Brazilian Feijoada + Hungarian Chicken Paprikash
🍳 Today’s culinary picks:
🇧🇷 Brazilian Feijoada
Brazil’s national dish—a thick, slow-cooked stew of black beans and multiple cuts of pork. A meal you can’t refuse: sticky bean broth, melting meat, crispy farofa, and bright lime.
Ingredients:
- Black beans (dried) — 500 g (soak overnight)
- Pork ribs — 400 g
- Smoked pork sausage (linguiça) — 250 g
- Smoked pork belly or bacon — 200 g
- Pork ears/feet (optional, for gelatin) — as desired
- Onion — 2 large
- Garlic — 6 cloves
- Bay leaf — 3
- Salt, black pepper — to taste
- Vegetable oil — 2 tbsp
For serving:
- Steamed white rice
- Farofa (toasted cassava flour with butter)
- Laranja (orange, sliced)
- Vinagrete (onion, tomato, bell pepper, vinegar, oil)
Instructions:
- Soak beans overnight in cold water.
- Cut pork into large chunks. Sear ribs and pork belly in a large pot until golden.
- Add onion (sliced into half-rings) and garlic—sauté until soft.
- Cover beans with water (5 cm above). Add bay leaves.
- Simmer on low heat for 2–2.5 hours, stirring occasionally. Beans should break down; broth should thicken and become fragrant.
- 30 minutes before done, slice sausage into rounds and add to the stew.
- Season with salt and pepper. Serve with rice, farofa, orange slices, and fresh vinagrete.
💡 Fact: Feijoada was born among slaves and the poor, who used pork scraps—ears, feet, tails—what plantation owners discarded. The dish became a symbol of Brazilian cuisine and national pride, evolving from peasant food to the centerpiece of Carnival.
🇭🇺 Hungarian Chicken Paprikash (Csirkepaprikás)
A classic of Hungarian country cooking—tender chicken in a creamy, paprika-infused sauce. Simple as can be, but the result is restaurant-worthy.
Ingredients:
- Chicken thighs (bone-in, skin-on) — 8
- Onion — 2 large
- Sweet Hungarian paprika — 3 tbsp (MUST be sweet, not hot)
- Sour cream (20%+ fat) — 250 g
- Tomatoes (fresh or canned) — 2 (or 200 g)
- Bell pepper — 1
- Garlic — 3 cloves
- Flour — 1 tbsp (for thickening)
- Vegetable oil — 2 tbsp
- Salt — to taste
- Fresh parsley — for garnish
Instructions:
- Finely chop onion. Sauté in oil in a pot until golden (7–8 min).
- Remove from heat, add paprika—stir quickly. Key moment: Paprika burns if cooked over heat.
- Return to heat, add diced tomatoes and bell pepper. Simmer 5 minutes.
- Arrange chicken thighs skin-side up. Salt. Cover, simmer on low heat for 45 minutes. Do not flip—steam does the work.
- Remove chicken. In a bowl, mix sour cream with flour and a few spoonfuls of hot sauce. Stir back into the pot.
- Add minced garlic, warm through for 5 minutes (do not boil—sour cream will curdle!).
- Serve with nokedli (Hungarian dumplings) or wide pasta, generously drizzled with sauce and sprinkled with parsley.
💡 Fact: Hungarian paprika—a national spice—made its way to Europe from the Americas via the Ottomans in the 16th century. Hungarians refined it so masterfully that today, Hungarian paprika is considered the global gold standard. No real paprikash exists without it—just like Italian cuisine without olive oil.
