Chicken stew and rice. A hearty, warming winter recipe.

This chicken stew dish is very popular throughout the Balkans. From Romania, Hungary and Serbia, it’s being made all over the region. This is my take on it, and there are many variations of it.

For this dish I used a whole chicken nothing is thrown away here. I served it with rice, but you can choose dumplings, potatoes, pasta, anything you fancy.

Cook time

60 mins

Total time

1 hour

Author: Intrepid Eats

Serves: 4

Ingredients

1 whole chicken cut into pieces (portioned)
1 spoon sweet paprika, 1 tablespoon hot paprika
chilli powder (optional)
1 onion
2 garlic coves
2 red peppers
2 bay leafs
1 teaspoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup flour
1 spoon corn flour
2 tablespoons sour cream or creme fraiche
salt, pepper, thyme, fresh parsley

Also, should you prefer to use for the chicken stew just legs, tights or breast, it can be done in the same way, and it will feed at least three hungry people or six that had a small starter. The whole procedure can seem a little complicated, but some steps can be omitted and replaced, I’ll explain as we go along.

Cut the chicken into pieces, I’m sure there are plenty of videos on the net on how to do that, take the wings and the back away, for the meal I used the breast cut in two, the legs and the tights.

From the wings and carcass I’ve made chicken stock, again plenty of info on how to do that. Should you prefer not to make stock, discard them, and use instead stock cubes.

Now, dust the pieces of chicken with flour, shake well off the excess and in a heated pan with some oil brown them on all sides. Don’t move them too much, let them sit and brown nicely. Then take them out of the pan, keep them aside.

Sweat now in the same pan, the onions, garlic and pepper all chopped finely for a few minutes. Add the paprika, bay leaf, tomato paste, sugar, salt and pepper (use salt carefully should you choose to use the chicken stock cubes, they might be salty), stir well for a few seconds then add the meat back into the pan.

Add now stock or water almost until the meat is covered. Reduce the fire to low, cover and simmer gently. After 10 minutes, I choose to remove the chicken breast (to keep it from drying out), keep it aside, and keep simmering the rest for about another 20 minutes until the meat is tender and soft.

At the end, mix a teaspoon of corn flour with a teaspoon of water and a spoon of creme fraiche or sour-cream, and stir this mixture well into the pan until the sauce gets silky and thick. That’s all it is. It’s a chicken stew.

Garnish the plate with chopped parsley, serve over a bed of your preferred side and add an extra spoon of sour cream on the top.