Keto beef Gulasch

Method

1. Pat the beef dry and season it with salt. Cut it into 3 cm cubes if the butcher has not already.
2. Heat the oil in a heavy pot on high. Brown the beef in batches, about 2 minutes per side. Do not crowd the pot. Set the browned meat aside.
3. Lower the heat to medium. Add the garlic and the diced pepper and cook 2 minutes.
4. Stir in the paprika and tomato paste and cook 1 minute.
5. Return the beef, pour in the stock, and stir. The liquid should just cover the meat.
6. Cover and simmer low for 1.5 to 2 hours, stirring now and then, until the beef is fork-tender.
7. Serve over cauliflower mash.

Notes

• Steffi tip. The long low simmer is what makes the beef tender, do not rush it. The big pot covers Sunday’s lunch.
• No onion, and that is not an oversight. A German or Hungarian Gulasch is normally built on as much onion as meat, cooked down until it collapses and becomes the body of the sauce. This one is onion-free on purpose, because that is the house rule. The paprika, the tomato paste, and the diced pepper do that job instead, and the pepper brings the sweetness the onion would have.
• No flour either. No Mehlschwitze, no dusting the beef before browning. Stewing beef is full of connective tissue, and 1.5 to 2 hours of low simmering turns it to gelatin, which is what thickens the sauce. You are not adding body, you are waiting for it.
• Paprika is doing most of the work here, so open a fresh tin. Paprika that has sat in the cupboard for two years tastes of dust and colours the pot without flavouring it.
• Saturday is the big-pot night of the keto week for a reason: four portions means Sunday midday is already handled, and Sunday dinner only has to be a steak.

Good with

• Cauliflower rice and cauliflower mash
• Greek salad with sardines
• Rinderrouladen
• Schwäbischer Salatteller

From Christoph Mayer