Korean · Main
Korean Fried Chicken
- Advanced
- 60 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, a warm current of chile, with a clean, bright snap.
Ingredients
- 1kg chicken wings or boneless thigh chunks
- Dry brine: salt, pepper, ginger
- Batter: ½ cup potato starch + ¼ cup flour + ½ tsp baking powder + cold water
- Sauce: 3 tbsp gochujang, 2 tbsp honey, 1 tbsp each soy, rice vinegar; garlic, butter knob
- Oil for frying, sesame
Equipment
Thermometer · Deep-fry pot
The skills inside
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · soy · sesame
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Toss chicken in a thin, drippy batter.
- Fry once at 165°C, 8 min; rest 5. 8 min
- Fry again at 190°C until shattering, 4 min. 4 min
- Toss in the warmed sauce or serve it alongside to preserve maximum crunch.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Cold barley tea (boricha)
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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