Goulash Recipes – per Request

I received a request for some goulash recipes.  Paula Dean ( love, love, love her!) has a great goulash recipe that is very similar to the one from my grandmother’s cookbook (I add chilies or one can of diced tomatoes with chilies already added to spice mine up just a little).

Goo-laash is different from the goulash recipes you normally hear about because they are mostly about cooking to utilize leftovers in a second meal. Here in the southern mountain region, some of us were raised to ‘Cook Big‘ just to make sure there is always more than plenty of fodder to be able to offer when someone pops in, to make a plate to take to someone or to lighten the cooking load for another night.

If you were looking for some goo-laash recipes, I honestly do not have any true recipes written down. Most of my cooking is a dash of this and a dash of that without exact measurements anyway. After years of watching my Grandmother turn over her canister to dump flour directly onto the counter, using her hand to turn it into a bowl of sorts, then roughly pouring in buttermilk to make her mouthwatering from scratch biscuits, I realized that most family cooking is usually more about trial and error experience than perfect proportions.

Making goo-laash means just taking dinner plate items from the last 24 hours and turning them into a casserole, soup/stew, one skillet meal, or any other thing that utilizes the prepared food without it looking like the original meal. In my Grandmother’s cookbook, her Goo-laash entry simply says to go to your refrigerator and look at what is in there and try to think of how to combine them and use them up instead of cooking up additional food. Then she writes, “You would be surprised how quickly cheese, a can of soup, or diced tomatoes can totally change and disguise yesterday’s fare.” That is typically exactly what she did. She would find a way to add something to the mix and then layer everything in a casserole dish to bake for a while. Then she would cut it as if it were lasagna and serve it up.  The second main standard she had for goo-laash was to throw everything into her stock pot and serve up interesting soups or stews.

I learned a lot from copying the things she served. After getting comfortable with the practice it was easier to come up with some attempts of my own to use up leftovers with less of a slab or slurp effect. Then I started planning meals purposely to have a ‘two for’.

Since I do not have any true recipes, how about I just try to share a few examples to spark your imagination when you look into your own refrigerator or are making your menu plans?

Chicken or Turkey

Let’s say tonight’s dinner is chicken or turkey. The remaining meat can be shredded or cut into chunks for several things.  What you do with the leftover meat may or may not depend on what else you have leftover.

• You can take leftover stuffing or crumble some biscuits/rolls, add some  shredded cheese and a can of cream of something soup. Mixed it all up and bake for a hearty casserole served with any vegetable or side salad.
• Pot Pies are pretty easy, too. Leftover mixed veggies, biscuits, or chicken broth can become a sort of pot pie. Crumble or split the biscuits on the bottom and the top (I use sheets of puff pastry baked separately unless I have another bread already leftover). Add corn starch to the broth in small amounts until it gets to a light gravy consistency or use cream of chicken soup.  I usually cook the veggies in the pan of gravy with an added diced onion  to reduce cooking time.
• Leftover plain or lightly seasoned pasta is my personal favorite. One diced green pepper and one diced onion cooked in a little of the chicken broth gravy mentioned above, poured over the pasta in a casserole dish, then topped with a light sprinkling of shredded sharp cheddar.  This one can just as easily be done as a one skillet meal instead of baked. Speaking of which, check out the grocery shelves for those boxed meals to come up with other ideas.
• How about taking forks to really shred the meat and turn it into barbecue?
• Shred the meat and add diced celery, walnut pieces, diced grapes, and mayo for great chicken salad? (Especially good served on those big fluffy croissants.)
• In the winter, another of my favorites is white chili. A dash of white pepper, shredded Monterrey Jack cheese, and white beans all thrown into the crock pot with the leftover shredded meat shortly after dinner will be perfect for dinner tomorrow.
• If all else fails, you can use the chunks as simple toppings to make a dinner salad out of a side salad.

You can do a lot with leftover chicken or turkey meat.  Even those breaded fillets and nuggets. BTW, I frequently will crock pot a whole chicken or turkey then pull all of the meat off just to put into containers for the freezer.  I can use them as is, or to supplement the amounts of leftover meat.  (Turkeys will give enough meat for many family meals, a chicken will cover one or two meals. And I usually can the broth they make, too.) If you want to start trying this, too, you should know that the meat looks pretty sad after it has been frozen. All of the chunk pieces shrivel a lot, look kind of sharp, even freezer burnt. Do not worry, they plump back up to normal as they thaw.

Leftover Hamburger, Meatloaf, or Steak

Let’s say tonight’s dinner is a giant meatloaf – remember, I cook big so there is plenty left.  I could put the leftovers into the freezer for a prepared meal another night or slice it for meatloaf sandwiches tomorrow. I could crumble it for the protein in a soup or on top of a salad. I could crumble it into a mix with long grain/dirty rice and extra diced tomatoes to make stuffed peppers or stuffed cabbage rolls. Or I could convert it into a shepherd’s pie.

Here are a few other meat ideas:

• Steak and salad one night can be shred more fine the next using a chef’s knife to become filling for tacos or a taco salad.
• Again, the meat can be crumbled or shred for barbecue or chili.
• Leftover pasta again can be mixed up for a one skillet meal as with your typical goulash.Use leftover mac and cheese and you have the most typical one skillet boxed meal at a fraction of the price.
• Roll the dough of two individual canned biscuits as round and flat as a salad plate.  Put a filling of crumbled leftover meat, cheese, and diced onions and peppers in the center of one rolled biscuit, then top with the second biscuit. Pinch the edges together almost like a dinner turnover. You could also use pita pockets or make a wrap.

Thinking Up Meals of Your Own

You can develop second day meals of your own similarly over time.  I have already suggested that you use index cards to journal as you prepare each nights meal to start you on your way to easy, low tech meal planning.  I suggested that you leave room on the card to add variations such as instead of this, use that. On my cards in that space, next to the variation, I frequently also have a reference to another card which is the ‘goo-laash’ meal utilizing the variation or I may have a reference to the original meal whose leftovers were utilized for this meal card.

When you cook dinner make your first card. The next day or the second time around, study the ingredients a little more closely. How many other meals could you make using your leftovers as the starting point? Look at each item. Think about the meat. Think about each vegetable. Use some food search engines that will let you enter a specific ingredient for more ideas (or enter “food search engine” in the search box).

When you cook casseroles, soups, or the like, try to look at it backwards. What meals could you serve the first night that could provide the ingredients to make up this dish the second night?

Make up additional cards based on those ideas. Do make sure to put a note on the appropriate cards so you can cross reference them when you have a ton of cards and they start getting shuffled a lot.

Around here, we have plenty of leftovers naturally because I have always cooked big.  I know this is an uncommon practice. You may need to make note on the ‘goo-laash’ card how much extra of the the original you will need to be able to make a second meal. There is no need to double the recipe of everything you make if you already have cooking to appropriate portions down pat. Just figure out how much extra you will need for the second meal or to feed the freezer.

Your Turn

Do you have some more second day suggestions that you already make to share with the rest of us?