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Korean Fried Chicken is also known as KFC. I love that! I also love this CRISPY, sweet, spicy, and garlicky fried chicken (Yangnyeom Dak). It's definitely yummy. 🙂
The typical way it is served in Korea is with cold beer (essential!) and pickled radishes, such as daikon.
A Korean Obsession
Fried chicken in Korea became popular in the early 90's, and they are absolutely obsessed with it. I read that there are about 50,000 fried chicken restaurants throughout Korea. Many of these are small chain restaurants that will deliver to you via motorbike.
The explosion of fried chicken restaurants in Korea followed a terrible financial crisis in Asia, where many men lost their jobs. A lot of these men opened fried chicken restaurants, due to the low initial investment and low overhead.
Fried Chicken - The Korean Way
Korean fried chicken is super duper crunchy. Koreans fry their chicken twice. The chicken is seasoned and then coated with potato starch. It is then fried at a lower temperature, removed to rest, and then refried at a higher temperature. The result? Super crispy and thin coating that is less greasy than our American fried chicken..and absolutely delicious.
Korean fried chicken is arguably the best fried chicken in the world. I'm on the verge of agreeing with that!
The chicken is fried, and then coated with a spicy, sweet, and garlicky sauce. The finishing touch includes sesame seeds and green onions as a garnish.
There are various seasonings for Korean fried chicken, and I have chosen the Yangnyeom Dak, which is the gochujang based sauce for this recipe. Gochujang is Korean red hot pepper paste.
The Yangnyeom Dak sauce is simply gochujang, rice vinegar, garlic, honey, and soy sauce. Delicious on the KFC, I'm also thinking about pouring it on everything else. 🙂
Yangnyeom Dak - One of the 1,000 Foods to Eat Before You Die
Yangnyeom Dak is one of the foods listed in the book 1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die, by Mimi Sheraton. It became #16 in my quest to try each and every one of the foods in the book.
Please follow along with me on this quest to try the 1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die, from the book by Mimi Sheraton! Join me in this journey and discover new foods, experiences, and cuisines which I hope will add inspiration, fun, and joy to your life! For a list of the foods tried so far visit the 1,000 Foods to Eat Project page.
I hope you'll try frying chicken the Korean way! It's definitely worth trying and you may be convinced, as many others are, that this is the best fried chicken in the world. 🙂
You may also enjoy these recipes for other Korean foods: jajangmyeon, Korean perilla leaves, bok choy kimchi, Korean zucchini side dish, and pa kimchi.
식사 맛있게하세요 ("enjoy your meal" in Korean)
Korean Fried Chicken - Yangnyeom Dak
Equipment
- Deep Fat Fryer
Ingredients
- vegetable oil enough to fill up your deep fat fryer
- 3 lbs chicken drumsticks skin on
- salt to season the chicken
- pepper to season the chicken
- 6 tablespoon potato starch
- 6 tablespoon gochujang
- 2 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
- 6 cloves garlic minced
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce I used Kikkoman
- 1 tablespoon roasted sesame seeds for garnish
- 2 green onions sliced, for garnish
Instructions
- Let your chicken rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Coat with potato starch.
Prepare the Sauce
- Combine the gochujang, rice vinegar, garlic, honey, and soy together.
Frying the Chicken
- Heat your deep fat fryer to 320 degrees. Once ready, deep fry your chicken for 10 minutes.
- Remove from the fryer, and drain on paper towels. Increase the temperature to 360. All the chicken to rest for 10 minutes.
- Once the temperatures reaches 360, return the chicken for its second frying, and fry for approximately 7 minutes. Remove and drain on paper towels.
- Coat the chicken with the yangnyeom dak sauce. I found the easiest way to do this is to pour it over the chicken sitr, and then finish off coating all sides with a baster.
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