Paprikás

There is a basic triumvirate of Hungarian cookery. The fözelék, the pörkölt and the paprikás. Each method can be altered slightly to suit the main ingredient you have in abundance. The fözelék is vegetable or pulse based – I’ve written about it on here – and doesn’t really translate other than as a vegetable pottage, made by thickening the cooking liquor of your vegetable with flour and lard and seasoning with vinegar, sugar, garlic etc to add piquancy and flavour. The pörkölt is what is more commonly thought of as the goulash (what we call gulyás is a hearty meat and potato soup not a stew), in other words a slow braised meat centred dish, and can be beef, chicken, carp, duck, goose, pork or mutton. The word pörkölt means “singed” and refers to the method of browning the meat before adding any liquid. It shouldn’t be too wet.

So what’s a paprikás? It’s a pörkölt but with added cream, either sweet or obviously the preferred option of sour, with flour to thicken a much wetter dish. The sauce is kind of the point of a paprikás. My sister flirted with vegetarianism for a while but she always made an exception for the paprikás sauce even if she chose not to have the accompanying animal protein. Traditionally a paprikás is served with nokedli or galuska – little egg dumplings similar to the Germanic spätzle – and the sauce soaking into these little nuggets of joy is part of what makes this dish special. The final flourish? Paprikás is usually also accompanied by a salad, made Hungarian style by lightly pickling thinly sliced cucumbers, onions, peppers or tomatoes in a sweet/ sour vinaigrette. This cuts through the richness of the paprikás and adds a very delicious piquancy.

My family always made chicken paprikás but as with a pörkölt, you can also make it with fish. Carp being hard to come by in the UK I’d recommend something meaty like cod or hake. I could also imagine it working well with lamb but haven’t as yet tried it. The other thing you must bear in mind ingredient wise refers to the peppers we use in Hungary. These are not the rotund Dutch ones, gleaming in their traffic light colours of green, yellow and red. No, we have the jade, pale green, almost yellow Turkish style peppers – long and pointed and in Hungary at any rate, with a padron pepper risk of getting the odd “hot” one. Not always easy to find, but I do source them in shops that specialise in middle eastern ingredients. If that’s not an option for you, use the red bell peppers, not the green ones as they will be too bitter.

Chicken Paprikás Antal style

Serves 4 to 6 depending upon greed

1 chicken – ideally purchased from your butcher who will kindly chop it up for you into 6 to 8 pieces. Alternatively, use chicken legs – but on the bone – adds to the flavour and will also prevent the chicken from disintegrating during the slow cooking process.

2 large Spanish onions, halved and sliced thinly into a tangle of half moons

2 peppers – red bell or jade Turkish. Deseed and slice thinly.

Chicken stock, 1 litre.

Lard – 2 tablespoons

Plain flour – 2 tablespoons

Hungarian Paprika – 4 tablespoons

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

300ml sour cream

Find yourself a large casserole that can go on the hob and in the oven with a lid. Alternatively, a large frying pan. Melt the lard and season the chicken pieces. Add to the pan, skin side down and cook for 5 minutes or so until the skin has browned. Remove from pan and set aside whilst you deal with the vegetables. Cook onions on a low heat til softened and translucent – this always takes longer than you think so allow a good 20 minutes for this stage. Add the sliced peppers and cook for another 10 minutes. Add the paprika, stir very well and do not allow to burn. Re introduce chicken to the pan, and pour over the chicken stock. Bring to a gentle simmer, then cover and put in the oven at 160C for an hour. After an hour, remove the chicken pieces to a plate – at this point you can remove the meat from the bone if folk are squeamish and also the skin if not keen – all the amazing flavours have gone into the sauce.

Mix the flour into the sour cream – stir it very well and then use a couple of tablespoons of the hot sauce to mix into it and slacken it before you pour it all into the sauce and bring to a gentle boil, stirring all the time to ensure no lumps. Let it cook for about 10 minutes to ensure the flour has cooked out and the sauce has thickened. Taste the sauce and add seasoning as you like. Reintroduce the chicken pieces, turning well in the sauce and then serve, spooning over nokedli or flat tagliatelle pasta. Mashed potatoes also work well. Anything to mop the sauce with! Try it with the cucumber salad I wrote about elsewhere on this blog – https://finom.home.blog/2019/05/14/cucumber-salad/