Venison Goulash in the Slow Cooker
Venison goulash in the slow cooker – an easy stew with an Eastern European twist. Try it with lamb, beef or goat if you prefer. However, switching for lamb doubles the calories of the dish.
Farmers’ Market
I had a happy, but expensive accident recently – I discovered that York has a superb little farmers’ market on the last Friday of the month. I’m not sure it’s a coincidence this is is just after payday for many people…
As I’ve discussed before on my blog we like interesting meats like goat and venison – my husband is not a beef fan thanks to growing up in the BSE crisis, my son is anaemic and we get bored easily. So – I stocked up – diced venison for stewing, and goat mince. I’m still thinking about how to use the goat mince, ideas on a postcard please!
Having only recently cooked a stunning Venison Giouvetsi with Orzo, and needing an easy slow cooker meal to cook while we celebrated our friends’ wedding at the weekend, I decided to give a venison goulash a go. I can’t say this dish is authentic as I’m not Hungarian and it isn’t traditionally made with Venison, but I did use Wikipedia to aim for a simple, old fashioned version of the dish. No cream or tomatoes, just straight forward meat, veg and smoked paprika.
The result was tasty and beautifully tender. I didn’t add any stock powders or similar to add salt, I simply left the slow cooker to do the work of bringing out the flavours. If you like your salt try adding a dash or two of soy sauce.
photos and text updated 19 August 2017

An easy, flavoursome Eastern European style stew.
- 1 small bunch celery
- 4 bell peppers
- 3 large carrots
- 1 kg 2lb 3oz charlotte potatoes
- 900 g 2lb diced venison
- 2 tbsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp each garlic granules
- 2 tsp ground caraway
Slice the celery- you may want to slice particularly wide bits lenghways first. Deseed the peppers and chop them into small chunks.
- Peel and dice the carrots and potatoes.
- Place all the prepared vegetables in the slow cooker and mix in the meat.
Stir in the spices, 1 tin of tomatoes and enough freshly boiled water to make it up to 400ml.
- Cook for 8 hours on low.