Good recipe for beef goulash?

Don’t add the water right away, you can always add water as needed while you are cooking.
The pasta should soak up much of the excess water if it is too runny. Check about 10 minutes from when it should be done, if you need to leave the lid off the pot to allow excess moisture to steam away.

Unless you are cooking a traditional Hungarian goulash, in which case you would leave out the tomatoes and the pasta and add vegetables and sauerkraut.

Are you referring to German goulash or what Americans call goulash? Two very different dishes.

The only kind I’ve seen is just ground beef with elbow macaroni and tomato sauce.

Hilarious

Try this:
In a Dutch oven, brown two pounds of seasoned beef chuck, cut into 1 inch cubes, in 3T olive oil.
Remove chuck and deglaze the pan with 1 cup beef stock.
Reserve this liquid to the side.
Now sweat 2 medium onions in 2T olive oil in the pan. Add salt and pepper.
Add one red bell pepper cut into strips and let soften.
Add 2T very high quality, smoked paprika. This is the main flavoring of the goulash.
Add one 14 oz can crushed tomato and the reserved liquid. Cover and simmer one hour.
Serve over rice or egg noodles.

@breedmitch Thanks for clarifying the question and adding a recipe. I couldn’t begin to answer because what she was looking for seemed to be something other than goulash. I didn’t know where to start.

I think what she’s looking for is hamburger helper.

Here is a pretty easy traditional Hungarian Beef Goulash recipe.

It does sound like the OP has probably had only the Americanized version of ghoulash, which is kind of similar to hamburger helper. Hopefully she can try one of our more traditional recipes and add noodles if she likes.

This German Beef Goulash recipe actually does have noodles in it.

Here is a recipe for home made Beef, Tomato Sauce and Macaroni that sounds more like what the OP is describing (this sounds pretty tasty and doesn’t involve any corn starch thickeners).

And here is a recipe that is called Alpine Beef Goulash with Noodles that sounds like a cross between traditional goulash and beef stroganoff (it has tomato sauce, which stroganoff does not).

@AshlynM The German version is usually stew beef, cooked forever with seasonings until it is fall apart tender served over some type of pasta. It’s a little like sauerbrauten.