When I started this blog it was with the intention of making it about FOOD—easy to prepare, great food. Like this:
This is a story about how this dish made me a hero with my partner’s Mom—it is so easy to prepare and it can make you a hero, too!
We recently made a long-delayed trip to Austria to celebrate Mom’s 90th birthday. Previous trips had followed a routine: meet Mom and her partner at a downtown Wels restaurant for a noonish meal (where the constants were beer and cake), then return to Mom’s apartment to play cards and visit (with more beer and snacks). My partner and I would then walk from the apartment to the lovely Boutique Hotel Hauser. In the four years since we had last been to Wels, Mom had slowed down quite a bit and the daily restaurant routine was quickly wearing her out. Seeing this, I offered to make a meal at the apartment and (somewhat to my surprise) Mom agreed to my proposal to take over her kitchen for an afternoon.
I knew I had to make something easy, tasty, and not too exotic for my Mom and her partner’s palates, and chicken paprikash was the obvious choice. Start to table this recipe takes an hour to prepare.
For the four of us, these were the ingredients:
About 3 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs
3 small onions (or 1 large)
1 large red pepper
1/4 Cup sweet paprika
2 Cups chicken stock
about 1/2 C robust red wine
1 Cup sour cream
About 3 tablespoons flour
Salt and pepper taste
Some “sharp” (or hot!) paprika to taste—1/4 teaspoon for Mom
Noodles (in this case short egg noodles)
Now, I have made this recipe countless times, and the type of chicken has varied from parting up a whole chicken to using skin-on breasts to bone-in skin-on thighs and other combinations. The dish will work with any of them, but skinless boneless thighs offer the best combination of flavor and eating ease so they have become my preference. The wine is optional but does give the sauce some depth. At home, I use about a teaspoon of hot smoked paprika but I like it spicy! For the stock, I sometimes have homemade at hand which is a preference, but a quick and easy cheat is either Better than Boullion or Knorr’s reduced stock which is what I used here. I recommend the full-fat sour cream. For the noodles—anything goes and I used what I had on hand. My preference for this dish: German dried spaetzle noodles like these really soak in the sauce! You can (and I have) served this dish over rice also and it works, too.
Method
Get the stock ready (warm it up in a small pot) and take the sour cream out of the fridge—you will be warming it up gradually with the sauce before combining it and it will help to get it started.
Combine the flour, salt, and pepper (I sometimes add a bit of paprika) and dredge the chicken in it while a large pot is on med/high heat with a knob of butter and a tablespoon or two of good-quality oil. (Oil plus butter means the butter is less likely to burn).
If your pot is large enough you can brown all of the chicken at once but otherwise do it in two batches. If the pan is hot 3-4 minutes per side will be sufficient. Once browned, remove the chicken to a plate.
While the chicken is browning, prep the onion and red pepper.
And when the chicken has been browned, add the onion and red pepper and turn the heat down to med/low. Cover the pot and let the veggies soften for about 10 minutes, stirring halfway through. When done, take the lid off, stir the onion-peppers mixture, and notice when the onions have a bit of color (have begun to carmelize). Add the paprika and stir in for about 30-60 seconds only (don’t let the paprika burn!), and add the red wine if you are using it. Let the alcohol evaporate before adding the stock, or if you are not using the wine just add the stock. This is what you have so far:
Bring the heat up to high to get the sauce bubbling, then add back the chicken and any juices on the plate. Turn the heat down but keep the sauce bubbling and cover. Set the timer for 20 minutes. When it goes off, get the pot of water for the noodles on the stove and add salt when it is close to boiling. The chicken needs about 30 minutes in the pot to be cooked but can go longer without difficulty—the next bit depends on how long it will take for your noodles (or rice) to cook.
When the noodles go in the pot, add the sour cream into the pot used to warm the stock and whisk in some of the leftover dredging flour. Add in ladles of sauce from the chicken to warm up the sour cream, and whisk—keep doing this until the sour cream mixture is close to the temperature of the sauce with the chicken, and add it. Keep the chicken happily bubbling—the sauce will thicken with the addition of the sour cream mixture. Taste the sauce and adjust if necessary with salt/pepper.
When the noodles are done, simply drain, plate, and add the chicken and sauce. Serve with some of that wine you used (if you did) a simple side salad, and some fresh bread.
I only wish I had taken a pic of my Mom’s partner licking his plate!
I guarantee this dish will make you a hero, too!
(I can’t resist adding a bit about the Hauser Hotel. It is a fabulous place to stay, and it has these self-service bar fridges. There is a price list, take what you want and pay into the box (you can even make change there).
I'm starting it right now... I'll let you know how it turns out. I would have loved to see a finished product picture in the post like the one you did with the sourdough 100yr old bread recipe. Just a thought.
Similar to a beef stroganoff, with the obvious meat difference. My family loves my stroganoff, but I have a couple who are anti-mushroom. Mostly, they are ok with me mincing the 'shrooms, since it is the texture they don't like. But, I am looking for something similar that everyone will like. Gonna try this next. I use homestyle egg noodles, as per my German grandmother, so I will probably serve this with the same. Thanks for this delicious looking recipe!