Recipe of the week: Hungarian layered potatoes

Layered meals can be found in the cuisine of most nations, because you can easily make them from a few ingredients, and they are quite filling. The Hungarian king of these dishes is the layered potatoes, which is considered to be a real comfort food. Its story and recipe are not too complicated, and definitely worth a try 😉

According to origo.hu, there are certain dishes that don’t call for a lot of ingredients, but the different versions can still cause serious debates, because those are are examples of how “there is no accounting for tastes”, and we all grow up loving the version our family makes. Fisherman’s soup, stuffed cabbage and maybe even the roast á la Brasov belong to this category.

The Hungarian layered potatoes is the recurring meal of family lunches or dinners, we have many pleasant memories connected to the dish, and we tend to search for the flavours of our childhood while eating layered potatoes on occasion. However, in this case there aren’t significant differences. Most traditional (not new wave) recipes call for the same ingredients.

Naturally, there are slight differences, but you can achieve the amazing combination of flavours with nearly all of the  recipes. Chefs believe that the only issue that might arise during making this meal is how to serve it aesthetically in a restaurant. If you’ve ever made layered potatoes at home, you know that this can be a real struggle.

Our layered potatoes is a traditional comfort food, which recalls homely feelings.

Foodandwine.hu states that in the 19^th century it was listed among thick soups (főzelék) as stuffed potatoes. It was first mentioned under this name in an 1840 cookbook. However, it was mentioned as sour cream potatoes in the Dobos cookbook.

The “stuffed” qualifier turned into “layered” throughout the centuries. Today rarely anyone calls the meal rakott burgonya, we call it rakott krumpli (burgonya and krumpli both mean potato, but krumpli is a more informal version).