I am well aware that, in addition to the football topic, Hungarian food with paprika can also start a war in the domestic internet space. Of course I have no such intention. That's why I'm trying to be more professional in defining and describing a dish that so many of us love and in so many different ways that it's hard to agree on the name alone. This is chicken with paprika.
The object of my childhood, rural, domestic chicken cooking experience was what my maternal grandmother called chicken paprikash, while my paternal grandparents, who lived a hundred and fifty kilometres away, called paprika chicken. By the way, from a culinary point of view, it was the same dish, and my culinary studies tell me that neither name was technically correct, since the term paprika is used for dishes where the paprika sauce is practically tamed into a sauce by enriching it with cream or sour cream (boiling).
So the recipe I'm sharing is actually stewed chicken with sour cream and dumplings. Believe me, it's completely different not only in character but also in taste from a stew than a paprika stew, even if the fresh snow-white sour cream is added to the gravy afterwards, not to mention the more pronounced flavour of the meat and other ingredients. A stew is more vibrant, more rhapsodic, one might say, than a French stew, uniform and refined.
I am well aware that there are a lot of variations in stew, not only in the seasoning, but also in the order and the technological processes.
Let's get started!
I fry finely chopped smoked bacon. Over a low heat, so that the bacon doesn't burn but rather melts.
Over the same low heat, sauté the chopped red onion and much less purple onion. I almost make onion soup (quite a long time: 20-25 minutes).
Place the washed and de-feathered (scorched) pieces of skinless chicken in the pot, turn on the heat and brown carefully, turning them with a spatula. Searing is essential from any stew - not to be confused with the burnt, bitter taste.
Before it bites, I season it in a mortar with salt and several types of paprika, crushed cumin seeds and garlic. I add the diced whole peppers - tomatoes are not needed, the right acidity is provided by wine. When the seasoning salt has dissolved in the fat, I turn the heat up high under the pot, pour in the red wine, and continue to sprinkle the top with red paprika.
As soon as the wine has cooked down, I add a little lukewarm water and a few celery cubes, or I continue cooking with the stock. Even with larger pieces of chicken, it is not possible to have a continuous, intermittent cooking and simmering process like with beef, for example, to avoid falling apart, so when the first juice is finished and really just simmering, I carefully turn it over and pour it back in just enough to cover it, not turning it over again. Then I taste and add salt and seasoning if needed. I remove the lid at the very end, otherwise it will evaporate too quickly.
When the fork easily penetrates the meat of the thighs and the gravy is not watery, the chicken stew is ready.
Ingredients (for 6 people) :
25 dkg smoked bacon
2 whole chickens, chopped or
6 lower thighs, 6 wings, a chopped tail, neck, scraper
4 heads of onion
2 heads of purple onion
20 dkg celery (tuber)
1 pepper, whole
6 cloves garlic
salt
3 teaspoons cumin seeds
5 tablespoons of paprika
2 dl (fork) red wine
Serve on a preheated porcelain plate with homemade dumplings (we call them noodles) and room temperature sour cream. For this spicy Hungarian dish, I also recommend the more characterful dry red wines.
Enjoy your meal!#
-Pupa-
