Hurka
Family of Hungarian puddings whose liver version (májas hurka), presented here, contains rice and marjoram. The véres hurka (with blood) is its counterpart. Both are prepared on the day of the disznóvágás.
| Pork liver | 400 g |
| Pork lung (optional) | 150 g |
| Cooked rice | 250 g |
| Onion, sliced and cooked | 100 g |
| Lard | 50 g |
| Fine salt | 18 g |
| Ground black pepper | 3 g |
| Sweet Hungarian paprika | 8 g |
| Dried marjoram | 3 g |
| Broth from cooking the offal | 100 ml |
| Hog casing (Ø 36–40 mm) | — |
- Cooking the offal: Poach the liver and the lung in salted water for 20 to 30 minutes. Reserve the broth. Leave to cool to lukewarm.
- Mincing: Mince the offal through the fine plate (4 mm) or in a food processor.
- Preparing the base: Fry the onion in the lard until golden. Add the paprika off the heat (to keep it from burning).
- Mixing: Combine the minced offal, the cooked rice, the paprika onion, the seasonings and enough broth to obtain a supple but not liquid forcemeat.
- Stuffing: Stuff without packing too tightly. Form portions of 15–18 cm.
- Poaching: Poach for 25–30 minutes in barely simmering water.
- Serving: It may be eaten warm after poaching, or cooled and then grilled or fried.
- The véres hurka (blood version) replaces part of the liver with pig’s blood. The paprika is essential: use a quality Hungarian paprika (édes, sweet, or félédes, semi-sweet).
The hurka is a Hungarian pudding that comes in two variants: the májas hurka, with pork liver, and the véres hurka, with blood. The use of rice as a binder, in place of the groats or bread usually used in puddings in Central Europe, is the technical trait that distinguishes the hurka from its Czech (jitrnice), Polish (kaszanka), or German (grützwurst) counterparts.
The word hurka has designated the preparation in both its forms since at least the eighteenth century, when it appears in Magyar market registers and cookery compilations. Its making is bound to the disznóvágás, the traditional pig slaughter, practised in winter from November to February. Families set the slaughter by the liturgical calendar: Saint Catherine’s on 25 November, Saint Andrew’s on 30 November or Saint Thomas’s on 21 December, so as to have smoked sausages and hams ready for the Christmas festivities.
The hurka is produced at the disznótor, the collective feast that closes the day of slaughter, and eaten first among the prepared charcuteries in the days that follow. Several ethnographic sources document the disznótor as structured by social codes comparable to those of the halotti tor, the reception that follows a Hungarian funeral. The blood collected at slaughter was immediately prepared as vérpörkölt (a blood stew with onions), which made the meal of the working morning.
The Mangalica, Hungary’s heritage curly-coated breed, developed in the nineteenth century by crossing with Serbian pigs, is held to be particularly suited to puddings and cooked charcuterie on account of the richness of its fat. Threatened with extinction after the Second World War, it was saved by conservation programmes set up in the 1990s.
The hurka is little known outside Hungary. It is sold in Hungarian grocers in the diaspora in Europe, North America, and Australia, chiefly in communities where the tradition of the disznóvágás is preserved. Its presence in international mass retail is almost nil.
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