Karaage Japanese Fried Chicken I Recipe
Here's how to make chicken karaage, a delicious Japanese fried chicken.
Transcript
00:00 Hi everybody, I'm Tim Anderson.
00:02 I have a restaurant in Brixton called Nanban,
00:05 and I got a cookbook called Nanban as well.
00:09 We do what's called Japanese soul food,
00:11 so quite hearty, filling, kind of Japanese junk food type stuff
00:15 that I absolutely love.
00:16 And I'm gonna do a dish that is an absolute classic
00:19 of Japanese soul food today.
00:21 It's called chicken karaage, Japanese fried chicken,
00:24 which is in my mind probably the best fried chicken recipe
00:27 you can make, and it's super easy actually.
00:30 So first we're gonna start with our marinade.
00:33 So usually chicken karaage is a very simple marinade
00:36 of sake, ginger, and garlic and things like that.
00:39 My marinade, or my recipe, is significantly more complicated.
00:42 And actually what I'm showing you here today
00:44 is not the same karaage that we make in the restaurant.
00:47 That is a top secret recipe, but this is pretty close
00:50 and it's very, very good.
00:51 So we're gonna start with some shallots.
00:56 Banana shallots, I'm using the nice big long ones,
00:59 two of them, but you can use the little shallots as well,
01:02 in which case you'd need four.
01:04 So these just go into a blender, or you can use a food processor,
01:09 or if you don't have these, you can just very finely mince.
01:13 Then I'm gonna add some garlic.
01:16 This is 10 cloves, just peeled in the blender as well.
01:20 Then some fresh ginger, about 15, 20 grams.
01:23 It's been peeled, and I do want to slice this fairly thinly
01:27 before we blend it, because one of my biggest pet peeves
01:30 in cooking are the little fibers in ginger
01:32 that don't break down very well in blenders or food processors
01:35 if you chuck it in whole.
01:36 So you want to slice this across the grain first
01:38 to break those down so you don't have that weird hairy texture.
01:41 Once you do, that goes in the blender as well.
01:43 So then we got seasonings.
01:45 Lots and lots of seasonings.
01:47 We're gonna do half a teaspoon of salt,
01:50 quarter teaspoon-ish pepper-- that's white pepper,
01:54 which I really like in Japanese cooking, but black pepper's fine.
01:57 Then we got some hot chili sauce, not too much.
02:00 You don't want this to be spicy.
02:02 You just want it to have a little bit of heat.
02:04 Then we've got some rice vinegar.
02:07 Rice vinegar is one of my favorite seasonings.
02:10 It's very, very fresh and crisp.
02:12 It's got a little bit of sweetness to it as well.
02:14 It's a lovely vinegar.
02:15 Then we've got some mirin.
02:17 So mirin is a sweetened cooking sake.
02:19 That's gonna add some lovely sweetness.
02:21 Then we've got some actual sake as well,
02:24 which is, of course, Japanese rice wine.
02:27 And that's got a lovely sort of savory quality to it,
02:30 like a fermented rice flavor.
02:33 Ah, then we've got some sesame oil.
02:35 Not too much 'cause it's quite a strong flavor.
02:38 That goes in as well.
02:40 Then some soy sauce.
02:41 Not too much 'cause if you use a lot of soy sauce,
02:43 this marinade becomes very dark,
02:45 and then it tends to burn when you fry it.
02:47 And finally, we've got some fresh limes.
02:49 So gonna give them a little roll
02:51 just to get their juices flowing.
02:53 And I need about 3 tablespoons or so of this.
02:56 I'm gonna save one half of these limes back for garnish
03:00 and just squeeze the rest straight in there.
03:04 If you can get yuzu juice, by the way,
03:07 that is excellent, but it is very expensive.
03:09 Limes are nearly as good,
03:11 but there's nothing quite like yuzu if you can get it.
03:13 All right, then we blend.
03:15 [music]
03:18 That's done, so now we're gonna prep our chicken.
03:21 So one of the best things about chicken karaage
03:23 is the size and shape of it so that you get--
03:27 it's a great crunch-to-juicy chicken ratio.
03:30 Instead of big chunks, like big joints of chicken
03:32 like you get in American fried chicken,
03:34 you get little sort of nugget-sized pieces.
03:37 So that's what we're gonna do.
03:39 And that's not just for flavor or texture.
03:41 That's also because it helps them cook evenly and quickly.
03:45 So you want to cut chicken thighs.
03:47 And by the way, these are boneless,
03:49 but skin-on chicken thighs,
03:51 'cause there's so much flavor in the skin.
03:53 And thighs are great because they're very juicy,
03:56 they're very, very flavorful,
03:58 but they don't have a lot of weird sinews in them
04:00 like a drumstick or a leg.
04:02 So most chicken thighs you'll get about 4 pieces out of--
04:05 if the thighs are bigger, you get 5.
04:08 If they're smaller, you'll just get 3 sometimes.
04:11 All right, so that's our chicken prepped up,
04:13 back in the bowl.
04:16 And then we add the marinade.
04:19 Mmm, lovely.
04:21 Which has so much flavor in it.
04:23 Make sure everything's really nice and evenly coated.
04:26 And then this will marinate for at least an hour.
04:29 Actually, you could fry it just like this,
04:31 and it'd be pretty tasty, but the longer it marinates,
04:33 the more flavor you'll get.
04:35 So this will go into the fridge. We'll come back later.
04:37 So we've got the chicken in its lovely marinade,
04:39 just chilling out in the fridge.
04:41 And most karaage at this point you would just flour and deep fry.
04:45 Usually karaage uses what's called katakuriko,
04:47 which is kind of like a potato starch.
04:49 It's very, very light and very crispy.
04:51 But I actually use corn flour for my karaage,
04:53 which is even more crispy.
04:55 It's sort of halfway between a flour and a potato starch texture.
04:58 So we're going to start with that.
05:00 The other thing I'm doing that's slightly nontraditional for my karaage
05:03 is making a seasoned flour like you'd get from American fried chicken.
05:06 Because I really like to pack as much flavor into this dish as possible.
05:10 So we'll start with corn flour.
05:12 We're going to add to that a little bit of salt,
05:15 a little bit of white pepper.
05:18 Black pepper's fine as well.
05:22 White and black sesame seeds,
05:25 or just white or just black, it's all good.
05:28 We've got some chili powder, just a tiny bit.
05:31 Some dried ginger.
05:35 And then finally, this is dashi powder.
05:38 So dashi is, of course, a Japanese stock made from smoked fish and kombu, seaweed.
05:45 It's a really, really lovely flavor, really, really satisfying and smoky and fishy and fragrant.
05:49 And this is essentially the stock cube version, which makes a decent dashi actually.
05:53 But what I like to use it for is seasoning other things.
05:55 You put some of this in your stir-fries, your fried rice, or like I'm doing now,
05:58 your seasoned karaage flour, and it just sort of lifts the whole thing.
06:02 It's got a great sort of satisfying mouth-filling flavor.
06:05 So we'll stir that all together, nice and well-mixed.
06:09 There we go.
06:12 And now we're ready to deep-fry.
06:14 Okay, so we've got our seasoned flour ready to go,
06:17 and our oil is up to temperature, so it's time for me to fry.
06:20 Temperature is important with this dish because you really don't want this to burn.
06:24 It'll taste really nasty, and obviously you don't want undercooked chicken.
06:27 Nobody likes that. Not safe, not delicious.
06:30 So 160, that's the temperature we're going for for this size of chicken pieces.
06:35 That'll get a great golden brown crust at the same time that it cooks through and stays really juicy.
06:40 So 160.
06:42 And by the way, every time you deep-fry, you want to use a nice big pan
06:45 where the sides come up very high above the level of the oil
06:49 so that if this does bubble up, it doesn't bubble up too much and overflow.
06:53 All right, so we're going to take our marinated chicken,
06:56 just let that marinade drip off a bit.
06:58 Throw a few pieces at a time into that seasoned flour.
07:01 And you're going to want to fry this in batches, by the way.
07:04 Don't try to do all of it at once because you will crowd the pan.
07:09 That'll do two things. One, the chicken will stick together, and it won't cook nicely.
07:13 And also the steam that generates from the chicken,
07:17 as the moisture inside evaporates away into the oil,
07:20 will actually start to steam the outside of the chicken as well.
07:23 So you'll end up with sort of soft, sad chicken pieces instead of nice, crispy bits.
07:28 All right, so make sure that these are really well coated as well.
07:31 The more coating you have, the crispier, crunchier they'll be.
07:34 And also you want to protect that marinade from the hot oil
07:37 because it does have sugar in it, it does have soy sauce,
07:41 and it'll burn if it touches the hot oil too much or is in contact for too long.
07:45 All right, so we're going to layer that into the oil.
07:49 Lovely sizzle.
07:52 Shake off as much flour as you can as well.
07:56 And you're going to want to fry these for about six minutes or so.
08:00 If you have a probe thermometer, a meat thermometer at home,
08:03 it's a good idea to use this because you don't really know what's going on inside the chicken
08:08 until you check it.
08:10 And you can either do that by cutting into it or by probing it.
08:13 It's the easiest way.
08:17 There it is.
08:19 Beautiful, golden, juicy, crunchy chicken karaage.
08:23 And this will stay crispy for ages as well, so don't worry about doing it in batches.
08:27 You can take your time with it.
08:29 The main thing is just don't overcrowd that pan.
08:32 You can just serve it as is, but when you bring it to the table, it's pub food again,
08:38 so you don't have to be fancy with it.
08:42 Sometimes people serve this with a dip like mayonnaise or ponzu sauce, something like that.
08:48 But to me, this chicken is just so crunchy and flavorful and juicy as it is.
08:53 I don't really think it needs anything except for maybe some fresh lime.
08:58 And that's it. That's chicken karaage.
09:00 That is Japanese fried chicken, maybe the best fried chicken.
09:04 (upbeat music)
09:06 (upbeat music)