Chicken Paprika
A delicious Hungarian dish of slow-cooked chicken with paprika.
It is also called Paprikas or Paprikash (the Hungarian is Paprikáscsirke).
INGREDIENTS
- 1 kg Chicken Leg Meat (Thighs, drumsticks or whole legs)
- 400 gm Chopped onions
- 2-3 Red, orange or yellow peppers, deseeded and chopped1
- 2 Cloves of garlic, chopped finely (Optional)
- 25 gm Butter
- 100 gm Mild Paprika
(Or you could use hot Paprika, or partly hot paprika, if you like it spicy)
- Freshly ground black pepper
- ¼ litre Liquid:- Water, or dry cider2, or home-made chicken stock
- A chicken stock cube if you don't use chicken stock
- 100 ml Thick (double) cream (or sour cream, or crème fraîche)
- Wheat flour or cornflour for thickening (Optional)
- 60 ml Tomato purée (Can be omitted)
PREPARATION
The chicken leg meat is best cooked with skin on and bone in for flavour, but the finished dish will contain slightly more fat, and you may prefer to use skinned and boned meat. You can use drumsticks or whole legs if you prefer but I like the size and shape of thighs. Chicken breast pieces work, too, but leg meat gives a better flavour and texture to this dish.
Sauté the onions, garlic (if used), and peppers in the butter until onions are soft and just turning golden. (The onions and bell peppers may be chopped quite small or just sliced in rings, depending on whether you want large or small pieces in your sauce.) Add the chicken pieces and cook until they're no longer pink.
Add the paprika and pepper, stir thoroughly for 60-90 seconds and add the liquid, and the tomato purée and the stock cube if used. Bring to the boil and simmer for 60-120 minutes at the lowest possible heat necessary to maintain boiling, stirring occasionally and adding water if necessary to prevent drying out. The sauce is thickened by the paprika and the cream, but if you like a thicker sauce add a little wheat flour or cornflour blended into a couple of tablespoons of water, stir well and bring back to the boil for 60-90 seconds.
Serve at once, or allow to cool, store in the refrigerator overnight, and reheat and serve the following day, when the flavour will be even better. Just before finally serving remove the boiling pot from the heat and stir in the cream. The cream may stirred until the sauce is homogeneous or it may be lightly stirred so that the sauce is streaky with dark sauce and lighter cream - this makes little difference to the taste but it looks nice. In Hungary the dish is traditionally served with dumpling-like boiled egg noodles (nokedli), similar to the German spätzle, as in the picture, but it may also be served with boiled rice.
1 Variously known as peppers, bell peppers, sweet peppers and capsicum
2 European style fermented ("hard") dry cider - don't use unfermented apple juice unless it's very dry
This is a recipe page on the James Bryant (G4CLF) Web-site.
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