Chicken and Nutchke
This recipe was given to my mother from my grandmother who came to Connecticut from Czechoslovakia at the turn of the 19th-20th century. My brothers and I loved it but I could only get my mom to make it a few times a year. I make it for my kids now and they love it. […]
This recipe was given to my mother from my grandmother who came to Connecticut from Czechoslovakia at the turn of the 19th-20th century. My brothers and I loved it but I could only get my mom to make it a few times a year. I make it for my kids now and they love it. It is a heart-warming soup with heavy noodles and fairly mild chicken despite the heavy paprika!
Yield:
5 servingsIngredients
3 pounds cut up chicken w/skin
1 medium onion
4 tablespoons paprika
1-2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 medium carrots, sliced about 1/4″ thick
4 cups flour (not self-rising)
2 eggs
2-3 cups milk
vegetable oil
Instructions
Dice onion and put in a deep pan like a soup pot or Dutch oven.
Add about 1/4 cup of oil. Heat on medium-high. Add washed chicken and brown until skin is at least partially browned (about 15 minutes).
Salt and pepper chicken (about 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper).
When chicken is browned, add about 1/4 cup of flour and the paprika over the top of the chicken.
Continue cooking for another 10 minutes or so. The bottom of the pan is going to look gross but that’s the stuff that makes the soup taste so good.
Now add 6-8 cups of water and carrots and simmer for about 1 hour on low until chicken just begins to fall off the bone.
Stir the soup every once in a while to make sure the stuff on the bottom of the pan is loosened. Don’t overcook the chicken or you will have to strain the soup and you don’t want to do that.
Now use a ladle or a grease separator and get the oil out of the broth.
Noodles:
In a large bowl (with handles is a help) add:
3-4 cups of flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs (1 for every 2 cups of flour)
Add 1 cup of milk and start stirring the dough with a wooden spoon. You will have to add more milk fairly quickly so go ahead and add the second cup a little at a time. Continue stirring with a wooden spoon.
Add enough milk so that the consistency of the dough is about that of a gooey wallpaper paste. Now is the hard part – you have to stir that dough with the wooden spoon and aerate it by kind of lifting the dough up with the spoon until it feels like your arm is going to fall off. The more tired your arm is, the better the noodles will be. I usually beat it for about 10 minutes with a short rest every minute or so.
Put the dough onto a dinner plate about 1-1/2 cups at a time and boil a big pot of water (about 4 quarts or so). Add another teaspoon of salt to the water. This will not make too salty.
Now with a teaspoon you have to knock teaspoon-size pieces of the dough off the edge of the plate so the dough pieces fall into the water. If you wet the spoon occasionally, the dough will fall off easier. When they hit the water, they will harden. Boil the noodles until they float and then about five minutes longer.
You can re-use the water if you strain the noodles out with a large spoon with holes in it.
Drain the noodles into a colander and rinse.
Fill serving bowls with noodles, add broth until they are just covered and give everyone a piece of chicken.
