9 Traditional German Chicken Dishes Everyone Should Try At Least Once

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You can't go wrong with German cuisine. The country's culinary offering is marked by its heartiness and blend of fresh, meaty, and sharp flavors, with many of the must-try German dishes out there reflecting the colder climates and mountains that populate the region. As a cuisine that's largely based around meat, it's no surprise that chicken features pretty heavily. However, German food doesn't just do poultry in one way. Although you might expect its chicken-based meals to be largely boiled or stewed, traditional German chicken dishes vary considerably in their styles and flavors.

When it comes to German chicken dishes, most of us will be familiar with chicken schnitzel: The large, breaded slab of chicken that's crowned with a host of flavorful toppings. However, look a little further, and you'll find roasted chicken in the form of brathendl, or rolled-up, gently simmered chicken in hähnchenrouladen. While many German chicken dishes are centered around the locally grown vegetables and aromatics in the country, more heavily spiced options like chicken döner (which was, contrary to popular belief, conceived in Germany) are also very popular. That's just the tip of the iceberg, too. Let's check out some of the best traditional German chicken dishes, including a few you likely haven't tried.

How could we discuss traditional German chicken dishes, and not talk about chicken schnitzel? This dish is arguably the most famous of all the chicken dishes in the country, and we can see why: Not only is it tasty and easy to make, but it's also pretty affordable and requires just a few ingredients to get right. 

Although chicken schnitzel is eaten across Germany and is a staple of German restaurants around the world, its origins can actually be traced back to Austria, and it originally contained veal instead of chicken. It's thought that Austrian Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky, who was traveling through Italy in the 19th century, stumbled upon a dish consisting of a fried veal cutlet coated in breadcrumbs. When he took the dish back to his native land, people immediately fell in love with it — and it quickly spread to neighboring Germany, where it took off.

Chicken schnitzel's appeal is all in its simplicity: It's a straightforward combination of crunchy, chewy, salty, and savory, that pairs well with a host of accompanying side dishes. Traditionally, though, it's served with potato salad and a wedge of lemon to provide some much-needed acidity. It's also a dish that's easy to improve upon, with plenty of ways to take fried chicken schnitzel up a notch.

Many German dishes are marked by having origins in other countries, with the German form of the dish slowly but surely taking on the traditions and ingredients specific to the region. A good example of this occurring is in hühnerfrikassee, the German chicken version of fricassée, which is made by cooking meat in a roux-based sauce studded with vegetables. Fricassée has its roots in French cuisine, and its first form started to appear around the 14th century. Chicken was one of the first meats to be included in early types of fricassée, with other poultry like pigeon, as well as easily caught or reared options like rabbit or veal being tossed in.

It's unclear exactly when fricassée jumped over the border from France to Germany and became frikassee, but it appeared that there was no going back once it did. In German, the word hühner refers to multiple chickens; while this is the most commonly used meat for this dish, veal is also seen pretty often. As with a lot of other German stew-based dishes, hühnerfrikassee can be served with a variety of different carbs, with rice, potatoes, and pasta options.

Rouladen is one of the most well-known styles of meat preparation in Germany. This way of cooking meat is thought to have developed throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and was a favorite in royal kitchens and among the upper classes in the country, before becoming a traditional Christmas dish on dinner tables across the land. Commonly found in Thuringia, Saxony, and Bavaria, rouladen dishes consist of pieces of thinly sliced meat layered with additional ingredients, with the whole affair then wrapped into a cylindrical shape and simmered. The meat and fillings cook together, creating a multilayered, flavorful dish that looks as good as it tastes.

Hähnchenrouladen is the chicken version of this dish, with the filling inside typically serving to provide a boost of flavor to the meat's gentle taste. Prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes, pesto, and truffles are all commonly used, although what you decide to stuff in your hähnchenrouladen is really down to personal preference. You can also bake hähnchenrouladen instead of simmering it, for a little bit of extra brownness on its exterior. Just make sure you serve it with a sauce, as all that meat can get a little bit dense and dry. Generally speaking, sharper sauces made with mustard, white wine, or tomatoes can serve as a nice flavor contrast.

Think Bavaria, and you likely think of beer steins, colorful cottages, imposing castles, and hearty food. Naturally, it's that last one that we're especially interested in. Bavarian cuisine has a lot of meat on the menu, and few dishes are as impressive as brathendl, or Bavarian roasted chicken. This chicken dish is frequently seen during Oktoberfest celebrations and during the winter months, offering an easy and cost-effective way to feed the masses something substantial and tasty while they're sampling the local ales.

Strictly speaking, brathendl's cooking process isn't that dissimilar from other types of roasted chicken around the globe. Each chicken is coated in a combo of melted butter and a garlic-herb mix, with rosemary and thyme providing an aromatic scent and flavor. The chicken is then roasted in a hot oven and basted every 30 minutes or so to keep it moist and to help the skin to crisp up; in larger kitchens, it can also be cooked on a rotisserie spit. Brathendl is usually served with other sides that are typical of the region, like potato salad or pretzels, which help to soak up all the alcohol in those beer tents. You'll never leave the table hungry in Bavaria.

Countless cuisines around the world have their own version of chicken soup. Thailand has tom kha gai, Mexico has sopa de lima, and Greece has avgolemono. In Germany, they certainly don't miss out on the chicken soup action, with hühnersuppe providing a filling meal for chilly winter nights. Hühnersuppe literally translates to "chicken soup," and it's pretty similar to the classic chicken noodle soup that your grandma may have served you when you were sick. The dish consists of hearty vegetables like carrots, leeks, celery root, and onions, as well as shredded pieces of chicken and pasta noodles, like Bechtle Traditional Soup Noodles. Although you can simply throw in whatever leftover chicken you have lying around, some folks like to simmer a whole chicken with their root vegetables, to create a flavorful broth while keeping the meat juicy.

Hühnersuppe clearly follows the tradition of other Northern European chicken soups. It has clear ties to Polish rosół and classic Ashenkazi Jewish chicken soup, sharing a lot of the same ingredients and serving a similar function in German culture, as a dish that serves as pure comfort food. It's far from the fanciest meal you'll eat in Germany, but it's definitely one of the most soothing.

Although many staples of a country's cuisine are passed down over hundreds of years and are typically centered around local ingredients, some meals stem from political circumstances — and propaganda. One clear example of this is eintopf, or the one-pot meal. This dish has a controversial history, becoming popular in 1930s Germany because of a campaign by the ruling Nazi party, which ran the Eintopfsonntag campaign. The idea was that on the first Sunday of every month, Germans should cook a one-pot meal instead of their traditional roast, donating the money they saved to the poor, as a way to promote a sense of national unity.

Eintopf meals were designed to be as frugal as possible, and as such didn't often contain meat — but chicken-based eintopf dishes weren't uncommon, and they still persist to this day. The beauty of eintopf meals is that there's no set recipe for them, and how they're made is largely up to the chef. As such, chicken-based eintopf dishes can vary from being creamy affairs made with asparagus, shallots, celery, cream, and back bacon, or they can be lighter and spicier affairs made with potatoes and hot pepper sauce. The important thing here is the technique, which is to use the same pot throughout and to not overcomplicate things. 

Chicken and wine go hand-in-hand in countless dishes around the world, and in Germany, things are no different. The European country boasts woihinkelche as one of its standout wine-based chicken dishes. Woihinkelche is a fairly simple, but totally delicious dish of chicken simmered in a combination of Riesling and cream, with garlic, onion, mushrooms, and butter thrown in for extra flavor. The pièce de résistance of the dish is a couple of generous handfuls of sliced grapes thrown in just before the woihinkelche is served, which provide bursts of sweetness and help to highlight the wine's briny, acidic notes.

As you might expect as a result of the inclusion of one of its star ingredients, woihinkelche comes from the Rheingau region where some varieties of Riesling are produced. The dish is typically served with plain white rice, which serves to soak up all the delicious juices from the chicken and the savory, flavorful broth. Naturally, it's best when paired with a glass of crisp white Riesling to wash everything down.

Let's talk about the chicken döner, guys. It's easy to assume that this dish comes from Turkey — and in a lot of ways, it kinda does. Well, in its earliest form, at least. Döner kebabs (with the word coming from the Turkish dönmek, which means "turning") first began to evolve in the Ottoman Empire hundreds of years ago. Meat would be skewered onto a rotating spit and roasted, before being served over pieces of pide (a Turkish flatbread) and topped with sauce.

However, the modern döner and the chicken döner are different entirely. The cooking style of the traditional döner was brought to Germany by an influx of Turkish guest workers, who turned to opening restaurants during the financial crisis of the early 1970s. This döner morphed into a hybrid food designed to honor Turkish cooking customs and German tastes, with lighter toppings like sliced tomatoes and red cabbage. The chicken gemüse döner, a spin on a classic döner that's topped with crumbled white cheese and fried vegetables, was invented in the mid-1990s by a restauranteur called Mustafa Demir, debuting in Berlin before spreading across the rest of Germany. While this dish is truly international, it's hard to deny that Germany was the place it truly came into its own, and it remains unbelievably popular in the country to this day.

As a country that borders nine others, it's no surprise that Germany shares a lot of interchange with the cuisine of its neighbors. A clear example of this in food form is geschnetzeltes, or chicken in cream sauce. Although this dish is popular across Germany, its origins actually lie in Switzerland, and more specifically in the German-speaking city of Zürich. Geschnetzeltes was first made with veal, but nowadays any type of meat can be used in it, including chicken. The dish is a relatively modern creation and first started becoming popular in Zürich in the mid-20th century, before crossing the border.

Making geschnetzeltes is pretty simple, and you get a lot of bang for your buck. Chicken geschnetzeltes starts with sautéeing chicken breasts in butter until they're cooked through (the chicken can sometimes be coated in flour beforehand, which helps it brown and adds substance to the sauce). Then, mushrooms, wine, cream, and tarragon are thrown into the mix, with everything simmering until the sauce is reduced. Geschnetzeltes is served with hot buttered noodles and a side of veggies, for a complete, hearty meal.