Chicken Paprikáš

A Hungarian classic with a Slovakian twist. A bit of a fusion take on a traditional meal.

Good

% Daily Values based on a 2,000 calorie diet

Step 1

Start with prep. First things first, for just a bit better flavor: dry your chicken thighs, toss them in a bowl and add a bunch of salt and black pepper. Mix all properly and put in the fridge while you cut the rest of the ingredients.

Step 2

Important rules and techniques. This dish stands on the onion. It gives it depth and regulates the thickness of the sauce. More onion = thicker final sauce. This is up to you. I like a thicker sauce so I use a bit more onion. For 1kg of meat, you should use at least 0.5kg of onion if not a bit more. As for the peppers: they are the main ingredient of this dish and the whole goal is to elevate the flavour of the peppers. Ideally, get actual original Hungarian red peppers for this. If you can't, use red capia or other strains of the pointy red pepper. I do not recomment using bell peppers, they are too bland and watery. As for how fine you want your onion diced: this depends on how you wish to finish your dish, you can either leave the sauce with pieces of onion and peppers in it or you can blend it all together to get a smoother more uniform sauce. This is really just a matter of preference. I like to blend my sauce so I don't bother by dicing the onion as fine as I can.

Step 3

Dice your onion and set it aside. You don't need to dice your peppers just yet, there will be plenty of time to do that later. Take your meat out of the fridge, get a large, deep pot and heat it up. Melt animal fat and sear the meat in it. Quick sear until the skin is golden. Make sure not to burn the fat.

Step 4

Put your seared chicken aside, deglaze the bottom of the pot with a splash of chicken broth (literally half a ladle), turn the heat all the way down and add the onion. Fry on low to medium heat until it's nice and soft. The lower the heat and the longer you fry the onion like this, the better the result. Salt your onion, it gives the dish depth and helps break down the onion a bit faster.

Step 5

While your onion slowly fries, you can dice your red peppers. Again, size of the pieces is up to you. If you will be blending the sauce, it doesn't matter. If you're leaving it as is, the size should reflect what kind of texture you're going for.

Step 6

Once your onion is nice and golden, add the diced peppers and fry until the peppers get soft and everything starts smelling really nicely.

Step 7

For this step it is important to switch off the heat underneath the pot. Once the onion and peppers are soft and ready, add two heaping spoons of mild paprika powder. Stir everything nicely and once everything is coated in paprika, add a spoon of tomato paste. Stir again.

Step 8

You can now add your chicken back.

Step 9

Cover everything with chicken broth. The amount depends on how thick you want the final sauce. If you're aiming for a bit thicker sauce, use less stock. If you want the sauce to be more watery, use more stock. After frying, my onion and peppers amounted to around 1 kg so I used equal part of the broth, 1 litre. Just so the meat was covered with it. When adding the broth, shake the whole pot a little bit so everything mixes and settles. Bring it to boil, cover it and simmer on low heat for 30-40 minutes.

Step 10

At the end, remove the chicken, add cream and blend everything together with immersion blender. I recommend adding the cream bit by bit. You might use 50 ml, you might end up using 100 ml. It depends on your taste and what you want. The more cream you add, the smoother the taste will be.

Step 11

Get a large bowl, preferably glass. Put 80 grams of butter and melt it in the microwave.

Step 12

Into the melted butter add flour, one egg and salt. Start mixing while adding water bit by bit. You should get a thick but a bit runny dough. Very sticky.

Step 13

Use a dumpling maker to press the dough through it into boilin salted water. Stir and cook for no more than 5 minutes.

Step 14

Strain the dumplings and wash them with cold water immediately otherwise they will all stick together into one massive lump of dough. Put them in a bowl and optionally you can pour some melted butter over them.

Step 15

Serve the dish over dumplings and garnish with finely chopped fresh parsley.