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Mom's Goulash in the Microwave

"There were no microwaves when my mom made this, so she did it on the stove top. She never gave us the recipe and I have discovered it through trial and error. You never forget the taste! I started with a recipe in a microwave cookbook and have adjusted the ingredients over time. If anyone is home when you are cooking, you will have company in the kitchen! Serve with Caesar salad, oven-baked garlic butter French bread and red wine. Microwave temperatures vary, so keep checking to see if these power levels work for you."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

6 servings
Prep10 min
Cook25 min

Ingredients

Contains: wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: pasta

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Crumble the ground beef into a large microwave-safe bowl, add the diced onion, sliced celery and minced garlic, cover loosely and microwave on high for 4 minutes.

  2. Stir well, then microwave on high 3 to 4 more minutes until the beef is no longer pink and reaches 160°F (71°C) in the thickest part. Drain off any excess fat.

  3. Stir in the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, sugar, paprika, dried oregano, caraway seed, cayenne pepper and salt.

  4. Add the uncooked macaroni and pour in enough boiling water to cover the pasta by about 1 inch, stirring to submerge it.

  5. Cover loosely and microwave on high for 10 minutes, stirring halfway through, until the macaroni is tender. Add a splash of water if it looks dry.

  6. Let stand covered for 5 minutes so the sauce thickens, then stir and serve hot.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + oreganotop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,767 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Garlic + tomatotop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Celery + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Garlic + oreganotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, garlic, tomato, sauce, sugar, oregano):

  1. Cuminbetter flavor fit
  2. Basilbetter flavor fit
  3. Gingerabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, garlic, tomato, sauce, sugar, oregano. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).