#paprikahendl

[evolutionsbedingt]

The Mystery of Paprikahendl (which isn't all that mysterious)

So, since a friend of mine sent the (as far as I can tell) most commonly shared Paprikahendl recipe to me and I ended up quite confused about several steps in the preparation, I decided to have a look for myself and... Dear people, did you forget to check in German?? This is staple food in Austria and the amount of recipes I found with a single search makes me question why it ever was such a ✨mystery✨ in the first year of Dracula Daily. (Even my GDR cookbook has a recipe for it, like, come on.)

Anyway. Since that recipe mentioned above is not very good, I found you a better one and what's more: It comes with a brief history of Paprikahendl and a lengthy discussion of the ingredients. You'll find the translation of the (for Dracula fans) important bits below the cut.

Translation of the Recipe:

1 chicken

salt

lard

650g / 1.4lbs onion

60g / 2.12oz sweet paprika

knife-tip (or to taste) spicy paprika

650ml / 2 ½ cups chicken broth

80ml / 1/3 cup of lean sour cream or Greek yoghurt [t/n: Important! Sauerrahm has only 10% fat so it’s not equivalent with normal US-American sour cream!]

lemon zest

(optional, for serving) rosemary twig

Carve the chicken: Cut off the legs and divide into upper and lower thighs, cut the breast from the carcass and halve, detach the wings and separate at the joint. Salt well.

Dice or slice the onion. No need to overdo it, they will be puréed later anyway.

Melt the lard in a heavy-bottomed pan. Add the onion, season well with salt[, cover with lid] and let soften [on low heat], but don't let it take on too much colour. Add the paprika and fry briefly, then slowly pour in the soup. Add the legs, wings and carcass. Save the breasts for later.

Cover and simmer over a low heat for about 40 minutes. Then place the breasts in the hot sauce and cook gently for a further ten minutes with the lid on until they are just cooked through and still a little pink. Alternatively, keep for another dish, such as a soup.

Remove from the heat, carefully lift out the pieces of meat and discard the carcass (and pick off and eat the oysters and other tasty bits beforehand, if they are still attached).

[t/n: Let the sauce cool off. Unless you'd like to paint your kitchen afterwards.] Stir in the sour cream and purée the sauce with a blender until smooth.

Return to the pan and add salt and lemon zest to flavour. Put the chicken pieces back in, leave to warm briefly if necessary and serve with sour cream nockerl. [t/n: These are likely the Flour Dumplings mentioned in the og recipe. Personally, I prefer Spaetzle and it's never mentioned what Our Dear Friend Jonathan had with his Paprikahendl.]

History: (t/n: the author makes a strange remark about cultural appropriation. It seems he should look up that definition again.) Paprikahendl is an impressive example of how enriching and worthy of support cultural appropriation is. It is the noble, bourgeois Budapest version of a Hungarian shepherd's stew, which then really took off in Vienna.

Its grandfather is the gulyáshús of the Puszta, which has probably been stewed in open cauldrons since time immemorial and has been inextricably linked with paprika, the little man's pepper, since the early 19th century. When this popular dish became fashionable in the fine bourgeois kitchens of Budapest in the 1830s during an early ‘back to the roots’ and ‘country love’ hype, a form adapted to the urban upper class flavour quickly emerged: the paprikás. After all, real poverty rarely tastes well.

In contrast to goulash, it was not prepared with tough old puszta beef, but with expensive cuts of meat such as beef fillet or veal, or, if it was to be particularly noble, the most expensive of all farmed animals, chicken. To top it all off, it was further refined with cream or sour cream.

Shortly thereafter, the dish also reached the Austrian half of the empire. The first German recipe we were able to find comes from Anna Dorn's ‘Großes Musterkochbuch’, the fourth edition of which was published in Vienna in 1849 (that's just over 30 years after the first Hungarian [beef] goulash recipes and shows how quickly recipes travelled even then). Dorn calls it ‘paprika chickens’, a generous plural that I really like. The dish was obviously an instant hit. In the 170 years that followed, it was hardly missing from any Viennese cookery book.

In keeping with the nobility of paprika, the old recipes recommend using young chickens, but in keeping with its origins as a stew, the chickens are often still cooked whole. Over the decades, they are cut up more and more reliably, and the reference to young chickens is dropped, probably because old chickens are almost impossible to buy anyway. Otherwise, however, the basic features of the recipe have not changed since then.

Note on paprika: Incidentally, the first paprika was probably always hot. Like its cousin, the chilli, it conquered the world as a cheap substitute for pepper, and today, as then, it is true that bad food tastes better with spiciness. Paprika was therefore an instant success, especially among poor shepherds, but was viewed with scepticism by the rich people of Budapest. Early cookery books also expressly warn against using too much ‘Turkish pepper’. The sweet paprika as we know it was bred in the late 19th century. More on this in the search for the perfect goulash. (Link provided by translator. The linked article doesn't provide too much more information though.)

[lee-romee]

paprikahendl/chicken paprikash

1kg/2lb chicken thighs, skin on & bone-in

4tb butter

2 large onions, finely chopped

12 cloves garlic, minced

32oz chicken stock

240g yogurt

4tb flour

LOTS of paprika. Regular & hot Hungarian. Twice as much as you think you need. Then triple that

pepper & salt

majoram & chili powder

heat a large pan on medium heat

add oil & cook chicken for a few minutes on all sides, until browned, then set aside

add butter & sauté onions + garlic until golden/translucent & very, very cooked down --- can take about 20min

add in lota of paprika, mix, & repeat until very red & fragrant

season chicken & re-add. fry briefly

add stock, to just cover the chicken --- about 32oz, but xould be a bit less or more

simmer for 45min to 1.5hr

in a bowl, mix yogurt & flour. add spices, + hot liquid to temper it

remive the chicken & shred into pieces

add the yogurt to the pan & mix in thoroughly

add more seasonings & re-add chicken

serve over rice or noodles ♡

we've done noodles & rice, but prefer eating it with rice (pictures with rice above & with noodles below). there's a lot of room to play around with this recipe :)

[petermorwood]

Further to its brief mention in this post, the Paprikaente (Duck Paprikash) was a great success! And quite perky, too.

Indeed, almost "thirsty" as Mr Harker calls it, so by coincidence, or possibly by crafty shopping, that wine, also Hungarian, complements the dish very nicely.

Our recipe was an amalgamation of The Best Bits from several others, so @dduane will have to write it up, which means it'll probably get posted here next week.

Meanwhile, there's enough left for second helpings (it's VERY rich and servings were kept small), so...

I'm going to go have some more.

[merv606]

Meet Dracula’s Paprika Chicken: The Dish That’s Scary Good

Dracula is the stuff of legend—but his paprika chicken should also be known. 'Paprikahendl' or 'paprikash' is a traditional Hungarian stew t

[lykrir]

Mina's Paprikahendl

- original transilvanian recipe -

Hint: The garlic in this recipe may offer protection from potential vampire attacks. Therefore it would be prudent not to use it sparingly.

Mina's Paprikahendl

6 chicken legs (or one roast chicken) | 3 onions | 4 cloves of garlic | 3 colourful bell peppers | 2 tbsp tomato paste | 800g peeled tomatoes | chilli powder (spice level according to taste) | 100ml cream | 3 tsp sweet paprika | 3 tsp hot paprika | 2 tsp corn starch | 1 pinch of sugar | salt | pepper

Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees Celsius. Meanwhile peel onions and garlic and finely dice. Wash bell peppers, remove seeds and finely dice.

Wash chicken and dab dry. Sear in a cast iron pot. Add onions and bell peppers and briefly fry together. Then add garlic and fry for another two minutes.

Add tomato paste and peeled tomatoes. Add paprika, salt, pepper and sugar. Mix in chilli powder according to taste.

Close lid and braise in the oven for around two hours. Transfer to stove top and add cream. While stirring bring to a boil and bind with starch. Add salt, pepper and chilli according to taste.

Rice, potatoes and salad go well with this dish.

[hekate1308]

As an Austrian, the best part about Dracula Daily is everyone discovering paprika hendl for the first time

[erminesandsable]

What everyone forgets in the debate about our good friend Jonathan Harker and his Paprikahendl: it was served to him under the German name. While maybe proper Hungarian paprikás csirke might use hot paprika, I guess it is a safe bet that the Austro-German version is watered down and uses sweet, and not a lot of it, too.

[petermorwood]

Follow-up, as promised...

Further to this post, I went rummaging.

My stars, it turns out we've got some serious goodies at the back of the cupboard.

They've all been here long enough that @dduane and I will eat well this next week or so, but the first of them, mentioned often by Dracula Daily...

...“We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. (Cluj) Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale (AFAIK, fictional) I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (mem. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called “paprika hendl” and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians.”

...is this one.

This is a standard bung-it-in-the-microwave ready meal (3 mins / 700w, wait 3 mins, eat) but there's no reason why it can't be prettied up a bit.

Taste report: the flavour was creamy, buttery, paprika-y, and entirely pleasant (if there were more of these I would scoff them) and the Nockerl (mini dumplings) were properly al dente and excellent, but it was by no means "thirsty", by which I assume spicy-hot. Okay, it wasn't labelled as such, but it was even milder than any Paprikahendl I've eaten in a restaurant.

I suspect that, like most ready-meals of this kind, including curries and chili-con-carne, its spice level has been dialled down to Avoid Shocking The Customers, though TBH most German / Austrian dishes labelled Scharf, Feurig or Würzig (all meaning spicy or hot) have been lacking in the oomph department, at least for me. (Some haven't, which is always a pleasant surprise.)

I'm going to make my own Paprikahendl in the next while because I got some sweet and hot paprikas from Polonez in Dublin, and right now, DD is in the process of making Paprikaente, based on several Paprikahendl recipes and a couple of duck breasts found at the back of the freezer. I don't know if that's authentic or not, but it smells great and I don't care. :->

*****

I've suggested in another post why Jonathan Harker found this dish "thirsty".

It wasn't because he he had a wimpy English palate unaccustomed to spicy food - the Edwardian era was familiar with fiery curries from Raj India, and even featured cayenne pepper as a table condiment, complete with its own caddy and (often devil-topped) spoon...

My opinion was that Paprikahendl (Austrian) / Paprikás csirke (Hungarian) was a peasant dish, with the main part of the meal a big dish of noodles or dumplings. Those would be perked up with a sauce based on some elderly chicken which had stopped laying, well-spiced so a little could flavour a lot.

Those noodles have lots of names - nockerln on the packet I posted, also nokoldel, csipetke, spaetzle, tarhhonya and so on - and were what filled people up, with the meat accompaniment more of a relish or seasoning. In the same way, for instance, Yorkshire Pudding used to be served with gravy as a first course, so the second course of meat would go further.

Rice / bread / couscous/ pasta / mian / potatoes / fufu / polenta etc. did the same; many of these are served alongside rich, spicy, buttery etc. dishes and are now suggested as fire extinguishers for "over-hot" foods because the proportions of bland vs rich / spicy have shifted.

Back when, dinner would have been lots of name-the-regional-bland carbohydrate, along with a little bit of over-hot (or -garlicked or -herby or -smoked-bacon / sausagey) protein, which might have tasted excessive alone but would have given flavour to all that bland.

*****

Side-note: it's another possible reason, besides conspicuous consumption, for lots of spice in (rich people's) medieval dishes; in winter and spring, all that spice would have made smoked / salted / dried meat more interesting.

The business of "spices masked bad meat" is rubbish, and originated as recently as 1939 thanks to historian J.C. Drummond, who didn't know what "green" meant in food context. Green cheese = fresh cheese, green meat = un-aged meat.

Drummond assumed a recipe to change the flavour of "green venison" was to cover that it had gone off. It was in fact meant to tenderise it as if hung a few days in the cold store, but "medieval people were primitive" has always been more acceptable pop history than "medieval people were pretty smart".

*****

Harker, eating the chicken-and-sauce as The Meal (Stoker doesn't mention accompaniments or Bulk Carbs like noodles, spaetzle, etc. so you'll have to trust me), would have been like someone taking a swig of hot sauce or chomp of chilli pickle and then declaring the entire meal over-spiced or "thirsty", unaware of the proper proportions of What Goes With What.

A hotter, spicier, "thirstier" Paprikahendl would definitely go with a big mound of these little noodles, so I plan to see - and taste - how it'll work.

And how it'll look, too. :->