General Features
Hungarians are especially passionate about their soups, desserts and pastries and stuffed pancakes (palacsinta), with fierce rivalries between regional variations of the same dish, (like the Hungarian hot fish soup called Fisherman's Soup or halászlé, cooked differently on the banks of Hungary's two main rivers: the Danube and the Tisza). Other famous Hungarian dishes would be Paprikás (paprika stew, meat simmered in thick creamy paprika gravy) served with nokedli (small dumplings), gulyás (goulash), palacsinta (pancakes served flambéed in dark chocolate sauce filled with ground walnuts) and Dobos Cake (layered sponge cake, with chocolate buttercream filling and topped with a thin caramel slice).
Two remarkable elements of Hungarian cuisine that are hardly noticed by locals, but usually conjure up much enthusiasm amongst foreigners, are different forms of vegetable stews called főzelék as well as cold fruit soups, like cold sour cherry soup (Hungarian: hideg meggyleves).
Meat stews, casseroles, steaks, roasted pork, beef, poultry, lamb or game and the Hungarian sausages (kolbász) and winter salami are a major part of Hungarian cuisine. The mixing of different varieties of meat is a traditional feature of the Hungarian cuisine. Goulash, stuffed peppers, stuffed cabbages or Fatányéros (Hungarian mixed grill on wooden platter) can combine beef and pork, and sometimes mutton. In very exclusive dishes fruits like plums and apricots are cooked with meat or in piquant sauces/stuffings for game, roasts and other cuts. Various kinds of noodles and dumplings, potatoes and rice are commonly served as a side dish. The Hungarian cuisine uses a large variety of cheeses, but the most common are túró (a type of quark), cream cheeses, ewe-cheese (juhturó), Emmentaler, Edam and the Hungarian cheeses Trappista and Pálpusztai and Pannonia cheese
Read more about this topic: Hungarian Cuisine
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