High-protein chicken goulash: a recipe for four servings

Most goulash ends up as a plate of sauce with a bit of meat and a lot of bread on the side. This one works the other way round: 800 g of chicken breast and a tin of chickpeas push it to roughly 57 g of protein per serving, and the sauce thickens without a flour roux or half a tub of cream. It cooks in one pan in about 55 minutes.

Prep time and servings

Prep 15 min, cooking 40 min, about 55 minutes in total. The recipe makes 4 servings of roughly 400 g each.

You need one wide pan or shallow casserole with a lid, around 28 cm across. In a narrow pot the chicken steams instead of browning, and that changes the flavour more than any spice you add later.

Ingredients

• 800 g chicken breast fillet, cut into 3 cm chunks
• 300 g red onion (2 large), finely chopped
• 250 g red pepper (2 whole), cut into strips
• 240 g drained tinned chickpeas (one 400 g tin)
• 400 g tinned plum tomatoes (one tin)
• 500 ml chicken stock or water
• 150 g Greek yoghurt (around 2% fat)
• 20 ml olive oil (2 tbsp)
• 14 g sweet paprika (2 tbsp)
• 12 g garlic (3 cloves)
• 3 g caraway seeds (1 tsp) and 1 bay leaf
• salt and black pepper to taste

Method

1. Heat the oil in the wide pan over a high heat. Salt the chicken and brown it in two batches, 3–4 minutes each, just until it takes on colour. Lift it into a bowl and set it aside; it does not need to be cooked through.
2. Turn the heat down to medium and add the onion. Cook for 6–8 minutes, stirring now and then, until soft and translucent. This is where most of the sweetness in the sauce comes from, so do not rush it.
3. Add the pepper strips and cook for another 4 minutes, then stir in the garlic and caraway for 30 seconds.
4. Take the pan off the heat before you stir in the paprika. On a hot base it burns in under a minute and turns the whole dish bitter.
5. Return the pan to the heat, pour in the tomatoes and stock and drop in the bay leaf. Break up the larger pieces of tomato with a wooden spoon.
6. Tip the chicken back in along with any juices in the bowl, cover, and simmer gently for 20 minutes.
7. Stir in the drained chickpeas and cook for a final 10 minutes with the lid off so the sauce reduces and thickens. Taste, then season with salt and pepper.
8. Take the pan off the heat, wait 3–4 minutes, and only then stir through the Greek yoghurt. Added to a boiling sauce it splits and turns grainy.

Nutrition per serving

An estimate per serving, calculated from the quantities listed above and divided by four, with no side dish included:

• Calories: about 455 kcal
• Protein: about 57 g
• Carbohydrate: about 34 g
• Fat: about 10 g

The numbers shift with the brand of tinned tomatoes, how heavy you are with the oil and how much liquid the chicken releases. Serve it over 60 g of dry rice and you add roughly 210 kcal and 47 g of carbohydrate per portion, which is the same arithmetic behind the air fryer chicken and rice meal.

Swaps and variations

Chicken thigh makes a juicier goulash but a fattier one: across 800 g of meat that is roughly 25 g more fat, so about 6 g and 55 kcal more per serving, with protein dropping to around 48 g.

Leave the chickpeas out and you land at about 52 g of protein and only 18 g of carbohydrate per serving, which makes more sense alongside potatoes or bread. If pulses leave you bloated, rinse them well under running water and start with half a tin.

Greek yoghurt can be swapped for kefir or thick soured milk; the protein barely moves, the thickness does, and we covered how kefir and yoghurt differ separately. For a vegetarian pan, use 400 g of firm tofu instead of the chicken and accept somewhat lower protein.

If you want the same flavours in a spoonable form, try the chicken and chickpea soup, and on a day when you cannot face a pan on the hob, oven-baked chicken kebabs with wholemeal flatbread do the job.

In short

One pan, 55 minutes, four servings at roughly 57 g of protein and 455 kcal each. The two details that matter most are browning the chicken in two batches and adding the paprika off the heat. It keeps for 3 days in the fridge and tastes better on day two, once the sauce has set.