Breasts of Chicken Paprika

Glücklich Donnerstag (Happy Thursday) from Ms. Schnitzel!

We are 12 days from the Autumnal Equinox (9 days from Oktoberfest!) and if you're not living in sunny LA, that means grilling season will soon come to an end for all but the bravest. But even here in LaLaLand, the advent of fall and the cooling temperatures inspire cravings for slow-cooked, hearty comfort food. This recipe for Breasts of Chicken Paprika is a rich and delicious dish reminiscent of a slow-cooked stew. 

So little did we know when we embarked on this recipe in hot, sweaty August...
  
Tara skimmed the recipe before shopping and interpreted it as sautéed chicken with a quick pan sauce.  Not so much.  But we all agreed that turning Jen's kitchen into a hot sauna for a couple of hours was well worth it once we were sitting on the patio enjoying it!

We also realized after we began that the original recipe was most likely calling for bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts (all that was available in 1973?), and that it was probably a good call to scale the amount down to about 3 lbs since we opted for boneless, skinless, humanely raised chicken.  

We already had half a 16oz. bag of frozen pearl onions on hand from Trader Joe's that we threw in the pan to sauté first, and found this fun 8oz. bag of Cipolline pearl onions pictured above to make a pound.  If you can get your hands on some Cipolline onions, do it! Everyone LOVED them.  We wish we had a close-up pic of one of these little guys; they're super cute too!

Our final adaptation was to boil down one quart of organic, free-range chicken broth to make roughly 21 oz. of condensed broth. This is a very simple thing to do: Just throw your quart into a sauce pan, turn it up to a manageable boil, and walk away for awhile.  Check back periodically until it's reduced to about 2/3 its original amount (or whatever the recipe calls for). It worked beautifully! Of course you can buy already condensed broth, but in our experience it's not easy to find free-range condensed broth so we did what we had to do.

Ok, it's time to sear your chicken.  Make sure not to skip this step because otherwise your chicken might be dry! No one likes dry chicken.

 

Schnitzel notes:

* The carrots were so delicious, buttery, and velvety that we would double them (at least!) next time

* Fresh pearl onions are definitely tastier than frozen, but the frozen will do just fine if that's what you can get your hands on

* Please make sure to whisk as you add the flour paste; we were momentarily distracted when adding it and ended up with a few accidental spätzle.  Not that that's such a bad thing...

* This recipe made a ton of sauce.  We served this over fried potatoes (next post!) and, speaking of spätzle, Tara and Rob made a whole batch of it to mix with their half of the leftovers for a German version of chicken & dumplings! So good.  

* Spätzle to be featured at a later date