Chicken Paprikash
To me, this is heaven on a plate. Chicken Paprikash is a Hungarian dish that my mom made a lot when I was a kid. I am part Hungarian, part German and part Romanian, so we ate a lot of ethnic food in my house….probably because it was better for us and it was a heck of a lot cheaper than eating out! I come from a large family and we usually only ate out maybe twice a year if we were lucky. Let me tell you why this is amazing to me: we practically ate home cooked meals every day-meaning my Mom cooked dinner every evening! Nothing processed, nothing pre-done. Incredible! And she had 6 kids no less! I have 1 and its tough!
Anyways, this dish is like a Hungarian version of chicken cacciatore……sort of. Its a tangy tomato sauce with onions, peppers, mushrooms and chicken overtop rice, pasta or nookedly–small homemade dumplings. I used bone-in chicken thighs and removed the skin and any excess fat to make it a little more figure friendly. Thats how my mom did it, so thats how I do it. Thats probably the hardest and most time consuming part of the recipe…..and skinning chicken really isn’t difficult AT ALL. You’ll have to chop some veggies and do some stirring, but other then that its easy breezy! I like to use a pretty deep skillet (like this) but a pot will work well, too! Try something new and interesting today!
Chicken Paprikash
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 1/2 tablespoons paprika (not smoked, not spicy…just the plain stuff)
1-1 1/2 lbs chicken thighs, skinned (4-6 pieces)
1-14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes (I used organic)
1/4 cup water
1 green bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup fresh diced tomatoes (preferably sweet ones–I used cherry tomatoes)
3/4 cup sliced mushrooms
lots of salt
pepper
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup sour cream (I used light)
Directions:
1. In deep skillet, heat oil and butter over medium heat. Add in onion and sautee 2 minutes.
2. Stir in paprika and cook 2 more minutes ensuring it doesn’t burn! Careful!
3. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Place chicken pieces into pan to brown each side (about 3 minutes per side)
4. Add in fresh and canned tomatoes, green peppers, salt and pepper. Lightly simmer (covered) over medium-low heat for 45 minutes to 1 hour stirring and turning chicken occasionally.
5. In the last 15 minutes of cooking add in mushrooms.
6. In small bowl, stir sour cream and flour together until smooth. In the last 5-10 minutes of cooking, remove chicken and stir in sour cream mixture to thicken sauce. Stir chicken back in to reheat. Once thoroughly heated through, serve hot over rice, pasta or nookedly.
Recipe TIPS
-Once you add your paprika into the cooking onions, watch it carefully! It can burn easily!
-If you don’t have canned tomatoes but you have fresh (or vice versa) you can easily substitute them for each other.
- This recipe needs lots of salt. Keep salting as you go, little by little. Before you serve it, do a taste test just to make sure its still good. After the sour cream is added, it tends to need a little more salt and pepper.
we are definitely trying this one! thomas served his mission in hungary and loves the food from there! please share more hungarian dishes!
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Very good ty!
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I’m assuming you put the water in on step 4 as well?
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This is almost exactly like the recipe I use for Chicken Paprikash. I use red bell pepper instead of green and I use chicken broth instead of water and a little bit more of it since I drain the canned tomatoes. Sometimes I like to add a little bit of hot paprika in with the sweet paprika to give it some kick. It’s a delicious recipe, give it a try, you won’t be disappointed at how good it is! Makes you feel at home.
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Tried this last night. YUM! Easy to make and delicious! Will definitely be adding it to my regular recipes!
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