10 Hungarian eating habits that make foreigners go nuts

Change language:

It is not only about eating roasted blood with onions or rooster testicle stew: the sugared cottage cheese and bread and dripping are all thought to be strange by foreigners, reports szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu.

Even if you ever heard about Hungarians having some strange eating habits, it can be hard to recognize: since bread and dripping with purple onion, pasta with poppy seeds, tripe, or the kidneys and brains are so delicious – what can be so strange about them…? Yet foreigners getting to know Hungarian cuisine and culinary culture surely have a hard time accepting the typical Hungarian dishes, ingredients, eating styles, and habits. Here are some examples.

1. No matter what you cook, the starting point is always fats and onion

Hungarians living with foreigners quite often hear the shocked question “You fry the onion on oil (or fats) again?” It may not strike us, but most of our dishes really start like that, and these are not only stews and ragouts but also soups and vegetable dishes.

Hagyma

2. Can’t live without paprika

Fresh paprika is the essential ingredient of many Hungarian dishes: just think about the lecsó, but neither the goulash, the stew, nor the paprika potatoes would exist without the ground (Erős Pista, Édes Anna and their numerous clones) and hot paprika. Just to mention the most important dishes. So it could seem that paprika predominates the Hungarian cuisine. There is a substratum of truth in that the Hungarian cuisine relies on the Holy-Trinity of fats-onion-paprika – but at least they form the basic backbone of it.

3. Putting sour cream in everything

A foreigner can immediately spot the sour cream love of the average Hungarian. Firstly, there are several dishes that must contain sour cream, but apart from them we usually put sour cream on every dish “without reason”. It can be chicken paprika, lángos, or runner beans soup – but who has not eaten a good bread with sour cream and onion for dinner yet? It is also essential on the top of the quark cheese noodles and the quark cheese pancakes – the latter leads to our next point.

Chicken paprikash csirkepaprikás

4. Quark cheese, what is more: sweetened quark cheese?

Just like sour cream, the typical bumpy, thin quark cheese is also a national peculiarity, something like this hardly appears outside the Carpathian basin. So the autoletic, premeditated and constant usage of this kind of cheese is suspicious already in itself, but it is nothing compared to the fact that we also put sugar in it… and chocolate at the top… thus creating the Túró Rudi.

túró rudi wikicommons

5. Giblets without control: tripe, kidney and brains, and rooster testicle stew!

The edible parts of animals usually stop at the height of the legs or wings of a distinguished Western European. They are gradually shocked by the chicken leg or gizzard put into the soup by granny – but this is nothing compared to a good kidney and brains, or rooster testicle stew! Of course, the list can go on with the stew of trotters, the pig pudding with pettitoes, and the gizzard stew.

Continue reading

20 Comments

  1. Quark cheese is absolutely not the one hungarians using. Not even cottage cheese. The one they using is specifically the dry curd cottage cheese.

  2. Quark cheese is absolutely not the one hungarians using. Not even cottage cheese. The one they using is specifically the dry curd cottage cheese.

  3. Most of the article ISfalse information.
    1.There are hundreds of dishes that do not have paprika.
    2.The often use of onions are hardly a Hungarian practice. Being a chef I know that many cuisine use a lot of onions.
    3.Yes we use sour cream often, bur so does other cuisines; Mexican, American, German, Polish and so.on
    4. We do not use any quark or cottage cheese. We use so called Turo, which is more like Pot cheese. Cottage cheese is made with a different bacteria culture.
    5. Cold fruit soups are known in many cuisines.
    So what makes Hungarian cuisine different? The use of spice and herb combination, the recipes that are rooted from the Hungarian culture and the love of cooking for the family.

    .

  4. Most of the article ISfalse information.
    1.There are hundreds of dishes that do not have paprika.
    2.The often use of onions are hardly a Hungarian practice. Being a chef I know that many cuisine use a lot of onions.
    3.Yes we use sour cream often, bur so does other cuisines; Mexican, American, German, Polish and so.on
    4. We do not use any quark or cottage cheese. We use so called Turo, which is more like Pot cheese. Cottage cheese is made with a different bacteria culture.
    5. Cold fruit soups are known in many cuisines.
    So what makes Hungarian cuisine different? The use of spice and herb combination, the recipes that are rooted from the Hungarian culture and the love of cooking for the family.

    .

  5. Roasted blood shouldn’t be disgusting or shocking any foreigner, the “black pudding” ( blood sausage as
    you called it) in the western countries is made from blood as well.

  6. Roasted blood shouldn’t be disgusting or shocking any foreigner, the “black pudding” ( blood sausage as
    you called it) in the western countries is made from blood as well.

  7. It’s called Farmer’s cheese around here (USA) That’s what we buy here to make kőrözött or túrós crapes.

  8. It’s called Farmer’s cheese around here (USA) That’s what we buy here to make kőrözött or túrós crapes.

  9. In England a bacon fat ” butty” is very popular…. Especially among the working class…. Tea cakes or bread…

  10. In England a bacon fat ” butty” is very popular…. Especially among the working class…. Tea cakes or bread…

  11. I was raised on those food love it yet to met a person who did not appreciate our food

  12. I was raised on those food love it yet to met a person who did not appreciate our food

  13. I have lived in Hungary for a few three month stints and have traveled there 10 to 12 times. The food, the people, the music is wonderful. I have learned to make many of these dishes and my family loves them. This week I will make summer pickles, yum.

  14. I have lived in Hungary for a few three month stints and have traveled there 10 to 12 times. The food, the people, the music is wonderful. I have learned to make many of these dishes and my family loves them. This week I will make summer pickles, yum.

  15. Been there, done that, got the tshirt. Have eaten all of it, made many of the dishes and enjoy cooking outside in a pot like the first picture even in the cold winter and love very minute of it. And off course there is a lot more to Hungarian cousine that this.

  16. Hungarians are gourmet cooks-i know both grandmas made delicious retes,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and many entrees -surprising part they used no cookbook-I was licky to have bothe grandmas up to my adult years-I still have grandmas cutting board –their foods were not fatty-I would call it cuisine-

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *