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Festival Cauldron · Fisherman's Soup

Szegedi Halászlé

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At Szeged's biggest fish festival, cooks fill a single cauldron holding around 5,000 liters to feed the crowd — a scale that turns a simple riverbank fish soup into a genuine spectacle.

A fiery, paprika-red soup made by boiling carp and other river fish (often with their heads and bones) into a smooth broth, then poaching fresh fish fillets in it — cooked outdoors in a bogrács cauldron over open flame and ladled out at riverside festivals along the Tisza.

Why it's made this way: It grew directly out of the working lives of Tisza River fishermen, who cooked their catch riverside in a single pot out of practicality — a tradition Szeged still celebrates every September at its International Tisza Fish Festival.
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