Here is a quick and easy meal to make one evening which is easy to do, using mainly inexpensive ingredients and very little effort.
The recipe was one from my mother. Being a child of wartime and rationing she was never particularly adventurous or fancy in the kitchen, more Delia smith than Fanny Craddock, she still is an excellent baker but meals were rarely anything other than meat and two veg.
So Chicken Paprika was an exotic adventure to us growing up and one I continue to make every now and then.
Ingredients
A pack of Boneless Chicken Thighs – say two thighs per person
A tin of Mushroom soup
Some Paprika
Potatoes – Jacket or now Parmentier.
Frozen peas/beans/mixed veg/whatever.
Preheat the oven to 180c
Place the Chicken thighs into a pot that will have lid – if you need more than one layer, do the base layer and sprinkle a good amount of paprika on each one. Thighs are cheaper than breast and the additional fats are needed to help cooking, if you use breast it just ends up tough and tasteless.
Add a second layer and again top with paprika. As the most expensive ingredient I usually buy Heeral larger bags from an Indian supermarket or market stall rather than the rip-off tiny supermarket jars.
Add the mushroom soup on top of it and place in the oven
If you are doing baked potatoes with the meal (which was the standard in the day) then prick some potatoes and add them to the same oven.
Cooking time 2 hours.
I recently discovered Aldi’s ‘Parmentier Potatoes’ – a bag of frozen diced potato and onion that is very tasty. If you can find a bag it goes well with this dish, again thrown into the same oven around 40 minutes before serving.
10 or 15 minutes before it is ready, boil up some frozen peas (beans or mixed veg, whatever’s in).
Enjoy!
Cost around £2 a portion all in.
© text, images & video Sweaty Dave 2023
