Name: Korean Fried Chicken
Prep time: 8 h
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 9 h
Yield: 4
Ingredients: 6 tbsp ketchup; 8 tbsp honey; 4 tbsp light soy sauce; 4 tbsp white sesame oil; 2 tsp gochujang; 2 chili padi, choppped; 1 kg chicken wings or drumlets; 2 tbsp Korean or Chinese Rice wine; 1 1cm piece of ginger, minced; 4 clove garlic, minced; 1 tsp salt; 2 dash black pepper; 2 dash white pepper; 3 oz potato starch; 3 oz corn starch; cooking oil for deep frying; 2 tbsp sesame seeds

Korean Fried Chicken

This dish gotta be everybody's favourite if you love crispy, flavourful fried chicken. The sauce I made here is a revised honey bbq sauce made with Korean gochujang, honey and ketchup. You can add chopped chili padi (bird's eye chilli) to the sauce to spice it up if you like your wings extra spicy. In this recipe, I use Chicken Wings or Drumlets but you can also apply the same to whole chicken cut into bit size pieces.

Author: Wokdiaries Cooking Method: deep-fry, Fry, Modern, Thermomix Cuisine: Asian, Korean

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Prep Time 8 hrs Cook Time 1 hr Total Time 9 hrs Difficulty: Intermediate Cooking Temp: 98 °C Servings: 4 Best Season: Suitable throughout the year

Instructions

Season the chicken overnight

1. Add the chicken, wine, minced ginger, minced garlic and salt in a large mixing bowl or Indian pan with cover. Combine to mix well.
2. Add white and black pepper to taste.
3. Add in the flour mixture and coat the chicken evenly with the flour. It will be sticky with dry flour bits but that's ok. ensure every piece of chicken is coated in the batter.
4. Cover and set aside the season in the fridge overnight.

Fry the chicken

1. Remove chicken from the fridge and mix well.
2. In a deep saucepan, wok or deep fryer, add a generous amount of oil and heat it under high heat. Use the chopstick dip method to check oil temperature. The oil around the chopstick should bubble vigorously.
3. Lower the battered chicken to the oil carefully and fry them until they are about half cooked and the batter is a light golden brown (about 5 mins, depending on the size of chicken).
4. Let the fried chicken rest and drip dry on a wire rack or place them on a metal strainer lined with tempura or cooking paper to absorb the excess oil while frying the remaining chicken pieces.
5. When the first round of frying is completed, scoop out the debris from the oil using a metal skimmer or metal strainer. Let the chicken cool down while preparing the sauce.

Make the sauce (over the stove)

1. In a separate saucepan, add the sauce ingredients in a saucepan and mix well. Bring to a boil then let it simmer and thicken at low heat for 20 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent the sauce from burning.
2. Meanwhile, toast the sesame seeds in a toaster oven at 120C until fragrant but not burnt, about 5 minutes depending on your oven.
3. When the sauce thickens (depends on how runny or thick your ketchup is), you may remove the sauce from heat and let it settle.

Re-fry the chicken for a crispy batter

Re-frying the chicken is the secret to a crispy batter. Do not skip this step.
1. Heat the oil to be used for frying the chicken again under high heat. Use the chopstick dip method to check oil temperature. The oil around the chopstick should bubble vigorously.
2. Deep fry the chicken again until the batter is golden brown and crispy. The second time frying should be shorter than the first time, about 3 minutes. If you notice blood oozing from the joints of the chicken, fry it for a further 30 seconds to maximum of 1 minute to purge the blood. Do try to avoid overcooking the chicken pieces or the meat will be tough. If you're unsure, cut open one piece at its thickest point to take a look at its doneness.
3. Let the fried chicken drip dry on a wire rack or place them on a metal strainer lined with a fresh piece of tempura or cooking paper to absorb the excess oil.

Serve the chicken

1. Reserve 2 saucers/small cup of sauce for dipping and set aside.
2. If the sauce has become cold, warm up the sauce while stirring prior to dipping.
3. Pick up the fried chicken with a pair of chopsticks or tongs and dip the fried chicken pieces into the sauce. Coat the chicken generously with the sauce.
4. Place coated the chicken pieces in the serving plate.
5. Sprinkle the toasted sesame seeds on top of the chicken.
6. Remove any debris left behind and scoop the remainder of the sauce, if any, into the saucer containing the reserved sauce to serve as dipping sauce.
7. Serve hot and crispy.

Make the sauce (using Thermomix)

1. Place the sauce ingredients in the following order into the Thermomix bowl:
  - Soy sauce
  - sesame oil (see recipe notes #5)
  - honey
  - ketchup
  - gochujang
  - chilli
2. Set the Thermomix to cook for 25 minutes, 98C and speed 3 to mix the ingredients.
3. After 10 seconds, reduce speed to 1 and let it simmer.
4. Leave the sauce in the thermomix to keep warm at 40C after cooking.

Note

Instead of dipping the chicken pieces in the sauce, you can serve the chicken and the sauce separately by drizzling the sauce over the chicken, or place the sauce in a dipping saucer as dipping sauce.
Leftovers can be refrigerated for a day or two. Reheat with the griller or toaster but it won’t be as crunchy as eating fresh.
You can use the same method for seasoning and frying the chicken and make other flavours of sauces e.g. honey soy sauce, garlic soy sauce, etc. as dipping sauce. Alternatively, you can also eat the fried chicken without any sauce.
You can also use a thermomix to make the dipping sauce. Instructions for making the sauce with the thermomix is in the instructions.
Use the sesame oil to coat the Thermomix blades and spoon so that honey and ketchup will slide off the spoon and blade and not get stuck on them.

Korean Fried Chicken