Amazing Hungarian Chicken Paprikash With Dumplings

Danny P's Note:

This recipe has been passed down in my Hungarian family for generations and perfected. I now use boneless chicken despite bone-in being the tradition. I think it makes it a little more friendly without losing any taste.

• Total Time: 50 mins
• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 40 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 8

For chicken and sauce

• 1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 -2 tablespoon oil
• 4 tablespoons paprika (Hungarian sweet is preferrable, yes, you can taste the difference. Substitute 1 tbsp with half-sharp)
• 3 tablespoons onion powder
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 32 ounces chicken broth
• 10 ounces sour cream
• 2 1/4 cups water
• 3/4 cup flour

For the dumplings

• 6 eggs
• 4 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Set a large pot of water on to boil for the dumplings.
2. De-fat, and tenderize chicken. Cut into bite-sized pieces. With oil, brown chicken in a large pan on medium-high heat (6-10 min).
3. Add paprika, onion powder, salt, pepper, and chicken broth to the chicken in the pan. Stir them to mix. Bring to a boil and then lower heat to simmer and put a lid on and let simmer for 25 minute.
4. In a container with a lid (tupperware is good) mix water, flour and sour cream for the chicken. Shaking the mixture aggressively is the best way to ensure a smooth mix. Set aside mixture for later.
5. While chicken is simmering, mix all ingredients - eggs, flour, water, and salt - for the dumplings together in a mixing bowl. It should be a pretty thick, dry mix when you are done. If it's too gooey, add small amounts of flour until it is more dry.
6. With water boiling, turn down the heat to low. Tip the mixing bowl until the dumpling dough rests at the edge. Using a dull knife (butter knife), slice the dough from the lip of the bowl into small blobs and into the pot. Continue this process until all of the dough has been used. This process takes about 3-5 minute Dipping the knife occasionally into the boiling water will prevent dough from sticking to it.
7. Raise heat and boil dumplings for another 5-6 min or so.
8. Meanwhile, the chicken should be about done simmering. Using a spoon, draw some of the chicken sauce and put it into the sour cream/flour/water mixture that you had set aside. This is important to prevent sour cream from curdling. Put the lid on and shake the mixture once more. There should be no flour or sour cream chunks in the mixture.
9. Finally, stir the mixture into the chicken pan. Mix until consistent. Bring the sauce to a boil stirring occasionally for sauce to thicken.
10. Drain the water from the dumplings.
11. Usually, chicken and sauce are served on top of the dumplings.

Reviews

[Chefbs]

My wife tried to surprise me with one of my favorite Hungarian dishes of all time. When I came home I had questioned this recipe big time and found this particular recipe a bit bland, pale and unexciting!!! I did not want to throw it away and the Chinese restaurant was closed due to the holiday. Thank God I am a chef and know how to fix recipes like this one. I had to start out by caramelizing onions and adding more Hungarian paprika paste. It took quite a bit of salt and fresh ground pepper to bring it to life. A bit more chicken stock and sour cream to thin it out a
little so that it did not have that wall paper consistency. I am not trying to be mean or rude but I almost had to remake the whole dish over to make it palatable.

[kimbellow]

I am also part Hungarian and a recipe much like this one was passed down in my family as well. In fact its the ONLY recipe passed down. Chicken Paprikash has been my favorite comfort dish since I was a child. this is the only recipe i know by heart but i wanted to see if there were any better ways to prepare it. (such as your mixing the sour cream separately was brilliant) We make our Dumplings slightly different though. Actually they are more like dumpling noodles. instead of making it dry ours calls for the mixture to be slightly runny (and I like to add a little paprika to the mixture as an extra kick!) then instead of a knife use a spoon to scoop the dough into the boiling water. And only use I/3 of the spoon (the side) and get the dough into the water by knocking the spoon on the edge of the pot and then continuing on to the next. (yes it can be time consuming but the efforts are worth it) make sure to have a straining spoon handy and a cassorole dish with a dab of butter to keep the dumpling noodles from sticking. As you continue one by one spooning the mixture in the pot, some of the dumplings should be rising to the surface so periodically scoup them out with the straining spoon and dump them in the cassirole dish. They should resemble slightly half-moon shaped pieces of chewed up gum (I know that sounds gross but that's the best description I've got). Continue scooping the dough untill its done. This takes a while and this is usually when my grandmother employed my help when I was young and how I learned to make this dish better than anyone in my family including her. I am happy to know there is someone else out there who was raised on this amazing and rare dish! Tonight for dinner I'm going to try it your way... :) Thank you!

[Sky Valley Cook]

This was good and my husband really liked it. The suggestion of dipping the knife into the hot water prior to scraping the dough made scraping a lot easier. I found I had to add a lot more flour to the dumpling recipe, but they turned out good. Thank you for sharing!