Given the current situation, it’s obviously not possible for us to visit all the interesting and lovely restaurants of our fine city.
But because we know you like to eat good food, we thought, hey we can cook ourselves and give you the recipe. We also made it a goal to only shop at local markets and small stores so we’re supporting small Viennese businesses.
Dish on the Vienna Würstelstand Käsetoast cook’s menu today:
Since we’re in Vienna, and everybody is missing sitting in a Wirtshaus with a Krügerl and ordering typical Viennese dishes, we thought you might want to know how to cook one of those at home yourself.
As always, really easy. When you know how to operate a stove and a blender, you should be fine. Don’t stick your finger in the blender, or any other body parts.
Local Vienna store where we got our ingredients:
This time, we went to a rather small, but well stocked shop with a unique concept – Lieber Ohne. When visiting this place, bring your own Sackerl to pack your lovely Bio veggies in. It’s zero waste here.
Note: when you buy meat, you have to order in advance.
What you need:
+ 500g of chicken thighs or wings
+ 6 bell peppers (which are capsicums if you speak that weird English)
+ 4 onions
+ 3 garlic cloves
+ 80 g paprika powder
+ 500 ml sour cream
+ 250ml stock
+ Honey
+ Tomato paste
+ 100g butter
+ Beer (we went for a good ol’ Ottakringer)
+ Sliced almonds
+ Chilli (if you’re brave)
+ Herbs of your choice, like thyme or rosemary
+ Salt pepper and oil (if you still don’t have these basics at home – what the hell is wrong with you savage?
Here is what you have to do:
1. The chicken needs to be marinated before we fry the f*** out of it. Which is just a fancy word for giving the chicken a slightly erotic massage with olive oil, paprika powder and some thyme. You’re done, when you’re starting to feel a bit awkward. Smoke a cigarette afterwards (even if you don’t normally smoke) and take a shower in fetal position. Then put everything into a tray and throw it in the fridge for 15-60 minutes… depending on your hunger level.
2. Making a good soup stock is easy, but time-consuming, so just use a stock cube (don’t tell your Oma). So just mix your water with the stock cube ‘til it starts to look like soup. You’re done when your stock also tastes like soup, and not like dirty dishwater.
3. Slice your onions, bell peppers, garlic and chilli – put it to the side. Go easy on the chilli. If you don’t, when you sit on the Heisl (translation: shitter) the next day, you’ll want to punch yourself for making it too spicy.
4. Get your freshly massaged chicken out of the fridge and toss into a pot with hot oil in it. You don’t have to feel sorry for the chicken – the chicken likes it. No need for safe words – trust us.
5. Fry the chicken for 5 minutes ‘til it looks delicious, get it out, and put your veggies in to the pot. Fry them for about 8 minutes, and then add some tomato paste, four tablespoons of paprika powder, a teaspoon of honey, and fry it a bit more. Now throw in some beer (for deglazing purposes) to get some fluids in there.
6. We don’t want the Hendl (translation: chicken) to be bsoffen (translation: shit-faced), so sizzle off the alcohol in your pot, which will take about 2 minutes. Then add the soup, some more paprika powder, and put the chicken back into your pot.
7. Reduce the flame to a simmer for 45 minutes. We recommend drinking the rest of the beer at this point. If you don’t live alone, you could also use the time to do everybody a favour and clean up the mess you made. As our Oma used to say: if the Kitchen looks like North Korea has thrown a missile in it, you need to give it a good clean. Ok, she never said that.
8. Turn up the heat again for a few minutes, then take the chicken out, turn off your stove, and let it cool.
9. Blend your sauce, and like we said, don’t stick any body parts in the blender. We know it looks tempting, but trust us, Vienna needs those ICU´s in the hospital for more important things right now.
10. Put some of the sauce into an extra bowl, and mix it with sour cream. Don’t do this in the hot pot – you’ll mess it up. Mix it in a bowl and then add it back into the pot. Then put the rest of the sour cream into the pot and leave it.
11. Boil some Fusilli pasta (you can use whatever pasta you want but we like how Fusilli sounds) for as long as the package says.
12. Once you’re pasta is done, mix it into the sauce.
13. Put your chicken back into a frying pan with some more butter and a rosemary twig. Fry everything ‘til it looks delicious (when it looks like a chunk of ebony wood you’ve gone wrong somewhere…)
14. Sprinkle your chicken with the sliced almonds for garnish and put it all on something you want to eat your meal from – most people use a plate, or a bowl, but you do you. Austria is a free country, so you can snort the noodles from the tabletop for all we care (if you do this, please do tell us how it goes)
Congratulations, you’ve made a typical Viennese dish, go and enjoy it.(if you want to play the part of a genuine Viennese person, you should be on your fifth hülsn (translation: a can of beer) already…and complaining a lot.
Drinks to go with your dish:
We paired this dish with a Lehner Rosé 2018 St. Laurent. It’s a vegan wine which doesn’t really make sense when we cooked a chicken, right?
What we listened to while cooking:
Vienna – Billy Joel
Wien woat auf die – Granada (do yourself a favor and listen it in this order)
Heit grob ma tote aus – Vodoo Jürgens
Ottakring – Granada
Ganz Wien – Ernst Molden
Praterlied – Nino aus Wien
Cadillac – Crowns of Babylon
Vienna Calling – Falco (everything by Falco fits any cooking sesh’)
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