Tasty Tuesday with Cory - Chicken Paprikash!

Hello there friends. Today's recipe is a traditional one handed down from my mom's side of the family from Hungary. It's a favorite of my husband’s family too - CHICKEN PAPRIKASH!

There's a million ways to make it and make it your own. My mother in law uses strictly mushrooms. My mother adds canned diced tomatoes to hers. I'm somewhere in-between. However, you like it's a GREAT comfort food dish to have at a large gathering!

I do have a few tips to make sure that your Chicken Paprikash is full flavored. DON'T cut corners. This is a very simple, few ingredient dish so make sure you have good FRESH ingredients on hand. It's also a full fat and calorie dish so please no weird calorie saving ingredients like no fat/low fat sour cream (blah gross).

Also, please don't skimp on the time the chicken braises on the bone - 45 min is key to extract a good flavor for your sauce.

Ok, let’s get this started. I use bone-in/skin on chicken about 8-12 pieces as it's the STAR of the dish. I like dark meat such as, thighs or drumsticks, as these pieces give the sauce the chicken flavor the sauce needs. If you have people that enjoy WHITE meat by all means add it to the sauce later. I also use chicken stock canned or I use homemade. Not everyone has time to make stock from scratch but, if you can you'll increase yumminess 1000x over. If not it's still damn good!

Finally, good quality paprika! I use the only one that I know and it is the one in the RED tin. Not the hot, just the regular Hungarian paprika, stored in the fridge so it doesn't get wormy*.

In a large high skillet or Dutch oven, sauté in a little butter and olive oil till soft mushrooms and a large sweet onion sliced into thin strips. I use at least a pound of regular button mushrooms. TRANSFER into bowl for later.

Then BROWN chicken pieces on all sides. ADD 2-3 cups of chicken stock to the pan and let simmer for about 40-45 minutes. This is KEY to extract the good chicken flavor from the meat. You can add a bouillon** but, you don't want to rush this step. Once again GRANDMA says so you just DO IT! When the meat is nice and soft you can take the meat off the bones and discard bones and skin (if you are a fataphobe you can skim the sauce too).

Once you have your sauce, thicken it with a ROUX I take some of the broth and mix in a couple tablespoons of flour or cornstarch to thicken and add to broth and add mushrooms and onions, let it simmer to thicken maybe 5-10 minutes and turn down. I like the KNORR flavor concentrate packs (chicken) so I would probably add one of those and add the FULL FAT sour cream - YUMMY.

When it's thoroughly mixed add a few tablespoons of paprika. Some people like their sauce more orangey. Mine is browner like gravy. Do what feels right for your taste. I serve over noodles or my kid’s favorite, homemade spätzle. You can buy it, too.

Once again there are 100 different variations of this recipe. Feel free to add or omit the following: celery, different mushrooms, tomatoes, hot peppers, onions, etc.

Happy Cooking.

* I've NEVER seen worms in paprika I just know my Grandmother told me to store it in the fridge. Nobody goes against Grandma so just DO IT!
** I'm not really sure what my grandmother would say about that.