Csirke Paprikas Recipe
Csirke paprikas is one of the delicious dishes of Hungarian cuisine. Although it looks like an ordinary chicken dish with tomato sauce, it has a great smell and taste. Csirke means chicken, paprika means pepper, so csirke paprikas means chicken with peppers. As it can be understood, the ingredients that give the base of the flavor of the dish are pepper and chicken. But the dish gets its real flavor from sour cream, which is the combiner of these two flavors.
Do not give up on the recipe immediately after seeing the sour cream. If you do not have access to sour cream where you live, you can use yogurt, which is the best alternative to sour cream. I did so. I made a few more changes to the recipe. It is usually made using lard, I used olive oil instead.
Another change I made was in the chicken selection. It is generally used by dividing the chicken thigh from the drumstick part, I only used chicken drumsticks because I did not want to deal with this cutting process.
One of the main flavors of the recipe, which gives its name to the recipe, is paprika. Therefore, the amount is quite large. So yes, you are not reading wrong, the recipe calls for two heaped tablespoons (yes, tablespoons, not teaspoons) of paprika (red sweet ground dried pepper). Hungarian pepper, known as the charliston pepper in Turkey, is used as green pepper. Since we don't have it here in Spain, I used Italian pepper, which is called village pepper in Turkey.
The sauce is incredibly delicious. So much so that even if it is not in this recipe, I will often make the sauce as pasta sauce from now on. The paprika + yoghurt mixture gives the sauce this tremendous flavor. Yogurt softens the pepper taste so much that the pepper turns into a very mild flavor without losing its main aroma.
There is a part of the recipe that you may not have seen before; making Nokedli. It can be summarized as a very simple homemade pasta. It is exactly the same as spaetzle in German cuisine, except for shape. Nokedli is shorter and thicker because it is poured with a grater, and spaetzle is longer because it is poured with tools with round holes. Although nokedli is an indispensable part of the recipe, just as we cannot think of dried beans without rice pilaf, csirke paprikas cannot be thought of without nokedli or can only be considered with certain dietary restrictions.
The seasoning of the dish is normally added to the dish without processing it with the blender. Since I wanted to get a perfectly smooth consistency, I first processed it with the blender. Of course, when you use light-colored hungarian peppers in food, it prevents the peppers from being noticed in the water, but dark-colored Italian peppers spoil the smoothness of the sauce.
While serving the meal, you can drizzle some whipped yogurt on top, but of course it's not necessary.
Enjoy the recipe...
Csirke Paprikas Recipe with Video
Ingredients
- 8 chicken drumsticks,
- 1 onion,
- 1 green pepper,
- 1 tomato,
- 1 clove of garlic,
- 2 heaped tablespoons of paprika,
- Salt,
- 5-6 tablespoons of olive oil.
For her dressing;
- 1 cup of plain yogurt,
- 1 tablespoon of flour.
For Nokedli;
- 2 eggs,
- 3/4 cup of water at room temperature,
- 2 cups of flour,
- Salt.
- Water to boil the nokedli,
- 1 tablespoon of butter.
Preparation
- Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan,
- Place the drumsticks in the oil and fry them, turning them occasionally, until they are lightly browned,
- Remove the chickens from the oil,
- Add chopped onion to the same oil and stir fry until soft,
- Add the finely chopped pepper and fry it until it softens,
- Add the ground pepper and crushed garlic and mix,
- Add the chopped tomatoes and fry until soft,
- Add the chickens back and add enough hot water to cover them,
- Close the lid and cook until the chicken softens completely,
- Remove the chickens,
- Process the broth with a blender until it has a smooth consistency,
- Whisk the flour and yoghurt in a separate bowl for its dressing,
- Add the mixture to the pot little by little and whisk,
- Cook, stirring constantly, until thickens,
- Add salt and mix,
- Add the chickens, mix and boil one more time and turn off the heat,
- For Nokedli, beat eggs, water and salt in a bowl,
- Add the flour little by little and whisk,
- Boil 1 liter of water in a pot,
- Add salt and mix,
- Put the nokedli dough piece by piece on the flat part of a grater, press it with a spatula and drop it into the boiling water (stir in between),
- After all the dough is finished, melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan while nokedli is boiling,
- Strain the nokedli and take into the pan and mix until it is all covered in butter and remove from the heat,
- Divide the nokedli on the serving plates,
- Put chicken and broth next to it,
- You can serve with yogurt and/or chopped parsley.
Enjoy the recipe...