Paprikás csirke (Chicken paprikás)

I've just eaten my usual Sunday lunch with my family. In Hungary, lunch at 12 a.m. is the main meal. Today, my mom cooked chicken paprikás, so I thought that I will share the recipe with you. It's possible that you won't be able to prepare the noodle for the chicken, because you can't find the necessary device in your country. Well, I'll give you a tip in the section "Notes from the writer" about how to solve this problem. Let's start our journey!


Ingredients for the chicken

8 pieces of chicken wings (csirkeszárny)
1 big onion (vöröshagyma)

1 tablespoon flour (liszt)

200 ml (6,76 fl oz) sour cream (tejföl)

3 tablespoon cooking oil (olaj)

1 green pepper (zöldpaprika)

1 tomato (paradicsom)

1 coffee-spoon ground red pepper (pirospaprika por)

Ingredients for the noodle

50 dkg (17,6 oz) flour (liszt)

3 eggs (tojás)

salt (só)

water (víz)

a special device which you can see on the picture

How to become master of the Hungarian kitchen #6

First, clean the chicken wings and salt them. Now, cut the onion into little pieces and fry it in the cooking oil. Add the ground red pepper to the onion, and then come the chicken wings. Put 2 dl water and a little salt in the sauce. Cut the green pepper and the tomato into pieces and add them to the chicken. Cover the saucepan with a lid and cook it (stew it) for about an hour. About every five minutes stir it slowly, so the chicken wings won't fall apart. Keep adding water until the wings are covered. Without water, your chicken wings would burn. If the chicken is soft enough, put only the chicken wings in a bowl and set it aside for a while.

Mix the sour cream and the one tablespoon flour together (it mustn't be lumpy) and add the mixture to the sauce, so you get the gravy for the chicken. Boil this gravy and then put the chicken wings back to the saucepan. Cook it for a few minutes in order to mix all of the ingredients. If it's ready, put it away till you are preparing the noodles.

How to prepare the noodle

It's not as difficult as it looks like. Mix the flour with the egg and a little salt. Add water to the mixture, so it won't be either soft or hard. Put 1 liter (33,8 fl oz) of water in a pot with a little salt and now cover it with the special noodle maker (see above). Now add a little piece of the mixture to the grater and slowly move it on the noodle maker back and forth. Stir it a little once in the water, so it won't stick to the bottom. The noodle is ready when it floats on the top of the water. When you take the noodles out from the water, drain them. Here is a tip from my mom: warm a little cooking oil in a pan, and when the noodles are ready, put them into the warm oil, so they won't stick together. Now that you made your first Hungarian noodles, put them on a plate and serve it with the chicken. Jó étvágyat!

Notes from the writer

If you are in Hungary and you intend to buy a noodle grater, go to a simple supermarket. Usually they sell it, too. In the case that you don't live in Hungary and don't have an opportunity to find it, you can prepare this meal with simple pasta that consist of small pieces. You won't get the same taste, but it's good that way, too. Also, if you don't like chicken wings, you can prepare this meal with any parts of the chicken that you like.