Midday in Budapest. On Hungarian street corners you still find the old-fashioned canteens called étkezde, and one of their standard plates is chicken stewed in a red sauce: paprikás csirke. In Hungarian it is also called csirkepaprikás, and both names mean "chicken cooked with paprika." Onions are sweated gently in lard, the pot comes off the heat so the paprika can melt into the fat, and the chicken simmers quietly. A spoonful of sour cream at the end turns the vivid red into a soft salmon color. A red sauce brought together with cream is exactly what sets it apart from goulash, the other great dish of the paprika country.
The ingredients are all ordinary supermarket items. Only two things are tricky: not scorching the paprika, and not letting the sour cream boil and split. Get those two right and this is about an hour of simmering in a home pot.
From the pots of the Great Plain to the town canteen
On the Alföld, the Great Plain that spreads across eastern Hungary, farmers in the 19th century stewed beef and mutton with onions and paprika. Chicken gradually joined them, and poultry stews are said to have become widespread. There are records that in 1840s Hatvan, serf households ate "pörkölt hús" and "paprikás hús" made with beef, mutton, and chicken as everyday food. The history of this dish begins where chicken entered the stew of the plains.
The oldest written recipe is said to be in a cookbook published in 1830. Its author was Czifray István, a cook at the court of Archduke Joseph. He fries onion, paprika, and allspice in butter or lard, adds the chicken, and thickens the sauce with flour, stock, and sour cream. The skeleton is almost the same as today's method. Four years later, in 1834, a price list put out by an innkeeper in Nyíregyháza includes "Paprikás Tsirke" at 18 krajcár. On the same list, the meat stew "paprikás hús" is 15 krajcár, so the chicken cost a little more.
Paprika has many old names: "Turkish pepper" (törökbors), "red pepper" (vörösbors), "Spanish pepper" (spanyol bors), and more. All of them mean "a pepper that came from somewhere else." The route by which New World chilies traveled around Europe and finally reached Hungary survives in the names.
Whether or not to add sour cream (tejföl in Hungarian) was also a question of a dish's standing. A stew finished with sour cream became a sign of a dish that had risen from the peasant's pot to the kitchens of the town middle class, and from there it is said to have spread back to ordinary tables. By the end of the 19th century it was already on restaurant menus and was a dish that travelers visiting Hungary recommended.
The dish also appears in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897). On his way to Transylvania, Jonathan Harker eats "paprika hendl," likes it, and jots down a note to get the recipe for his fiancée Mina. This is a dish that makes a traveler want to take the recipe home, and that was already true in a 19th-century novel.
Paprikás and pörkölt are separated by cream
Hungarian cooking has four paprika-based stews. In The Cuisine of Hungary, George Lang names gulyás, pörkölt, tokány, and paprikás as the four pillars of Hungarian cooking. Paprikás and pörkölt are very similar, with one difference. Paprikás is finished with sweet cream or sour cream, while pörkölt takes no cream. Lang even writes that "no cream of any kind may be used in gulyás or pörkölt."
There is also a tendency in the choice of meat. According to Lang, veal and chicken suit paprikás, while beef, mutton, game, goose, duck, and pork are more often used in pörkölt. The logic is to pair the mildness of cream with lean, delicate meats, and to cook fattier or stronger-flavored meats without cream. With the same method, veal, mushrooms, or fish are also sometimes stewed.
If you save the cooking liquid from a paprikás, the next day it can turn into Hortobágyi palacsinta. Crêpes are rolled around a meat filling and topped with the paprikás sauce with a little more sour cream added.
Ingredients (serves 4)
This sauce is made almost entirely of paprika flavor. Look for sweet paprika without heat; most ground paprika sold in supermarkets is sweet and can be used as is. If you can find Hungarian sweet paprika (édesnemes), the color and aroma go deeper still. Whether to mix in a little hot paprika (csípős) is up to you. One thing to watch: paprika loses its aroma once it has been open a while. If your jar has turned brownish at the back of the shelf, replacing it makes a clear difference in the result.
Cooking the chicken with the skin on gives the sauce depth and richness. If you dislike the skin, cook it on and remove it when serving. If you cannot find bone-in meat, use 800 g of boneless thigh and shorten the simmering time by about 5 minutes.
This dish contains milk (sour cream, heavy cream, butter, milk), wheat (flour, bread flour), and egg (the nokedli). If you are serving someone with an allergy, check the relevant ingredients.
How to make csirke paprikás
Prep takes about 15 minutes: chop the onions, cut the tomato and pepper, and mix the nokedli batter. The stew takes about 55 minutes counted from sweating the onions. Boil the nokedli while the chicken simmers and the whole meal is ready in about 1 hour 10 minutes.
Cook the chicken until the center has been held at 75°C for at least 1 minute. This is a guideline for preventing Campylobacter food poisoning. The meat around the bone is the slowest to cook, so do not judge by color; check with a thermometer. Wash the cutting board and knife used for raw chicken before using them on other foods.
If the cream splits and the sauce turns speckled and grainy, take the pot off the heat, stir in 1 tbsp heavy cream, and mix quickly. Boiling is the main cause of splitting, so after adding the cream, go no further than a few small bubbles at the edge of the pot.
If the nokedli batter is too stiff, it will not pass through the holes of the grater. If it is too loose, it falls apart in the water, so do not add the milk all at once; add 1 tbsp at a time and check. You can also spread the batter on a wooden board and scrape it into the water bit by bit with a knife.
Served with nokedli and a cucumber salad
In Hungary, csirke paprikás almost always comes with nokedli. Nokedli, also called galuska, are small egg dumplings related to German spätzle. They are shorter and stubbier than spätzle and soak up the sauce well. Put the chicken on one half of the plate and the nokedli on the other, then ladle plenty of sauce over, and the nokedli drink up the red sauce.
A sweet-and-sour cucumber salad goes well on the side. After the rich sauce, the vinegar cleans the palate. On a day when you don't have time to make nokedli, boiled potatoes sprinkled with parsley or soft polenta also work. Store-bought egg-based short pasta will do the job of carrying the sauce just as well.
If you have sauce left over the next day, use it for the Hortobágyi palacsinta mentioned earlier, or toss it with nokedli for a light lunch. Eating it alongside goulash, which stews beef with the same paprika, makes it very clear how different the sauce feels depending on whether or not there is cream. Rakott krumpli, baked layers of potatoes and sausage, is another Hungarian home dish that uses the same sour cream.
Across the border, the sides and the stew change
Csirke paprikás has also been eaten outside Hungary in changed forms. In Romania it is traditionally served with mămăligă, a cornmeal porridge, and in Czechia it is often served with knedlíky, bread-style dumplings. It has also become a home dish of the Danube Swabians (German-speaking emigrants who lived along the Danube).
In Jewish households in Hungary and Czechoslovakia it was passed down as a Sabbath dish. Because dietary law forbids eating meat and dairy together, it is said that many cooks leave out the sour cream and bring the sauce together with tomato. Bulgarian paprikash (паприкаш) is a different dish, using less paprika and putting diced sweet peppers in the lead.
To make it without dairy, increase the tomatoes to 2, skip the cream finish, and after adding the pepper simmer about 10 minutes longer, which thickens the sauce. This is an adaptation for a home kitchen, following the way Jewish households make it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I make it with chicken breast?
You can, but breast meat turns tough more easily than thigh. For boneless breast, cut it into bite-size slices and shorten the simmering in step 3 to about 15 minutes. With any cut, check with a thermometer that the center has been held at 75°C for at least 1 minute.
Can I use hot paprika?
Yes. In Hungary it is made with both sweet and hot paprika. Hot paprika alone gives a strong heat, so a good way to start is to swap 1 teaspoon of the 2 tablespoons of sweet paprika for hot and see how you like it.
My sauce split. Can I fix it?
Take it off the heat, add 1 tbsp heavy cream, and mix quickly; the smoothness sometimes comes back. To prevent splitting, whisk the sour cream and flour together first, thin them with a little hot sauce before returning them to the pot, and do not let it boil afterward.
Can I make it ahead?
Let the stew cool a little, then refrigerate it and eat it soon. Reheat slowly over low heat, and do not let the cream sauce boil hard. Make sure the chicken is thoroughly heated through to the center before eating.
What can I use instead of nokedli?
Boiled potatoes, polenta, and egg-based short pasta are easy options. Choose something that soaks up the sauce well and you will get close to the feel of nokedli.
Sources
- Taste Hungary, "Paprikás Csirke (Paprika Chicken)." (accessed and checked 22 October 2026) https://tastehungary.com/journal/paprikas-csirke-paprika-chicken/
- Just Budapest, "Chicken Paprikash: Hungarian Food Speciality." (accessed and checked 22 October 2026) https://justbudapest.com/chicken-paprikash-hungarian-food-speciality/
- Norecipes, "Nokedli (Hungarian Dumplings)." (accessed and checked 22 October 2026) https://norecipes.com/nokedli-recipe/
- Wikipedia, "Chicken paprikash." (accessed and checked 22 October 2026) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_paprikash
- Setagaya City, "Beware of food poisoning caused by Campylobacter!" (in Japanese; accessed and checked 22 October 2026) https://www.city.setagaya.lg.jp/02245/3179.html
