Chicken with Paprika-Sour Cream Sauce
Paprikahühner. Chicken and onions cooked gently in butter so neither browns, then simmered in broth and finished with sour cream. Came to Germany via Hungary and Austria and stayed. From The German Cookbook (Mimi Sheraton).
Ingredients
- 2 chickens, broilers or fryers
- Salt
- ½ cup butter
- 1 large onion, minced
- 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 1 cup sour cream
Instructions
Cut the chickens into serving pieces and dry them thoroughly with paper towel. Sprinkle lightly all over with salt.
Heat the butter in a large deep skillet that has a cover. When it is hot and bubbling, add the onion and sauté slowly until very soft but still pale yellow. The onions should melt, not brown. If they brown, throw them out and start again — browned onion ruins the delicate flavor of the sauce.
Add the chicken and sauté slowly, turning often, until the pieces are bright yellow on all sides. Do not let them brown.
Sprinkle with the paprika and stir through the onions and chicken until every piece is coated. Sauté 3 or 4 minutes more.
Add the broth, bring to a boil, cover, reduce the heat, and simmer until the chicken is done, 30 to 35 minutes. Check as it goes and add more stock if the pan runs dry.
Move the chicken to a heated platter. Blend the flour into the sour cream and stir it into the sauce until smoothly thickened.
Return the chicken, bring the sauce to a boil, then drop to a slow simmer 5 to 10 minutes. Check the seasoning and serve with noodles or spätzle.
Notes
Nothing browns in this dish. That is the whole discipline of it — the sauce is supposed to stay pale gold, not turn into a fond-based gravy.
For a light tomato note, use 1 cup tomato juice and 1 cup chicken stock in place of the 2 cups stock.
For a sharper version, common in Germany: use bacon fat instead of butter, add 1 teaspoon vinegar right after the paprika and before the liquid, and use water instead of stock.
For squab, split the birds and cook the same way — they are done in about 25 minutes.
Photo: Sumit Surai, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.