What does “levet enged” mean in Hungarian cooking?

Levet enged means “releases its liquid” — the phrase Hungarian recipes reach for whenever salt draws water out of a vegetable. Salt cucumber, and it doesn’t just get seasoned; osmosis pulls moisture out through the cell walls, and that pooled liquid is what levet enged names. Recipes rely on the phrase to signal a step: salt, wait, then squeeze out what’s collected before it waters down the dish.

This tzatziki recipe uses exactly that step: grated cucumber gets salted and left to stand (“hagyjuk állni, hogy levet engedjen”) before being squeezed dry and folded into the yogurt — skip it, and the sauce turns watery within an hour. The same phrase shows up for salted eggplant and cabbage across Hungarian recipes generally.