it, because in the cooking vessel that Hungarians used as far back as Árpád’s time (head of the confederation of the Hungarian tribes at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries), over an open fire, the rest of the magic almost happens by itself.

What is particularly interesting about goulash is that there is not just one kind. Among the many variations, the most famous are the goulash of the Great Plain, from Szeged, Kolozsvár and the Andrássy goulash.

Moreover, an amazing achievement was announced in connection with the traditional dish. Recently, TasteAtlas (an experiential travel online guide for traditional food) has compiled a list of the world’s best soups, ranking goulash as the 16th best.

Featured image via Facebook/Szolnoki Gyulásfesztivál