Chicken Paprikash Meatballs
I fell in love with Chicken Paprikash when I was looking for something new to make for dinner. We make Goulash in Minnesota and this is a similar recipe but made with Hungarian Paprika.
Chicken Paprikash Meatballs
Ingredients
Meatballs
- 1 lb ground chicken
- 1 cup plain breadcrumbs
- 2 eggs
- salt & pepper to taste
- 3 tsp of Hungarian paprika
- 2 cloves garlic minced
Paprikash Sauce
- 1 small onion minced
- 3 garlic cloves minced
- 2 tbs butter
- 1/3 cup flour
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 3 tbs Hungarian paprika
- 1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 cup sour cream
- Salt & Pepper to taste
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
- In a bowl combine ground meat, breadcrumbs, eggs, garlic, paprika and season to taste salt and pepper.
- Take little scoops of the meat mixture and roll it in your hands to form a ball.
- Place your meatballs on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 22 mins.
- While your meatballs are cooking in a sauté pan add butter and melt on high. Once melted add the onions and sauté until they are translucent – this should take about 8-10 mins depending on how hot your pan is. Make sure if your pan is hot to stir often so the onions don’t burn.
- Add the garlic to the onions sautéing and cook for a couple of minutes until they are fragrant but making sure you don’t let them burn
- Add the flour and paprika to the cooked onions and cook for a couple of mins. Add the chicken broth, diced tomatoes, bay leaves, sour cream, and salt and pepper to taste. Keep this on low to simmer and keep warm to add the meatballs to when cooked.
- Remove the bay leaves and add the cooked meatballs to the sauce to coat thoroughly. You can serve these little nuggets over precooked noodles or put them in a crockpot in their sauce to let your guests eat with toothpicks.
This meatball is pretty easy to throw together. You’ll probably see that note on a lot of my meatballs that aren’t stuffed with anything. Once you add the extra step of stuffing the meatball they become a little more time consuming than just rolling a ball.
The only thing about these balls that you want to make sure you are prepared for is that they are a chicken meatball so the meat mixture is going to be a lot stickier than a beef meatball. I say that a lot in my chicken and turkey meatballs only so that you are prepared to spray your hands before you start the meatball rolling process. This will help you form the balls with less mess and it will also make the process quicker.
I am always looking for recipes that come from different places that remind me of staples in our house. This one is pretty easy given we make a lot of casseroles or as we call them hotdishes, that resemble this recipe. I really like the amount of paprika we have in this recipe too. It’s nice to have something that is a little more potent that the typical goulash that folks in Minnesota make. I’ve had a lot of goulashes in this state that were a little bland, so adding so much Hungarian paprika really gives this dish a nice kick – without heat.
You can make your meatballs as large or small as you would like based on what you would like to do with them. Since this recipe reminds me a little of spaghetti and meatballs I have made my meatballs more around that size. They are definitely a large one bite type meatballs – the size I made them are perfect to use your fork and cut in half. You can eat each bite of paprikash meatballs with a nice helping of noodles too.
The other fun thing about this recipe is not only are the meatballs a pretty simple thing to make, so is the sauce. It packs a lot of punch and you can throw it together pretty quickly. I will say too that if you can find sweet Hungarian paprika it does make a nice difference in the recipe. If you can’t it still turns out really good – that last time I made it I couldn’t get out to the fancy grocery store in our area that sells it and it was still awesome.
This is a really nice recipe that reminds me so much of some of the foods that I grew up on or had at some of my friends houses growing up with just a little more paprika that gives it a nice earthy flavor. The sauce itself lends itself well to be served over meatballs and noodles. It has a similar consistency to spaghetti sauce – especially the recipe that I like to make for a simple tomato sauce that goes great on so many things.
You can see that this recipe doesn’t call for too many ingredients and a lot of them are things that we all have in our homes at any given time. The only one that might be a little more difficult to find is the Hungarian paprika but the normal paprika in your spice rack will work too. Hopefully too, I’m giving you a reason to use up some of those dried bay leaves that you bought for that one recipe you wanted to make. I hope that this reminds you of something that you grew up with just like it did for us – just with a little twist and some newer ingredients.
These are great for weeknight dinners in those months where the weather starts to turn a little colder and you’re craving those comfort foods that remind you of being a kid. Both the meatballs and the sauce don’t take too long to throw together so it’s an easy recipe to make for your family during the week. Who are we kidding – everyone loves a good home cooked meal during the week. I also don’t know about you but we have a lot of restaurants that are closed on Mondays so this is a great alternative to any kind of take out on those days where that’s not an option.
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