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Serve this American Goulash with a 5-ingredient cranberry-apple salad, homemade dinner rolls and try baking a Twinkie bundt cake for dessert!
★ Why You’ll Love this Recipe ★
Old-Fashioned Ground Beef Goulash is one of those nostalgic recipes your family may have grown up eating or maybe you've heard how beloved it is and want to give it a try.
A Classic American Recipe
This recipe seems to bring back fond memories for so many. "Goulash" is a timeless American dinner dish that has withstood the test of time. To this day, it's still a great little dinner to feed your family, especially if you have a larger family and you're on a budget.
Layers of Flavor
This particular Goulash recipe is flavorful featuring ground beef, bell peppers, onions, Worcestershire sauce and spices. I often hear that it tastes like the goulash they remember from their childhood.
One-pot Recipe
The cooking process is very simple and uses just one pot for easy clean up! Hooray for less dishes!
All the food groups in one dish!
I love a meal where you get the filling factor of carbs, hearty and flavorful meat, plus veggies all in one dish. It makes cooking and clean up super simple and I'm happy as mom because everyone gets some veggies with each scoop.
Budget-friendly
American goulash is a cheap and easy family dinner.
One of the reasons this recipe became so popular back in the day is that it's really affordable to make a big batch of this filling dish.
American Goulash is a great dinner option for feeding big families, house guests, growing children and teens, or for making extras to have lunch to take to work for the week.
Kid-friendly
Made with ground beef, it's hearty yet affordable and is typically well-liked even among picky eaters.
★ Ingredients You'll Need ★
Traditionally, and with this recipes, here's what you'll find in American Goulash:
- Elbow macaroni. This classic pasta shape works well with this dish because the sauce and bits of meat get trapped inside the noodles in the best way making for perfect bites! However, if you want to use a different shape of pasta, by all means, you can.
- Ground beef. This is a great "Hamburger Helper" style recipe that's almost as easy as just adding some beef to a box. We are just incorporating some more freshness and texture vs. the boxed dinner with onion, mixed vegetables and tomatoes.
- Bell peppers. To me, the peppers are what really makes goulash goulash. Bell peppers add a subtle sweetness and depth of flavor that sets this dish apart from the more familiar spaghetti dinner.
- Onion and garlic. This tasty duo layers flavor into the sauce and compliments the ground beef nicely.
- Tomato sauce and diced tomatoes. You get lots of sauce but also a little but of a chunky texture when you combine these two to form the base for the sauce.
- Worcestershire sauce. This is almost like a secret weapon for literally beefing up the flavor of this dish. It's subtle but if you've been making Goulash without Worcestershire sauce and feel like it's been missing something, this just might be what's missing!
- A tablespoon of sugar. Because that's what grandma did and that's because it perfectly balances out the acidic tomatoes and peppers. Another subtle but secret weapon!
- Olive oil. I like to add a splash of olive oil to enrich the sauce. It seems insignificant but it really makes a difference in adding flavor and a silky smooth texture to the finished dish. Scientifically speaking, adding a small amount of fat to a dish makes things taste much more flavorful because the fat actually helps the flavor stick to your tongue longer. How fun is that?
Optional Ingredients for Extra Flavor
Black olives are an excellent topping for this dish, adding some saltiness and texture to each bite. Add as a topping to your finished dish or stir them in at the end of the cooking process if you want to heat them up a little.
You could also add chopped artichokes, fresh or dried Italian herbs and/or Parmesan cheese. Add these as toppings when serving.
Ideally, you'll want to let the olives and artichokes get to room temperature before adding as toppings.
Bay leaves also add a layer of extra flavor. Add 2-3 bay leaves when you saute the meat and veggies. You can leave them in the sauce as it cooks. They are edible but you don't want to actually eat them as they are tough. So when serving, just pull them out if you accidentally scoop them onto your plate.
Extra beefy flavor: add a teaspoon of beef bullion to your meat when cooking to boost the beef flavor.
Thin the sauce: Add ½ cup of beef broth to thin the sauce.
★ How to Make this Recipe ★
This American Goulash Recipe is an easy ground beef dinner comes together in just a few steps and with just one pot!
- First, boil the elbow macaroni according to package then drain and set aside.
- Next, use the same pot to cook ground beef, onion, garlic and bell peppers.
- Add tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, and salt to taste.
- Return cooked pasta to pot and stir to combine.
- Serve and add optional toppings as desired!
Quick and easy!
★ Tips & FAQs ★
★ More Beef Recipes You'll Love ★
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This easy recipe for Old Fashioned Ground Beef Goulash was featured on South Your Mouth and Menu Plan Monday.
American Goulash
Equipment
Ingredients
Pasta
- 8 oz elbow pasta
Beef and Vegetables
- 1 lb ground beef
- 1 bell pepper any color, seeded and diced
- 1 onion diced
- 1 teaspoon garlic paste
Sauce
- 15 oz tomato sauce
- 14.5 oz petite diced tomatoes or crushed tomatoes for smoother sauce
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon sugar more or less to taste
- ½ teaspoon salt more or less to taste
Optional Toppings
- grated Parmesan cheese
- red pepper flakes
- Italian spices
- olives
- artichokes
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Instructions
- Cook pasta. In a dutch oven, cook elbow macaroni according to package, drain and set aside.
- Cook beef with vegetables. Set the dutch oven to medium-high heat and add ground beef, diced bell peppers and onion. Cook until ground beef is brown and peppers and onions are soft, about 10 minutes. Add garlic paste and cook for an additional minute.
- Make sauce. Stir in tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, sugar and salt to taste.
- Combine. Add cooked pasta to sauce and stir to combine.
- Add toppings. (Optional) Offer Parmesan cheese, red pepper flakes, Italian spices, olives and/or artichokes as optional toppings.
Rose Pickett says
My mom used to make goulash and I always loved it. This is the closest recipe I found to hers (she never wrote any of her recipes down). I do remember that she would only partially cooked the macaroni so that it would absorb the flavor of the tomatoes. I enjoy a bowl of this and make goulash and peanut butter sandwiches (which my family thought was weird)
Christine says
Growing up in Connecticut, my mother could not really cook, but she tried. One of my favorite dishes that she made was this style goulash, which she called “American chop suey”. That shows you that anyone can make this and it always tastes great! I add sausage to spice it up, as well as grated cheese. Note to read the beginning notes about adding sugar and olive oil. They do make a nice difference but are not listed in the recipe for some reason.
Lynda Mae Chavez says
both are mentioned in the recipe
Dougla Chiles says
Very simple and delicious
Donnie says
My mother made meals like this when I was young living at home. She made these goulashis and oh was they good. I am now 59 yrs old and getting ready to make this recipe. Its good with a can of corn and or carrots. I am fixing to bring back some great memories about my mother.
Love you mom ⚘⚘⚘
Rodger says
I grew up eating this in Wisconsin. We raised our own beef and canned tomatoes from our farm garden. Truly a delightful comfort food!
Angela G. says
That sounds wonderful. Thanks for sharing your memory of this dish.
Jordi says
I am from Florida and I grew up eating goulash all the time
James says
Thanks for the recipe.
Kathy says
When I was growing up this was a weekly meal, but my mom didn't add all bell peppers and other stuff. It was just ground beef, onion, diced tomatoes (that was canned from the garden), and sometimes we didn't haven tomato sauce so my mom would put in ketchup. Since these grocery prices are just keep going up, I'm going back to how my mom made it.
Angela G. says
The beauty is you can customize this to what you have on hand.
Georgiana Knight says
My mom used chopped onion and a can of alphabet soup..👍
Erin says
I am originally from Connecticut. My Grandma and my Dad used to make this for my brother and I back in the 80’s and 90’s. Thank you for sharing this recipe.
Donna says
Good old fashioned comfort meal! I used a quart jar of home canned tomatoes..
Shelly Duston says
My boyfriend has been asking for awhile for me to make goulash. I've never made it before. I've never seemed to have all the ingredients to make any of the recipes I came across and running to the store to get them was not an option. And then I came across Mighty Mrs. Old fashioned beef goulash recipe and got started. This was so easy to make. Huge hit with my boyfriend....thank you!
Shari says
I am making this dish tonight, we grew up eating this as a family of 6. My mother always used to call it Quickie Macaroni. Budget friendly & delish. Similar recipe, but don't remember the Worcestershire added, also my mother always used whole tomatoes. Always a comfort food in our home.
Ray says
In our household mom canned hundreds of quarts of tomatoes in the fall. So a jar or two always made it into her goulash! LOL