Chicken Pörkölt (Hungarian paprika stew)
Recipe from Stormwyrm (@stormwyrm on Bluesky)
A "pörkölt" is a thick Hungarian stew with a paprika tomato base, which can be based on beef (in Hungarian: marha), pork (sertés), tripe (pacal) or chicken (csirke). So, in proper Hungarian, this dish would be Csirkepörkölt.
Make this, and you can read about Valabar and Sons' restaurant in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels, and not get hungry.
Yields:
4 servings
Time Required:
- deboning chicken pieces: 30 mins.
- other prep: 30 mins.
- cooking: 80 mins.
- total: 2 hrs. 20 mins.
Ingredients:
- ½ kg boneless, skin-on chicken thighs
- 2 Tbsp.1 pork lard or 4 slices bacon, chopped fine
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 Tbsp. Hungarian2 paprika
- 4 sun-dried tomatoes or ½ can (400 g) tomatoes, chopped
- 1 tsp. garlic salt3
- 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 tsp. caraway seed4
- water
Preparation:
In a medium saucepan, fry the bacon on medium heat until the fat renders. If using lard, until it melts.
Add onions and sauté until transparent, about 5 mins. Add garlic, and sauté for 2 more mins.
Add chicken, and sauté for two more minutes, until most but not all of the pink is gone.
Stir in paprika, and remove from heat, important because paprika turns bitter when fried.
Add salt, pepper, caraway seeds, and tomatoes. Add enough water to saucepan, to just about half the depth of the meat, or just a bit more. Do not cover completely with water.
Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat to medium-low. Let simmer like this, for around an hour. At the end of this process, if sauce is still too thin, let simmer uncovered a bit longer.
Serve with egg noodles (spätzle5), boiled potatoes, or steamed rice. Add a dollop of sour cream, if desired.
Cook's Notes:
Recently, when I had a huge stock of chicken legs and thighs, with company expected, I made a triple recipe of this with rice. It was a crowd-pleaser, and easy to do.
1 Cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons are as defined in US Customary Units, not to be confused with differing British imperial, "legal", "coffee", Commonwealth of Nations, Canadian, Latin American, Japanese, Russian, or Dutch defintions — further proof that everyone needs the metric system.
2 You might ask, does paprika being Hungarian make a difference? Well, maybe. They aim for specific flavour profiles using Capsicum annuum cultivars grown distinctively in Hungary, concentrating on a complex, robust flavour profile. Commercial paprika here in California is crafted mostly for its colour. On the other hand, quality culinary paprika's possible anywhere. As someone who grows his own hot peppers and deyhdrates them for uses including powders, I think it's possible to do well on a DIY basis — but getting imported Hungarian paprika is cheap insurance when flavour matters.
3 Some garlic powder and some salt will do.
4 It's the seed (fruit) of a fennel/carrot relative (Carum carvi), with an anise (licorice-like) flavour, popular in rye breads, Irish soda breads, casseroles, stews, soups, desserts, baked goods, and liqueurs.
5 "Spätzle" (or Spatzen or Spätzla) is the German name for a type of Central European egg pasta with an irregular form and rough, porous surface, typically served as a side for meat dishes with sauce. The Hungarian name would be "nokedli". They're quite a bit like the Italian gnocci.
Collected and re-published at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/chicken-porkolt.html by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> on Oct. 12, 2025. Individual recipes are free from copyright. Share and enjoy!
Taken from: https://cookpad.com/eng/recipes/13285690/, as the contribution of Bluesky user @stormwyrm on July 27, 2020. Thank you!
(If I have any copyright title in my own very minor contributions to this page — not my intention — they were created in 2025 by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. The image file (photograph) was taken on Oct. 12, 2025, also by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. I have thereby waived all copyright, compilation copyright, and related or neighbouring rights to this work. This work is published from: United States of America.)