White trash food doesn't HAVE to turn you into an obese chickenhawk. It can indeed be used for good.

Forewarned is forearmed: If you are Hungarian have Hungarian friends, or like me have simply idolized the Huns (and by extension the Hungarians), please feel free to call this dish anything other than goulash, as this dish is to goulash what Midwestern chain “American” pizza is to pizza in Naples and Rome (there’s a great Food That Built America episode on the subject if you want to learn more). Yes, like the pizza you enjoy so much, Americans took the classic “kettle goulash” recipe (which is a stew heavily seasoned with paprika and made with cubes of beef or mutton fried in lard with onions in lard, and seasoned with garlic, tomatoes, green peppers, caraway seeds, and potatoes) (Britannica), Americans took the basic idea of goulash and transformed it into a dish so entirely American you’d think it came with an extra 50 pounds of bodyfat, a bag of meth, and a second-grade reading level.

Other Bulking Goodness

MXPD Bacon and Pot Roast Potato Soup

Junk Food for Gainz

Dieting and Training on a Galley Slave Budget (which is one of the old school very NSFW series, for anyone who’s a recent arrival. Don’t open that at work or in front of kids. Or old people. Or anyone who dislikes bukkake.)

And that’s not to say that this dish doesn’t slap (because it will hit you in the face harder than a Youtuber pounding on an out-of-shape wrestler (who should hang himself in disgrace), but this goulash lacks even paprika, so feel free to call it any of its other names with goulash seems ill-fitting- this dish also goes by the even more ludicrous name “American Chop Suey,” but you can just call it chili mac if you’re going super cheesy or macaroni and meat sauce if you want- frankly, I don’t give a fuck what you call it, because any name this is given equals GAINZ. This shit is easy as hell to make, cheap as fuck, and requires only one burner and one pot to cook a full day of food, so you can bulk even if you’re living in some shitty dirt motel and using a countertop electric burner to cook all of your food on the bathroom counter (as I’ve said, I’ve bulked even while broker than you knew was possible). You can make this in any level of complexity from literal jail food to haute cuisine, and my recipe pretty much splits the difference, though I’ll link recipes to other options if you want to zhuzh it up (it is indeed a word).

I didn’t bother to upload my photo of this dish because my counter was a mess and this dish is ugly irrespective of the lofty aspirations of the chef and/or photographer. This photo is from Recipe Critic’s much more involved and elevated recipe.

Note: I am not a big cheese person, and this recipe can be made with or without cheese. Most recipes seem to add cheddar to this at the end and then mix to melt the cheese, though I think mozzarella makes more sense. Here’s an unpretentious and very Midwestern (which I guess makes it more of an OG recipe) baked version with cheddar mixed in and topped with mozzarella.

Ingredients, Price, and Macros

  • 2lb 85% Lean ground beef, drained (and definitely drain your shit if it’s under 90%)- $8.00
    • Protein- 224g
    • Fat- 128g
    • Carbs- 0g
  • 1lb Macaroni- $1.29
    • Protein- 56g
    • Fat- 8g
    • Carbs- 336g
  • 2 bottles Classico Roasted garlic spaghetti sauce- $6
    • Protein- 10g
    • Fat- 5g
    • Carbs- 80g
  • plus the cost of garlic and an onion if you don’t already have them, but I had them in my cabinet and there ‘s negligible nutrition info, so I’m not pricing them.

Total

  • Price-$15
  • Calories– 3811
  • Protein-290g (30%)
  • Fat– 141g (26%)
  • Carbs– 416g (44%)

And obviously, that isn’t all I am eating in a day, so combine that with two protein shakes in water and you’ve got a fairly sick fucking day of isocaloric eating:

  • 390g protein (37%)
  • 145g fat (24%)
  • 426g carbs (39%)
  • Calories: 4250

A day of hearty eating for less than $20 bucks all told. Obviously that isn’t the cheapest shit you can make, but it is a damn sight cheaper than a single meal at Chipotle. If you subbed chicken thigh for the meal, you’d cut the cost by about 75% if you really wanted to cut corners, and then more if you made your own sauce. I’ve no interest in trying to figure out how to make this dish the cheapest, but it wouldn’t be hard to push it as low as $7 a day if you didn’t care as much about taste.

Although it isn’t much for learning shit about cooking, the Netflix show “cooking on High” is fairly entertaining if you want to watch people compete in cooking while super blazed. It also stars that comedian with CP (Josh Blue, if memory serves), who’s so fucking high you can’t tell if he’s got CP or is just stoned to the point of incapacity, and he’s a funny motherfucker.

Prepare That Motherfucker

As I mentioned above, this is a meal that you can prepare even while so high it’s astonishing you’re even vertical. It is nearly impossible to fuck this up, and you can do it all in one pot if you want. This means even if you’re living in a dirt motel, you can make this shit, and it’s virtually impossible to fuck up. That said, I never tried it blazed in a dirt motel. [Know your limits when you’re creating a fire hazard for bunches of people, even if you’re the only one in the bunch. Eventually, the idiots will catch on.]

Ingredients

(if you want to go quick and dirty, you just need the sauce, salt, pepper, macaroni, and meat- I just love onion and garlic in my food- meals without it feel incomplete)

  • 1 onion (chopped). If you’re new to cooking, chop the ends off the onion and slice it in half and the skin will come right off, without having to peel it.
  • 2 pounds lean ground beef (I used 85% and drained it, but you can make your own choices. Below 85% is so fatty it’s hard to work with for me due to the mess)
  • 2 heaping TBSP minced garlic (or more- I love garlic and it’s fucking phenomenal for you)
  • 2 TSP paprika 
  • 1 TSP Italian seasoning 
  • 1 TSP salt 
  • 1 TSP ground pepper (you might find that’s too much, but I like mine a bit peppery)
  • 2 bottles of spaghetti sauce (I used a middle of the road Classico, but I’ve seen recipes that swear their shit is best with cheap shit like Ragu. I remain unconvinced)
  • 1 cup beef or chicken broth
  • 1 box elbow macaroni 
  • parmesan cheese for topping (optional)

Directions

This shit should be pretty self-explanatory to make, but I made it lean because I’ve no interest in getting fat, in spite of my general refusal to diet the last couple of years.

  1. spray pan with Pam or other non-stick cooking spray and fry up your meat (make it somewhat underdone if you’re adding the onion and garlic). Use the pot’s lid to hold the meat in the pan while you drain the fat. To make it leaner, just run water over the meat and use the lid to strain it out.
  2. add the garlic, salt, pepper, italian seasoning, and onion, then fry a bit more to soften the onion (if you sliced it thin, the onion should be clear when it’s ready)
  3. add the sauce and beef broth, bring to a boil, then simmer for 5-10 minutes.
  4. reduce heat to medium-low and add the macaroni and stir frequently, cooking it uncovered until the noodles are soft (maybe ten mins). If that seems a bit weird, you can pre-cook your macaroni, which I usually do anyway. The dish does taste better if you soften the noodles in the sauce, though.
  5. Let it sit for at least 5 minutes. This shit is straight napalm when it hits your mouth in less than five minutes, so heed my warning. Stir it and blow on it or you’ll end up having the roof of your mouth looking like in Ed Gein’s laundry room, with sheets of skin hanging from the ceiling.


And because it makes food both taste amazing and incredibly healthy, I typically add crushed red peppers by the spoonful to my own bowl, but not everyone who eats with me can tolerate the level of pungency I can. You can add them as you cook if you wish, but you might find yourself eating alone as a result.

Life’s too short to be small. Eat something.

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