Chicken Paprikash - Hungarian Chicken Stew - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with chicken pepper cosh that's right after many many requests i'm excited to be sharing what is my second favorite hungarian dish of all time okay goulash would be first although it's pretty close to a tie and i really love making anything hungarian since the recipes tend to be simple and easy to make as well as always comforting and delicious plus the names are never not fun to say so with that let's go ahead and get started by generously seasoning our chicken with kosher salt and for this my favorite cut would be the bone-in skin on chicken thigh alright dark meat just always works better in braised or stewed dishes plus all these pieces are going to cook in the same amount of time versus trying to cook the breasts along with the thighs and legs where we have to worry about the white meat drying out before the dark meat gets forked under but having said that pretty much any chicken parts will work and then what we'll do once that's been thoughtfully seasoned is brown it very well starting with the skin side down over high heat and a little bit of oil and i'm using olive oil but regular vegetable oil will work and i should mention traditionally this is done in lard so if you have some lard laying around use that but anyway we'll sear that skin side on high heat for about five minutes or so at which point we'll flip it over and give the other side a few minutes and above and beyond getting a little bit of color on the chicken we are mostly doing this to render some of that fat from under the skin not only to improve the texture but we're also going to cook the rest of our ingredients in that fat speaking of which once that second side has been browned a little we'll go ahead and remove that tube plate and reserve it until needed and we should also turn off the heat and we should be left with a fair amount of that chicken fat in the pan and if it looks like you have a ton like i do we could spoon out a few tablespoons so it's not so much and maybe save that to fry some potatoes or dumplings in so you'll have to be the judge of that but i did remove a little bit and then what we'll do is add our diced onions to this pan along with a nice big pinch of salt and we'll set our heat to medium and we will cook these onions stirring occasionally until they soften and sweeten up and start to turn a little bit golden and then once that happens we'll go ahead and toss in our minced garlic along with a couple tablespoons of tomato paste which as you can see i'm squeezing in with total disregard for ingredient amount accuracy but anyway that's just how these kind of recipes are all right just use the force and then we will also at this point add some flour and we'll give everything a stir and then cook this for about three or four minutes to form what is basically a tomato roux or as we call in the business a true and not only are we cooking the flour a little bit which is what's gonna thicken our sauce but we're also sort of toasting that tomato paste onto the bottom of the pan which is gonna intensify and deepen the flavor not to mention the color so like i said we'll just give that about three or four minutes at which point it should probably look something like this and then once we're happy with that we'll go ahead and stop and add our seasoning which will include some salt as well as some freshly ground black pepper followed by the star of the show our paprika and i like to do two kinds okay a little touch of smoked paprika followed by a whole bunch of regular sweet paprika and once all that's in there we'll go ahead and stir that and cook that for about a minute and if you can get it you definitely want to use hungarian paprika for you know super obvious reasons but if you can use any paprika you can find and this will still be very very delicious and that's it once that's been stirred in and cook for about a minute we'll go ahead and add our chicken broth and we will also raise our heat to high and bring this up to a simmer and as we stir this that broth is going to release all that beautiful caramelized goodness from the bottom of the pan which yes it's called the fond and once that's been stirred into the broth as it comes up to a simmer it should thicken up noticeably and then what we'll do once our sauce is simmering let's go ahead and add our chicken thighs back in and as we do that i think we should give him a little toss in the sauce and who knows if that really makes any difference but it sure feels right and at this point we'll reduce our heat to medium-low and of course don't forget to add back in those accumulated juices from the plate or if those get thrown away we're going to have a problem you and me and then here's the plan what we'll do is cover this and cook it on medium low for about 45 minutes to an hour or until it's definitely fork tender and i probably should have filmed it and i'm not sure why i didn't but during that cooking time it's not a bad idea to take a spoon and baste the chicken as it cooks or i guess if you want you could flip them over halfway through but spooning sauce over meat is pretty fun so i'm a baster but anyway about 45 minutes to an hour later we'll go ahead and uncover these and check to see if they're done and we'll poke these with a fork and if it goes in easily with very little effort our chicken is done which means we'll remove that and reserve it on a plate while we move on to finish our sauce and by the way if you want to go further and actually simmer this longer until the chicken's like falling off the bone feel free i mean you are after all the george washington of when your pepper cash is done but for me fork tender is just right in any event let's go ahead and finish our sauce and the first step for that is technically optional and that would be skimming some of this fat off the top all right i have a feeling my hungarian friends don't think this is the best idea but i do tend to skim off about 75 of it okay so i do leave some since chicken fat is delicious and then once that's been accomplished we can go ahead and pour in our heavy cream along with some full fat sour cream then we'll take a whisk and mix that until it's fully incorporated and yes i did say full fat sour cream all right if you use a reduced fat sour cream here it's going to separate and curdle and not look good at all so please i beg you use the highest quality fattiest sour cream you can find and then what we'll do is wait for this to come back to the simmer at which point we'll add our chicken back in along with of course i need the accumulated juices which we never ever waste okay i feel like we've had this talk before and that's it to finish this off all we need to do is simmer this long enough so our chickens heat it through and while that's happening i encourage lots of basting and obviously we're also going to want to taste it for seasoning and that's it once we're happy with how it looks feels and tastes we will pull that off the heat and dollop it here and there with some sour cream and possibly garnish it with some freshly chopped herbs like parsley or dill or in my case some chives which i think pair perfectly and that's it my take on chicken pepperonkash is ready to enjoy which for now i'm gonna do right in this pan because it was looking and smelling too good to resist so i had to cut in and take a bite and it was everything i wanted and more just an absolutely stellar stewed chicken dish all right we have those beautiful bittersweet notes from the paprika balanced beautifully by that rich sour cream just so satisfying and comforting i really could not have been happier with how this came out if only i could work a fork and knife on camera i mean seriously it should probably take less than 20 seconds to cut and eat a bite but anyway i think i was a little distracted because i didn't have time to make hungarian egg noodle dumplings which are called no goodly and instead plate it up with some buttered and herb corkscrew pasta which really is still a very effective pairing it's just not quite the same as enjoying it with those little special-like dumplings but i do have leftovers so don't be surprised if you see my attempt at those dumplings in the future but anyway the good news is this chicken is so delicious and that sauce is so amazing you can serve this on anything and i think you're going to be thrilled which is why no matter what you decide to pair with yours i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 384,069

Rating: 4.9564347 out of 5

Keywords: Chicken, Paprikash, Hungarian, recipe, stew, easy, simple, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking

Id: _U6Eb-PoTNo

Length: 8min 10sec (490 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Sadams90]

You are, after all, the Daniel Tosh of your chicken paprikash

[u/Sue_Dohnim]

I was like, I could make this! This is simple. And it looks ah-MAY-zing!

[u/bradlovesbacon]

Spirits lifted.

[u/josephx24]

My people are from Romania and not Hungary, but this is a dish I grew up with. I like it with white rice instead of noodles.

[u/PM_ME_UR_DIET_TIPS]

I swear he'd already done this...

[u/birding954]

I made this. It was really good, with a very nice unique flavor. I ate it with mashed potatoes as the side. I was skeptical of 1/4 cup of paprika which sounded nuts lol.