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Here's how to make chicken karaage, a delicious Japanese fried chicken.
Transcript
00:00Hi everybody, I'm Tim Anderson. I have a restaurant in Brixton called Nanban,
00:05and I got a cookbook called Nanban as well.
00:09We do what's called Japanese soul food, so quite hearty, filling,
00:13kind of Japanese junk food type stuff that I absolutely love.
00:16And I'm going to do a dish that is an absolute classic of Japanese soul food today.
00:21It's called chicken karaage, Japanese fried chicken, which is in my mind
00:25probably the best fried chicken recipe you can make, and it's super easy actually.
00:31So first we're going to start with our marinade.
00:34So usually chicken karaage is a very simple marinade of sake and ginger and garlic and things like that.
00:40My marinade or my recipe is significantly more complicated,
00:43and actually what I'm showing you here today is not the same karaage that we make in the restaurant.
00:48That is a top secret recipe, but this is pretty close and it's very, very good.
00:52So we're going to start with some shallots.
00:56Banana shallots, I'm using the nice big long ones, two of them,
01:00but you can use the little shallots as well, in which case you'd need four.
01:04So these just go into a blender or you can use a food processor,
01:09or if you don't have these you can just very finely mince.
01:13Then I'm going to add some garlic.
01:16This is 10 cloves just peeled in the blender as well.
01:20Then some fresh ginger, about 15-20 grams.
01:23It's been peeled and I do want to slice this fairly thinly before we blend it,
01:28because one of my biggest pet peeves in cooking are the little fibers in ginger
01:32that don't break down very well in blenders or food processors if you chuck it in whole.
01:36So you want to slice this across the grain first to break those down,
01:39so you don't have that weird hairy texture.
01:41Once you do, that goes in the blender as well.
01:43So then we've got seasonings.
01:45Lots and lots of seasonings.
01:47We're going to do half a teaspoon of salt, quarter teaspoon-ish pepper.
01:53That's white pepper, which I really like in Japanese cooking, but black pepper's fine.
01:57Then we've got some hot chili sauce, not too much.
02:00You don't want this to be spicy.
02:02You just want it to have a little bit of heat.
02:04Then we've got some rice vinegar.
02:07Rice vinegar is one of my favorite seasonings.
02:10It's very, very fresh and crisp.
02:12It's got a little bit of sweetness to it as well. It's a lovely vinegar.
02:14Then we've got some mirin.
02:16So mirin is a sweetened cooking sake.
02:19That's going to add some lovely sweetness.
02:21Then we've got some actual sake as well, which is, of course, Japanese rice wine.
02:27And that's got a lovely sort of savory quality to it, like a fermented rice flavor.
02:33Ah, then we've got some sesame oil.
02:35Not too much because it's quite a strong flavor.
02:38That goes in as well.
02:40Then some soy sauce, not too much because if you use a lot of soy sauce,
02:43this marinade becomes very dark and then it tends to burn when you fry it.
02:46And finally, we've got some fresh limes.
02:48So I'm going to give them a little roll just to get their juices flowing.
02:52And I need about three tablespoons or so of this.
02:55I'm going to save one half of these limes back for garnish
02:59and just squeeze the rest straight in there.
03:03If you can get yuzu juice, by the way, that is excellent, but it is very expensive.
03:09Limes are nearly as good, but there's nothing quite like yuzu if you can get it.
03:13All right, then we blend.
03:18That's done, so now we're going to prep our chicken.
03:21So one of the best things about chicken karaage is the size and shape of it.
03:25It's a great crunch to juicy chicken ratio.
03:30Instead of big chunks, like big joints of chicken like you get in American fried chicken,
03:34you get little sort of nugget-sized pieces.
03:37So that's what we're going to do, and that's not just for flavor or texture.
03:41That's also because it helps them cook evenly and quickly.
03:45So you want to cut chicken thighs.
03:47And by the way, these are boneless but skin-on chicken thighs
03:50because there's so much flavor in the skin.
03:53And thighs are great because they're very juicy, they're very, very flavorful,
03:57but they don't have a lot of weird sinews in them like a drumstick or a leg.
04:01So most chicken thighs you'll get about four pieces out of...
04:05If the thighs are bigger, you get five.
04:08If they're smaller, you'll just get three sometimes.
04:11All right, so that's our chicken prepped up back in the bowl.
04:16And then we add the marinade.
04:20Mmm, lovely, which has so much flavor in it.
04:24Make sure everything's really nice and evenly coated.
04:26And then this will marinate for at least an hour.
04:29Actually, you could fry it just like this and it would be pretty tasty,
04:32but the longer it marinates, the more flavor you'll get.
04:34So I'm going to go into the fridge. We'll come back later.
04:36So we've got the chicken in its lovely marinade just chilling out in the fridge.
04:40And most karaage at this point you would just flour and deep fry.
04:45Usually karaage uses what's called katakuriko, which is kind of like a potato starch.
04:49It's very, very light and very crispy.
04:51But I actually use corn flour for my karaage, which is even more crispy.
04:55It's sort of halfway between a flour and a potato starch texture.
04:58So we're going to start with that.
05:00The other thing I'm doing that's slightly nontraditional for my karaage
05:03is making a seasoned flour like you'd get from American fried chicken
05:06because I really like to pack as much flavor into this dish as possible.
05:10So we'll start with corn flour. We're going to add to that a little bit of salt.
05:15A little bit of white pepper.
05:18Black pepper's fine as well.
05:22White and black sesame seeds, or just white or just black, it's all good.
05:28We've got some chili powder, just a tiny bit.
05:31Some dried ginger.
05:35And then finally, this is dashi powder.
05:38So dashi is, of course, a Japanese stock made from smoked fish and kombu, seaweed.
05:45It's a really, really lovely flavor, really, really satisfying and smoky and fishy and fragrant.
05:49And this is essentially the stock cube version, which makes a decent dashi actually.
05:53But what I like to use it for is seasoning other things.
05:55You put some of this in your stir fries, your fried rice, or like I'm doing now,
05:58your seasoned karaage flour, and it just sort of lifts the whole thing.
06:02It's got a great sort of satisfying mouth-filling flavor.
06:06So we'll stir that all together, nice and well-mixed.
06:10There we go.
06:12And now we're ready to deep fry.
06:14Okay, so we've got our seasoned flour ready to go, and our oil is up to temperature,
06:19so it's time for me to fry.
06:21Temperature is important with this dish because you really don't want this to burn.
06:24It'll taste really nasty, and obviously you don't want undercooked chicken.
06:27Nobody likes that.
06:28Not safe, not delicious.
06:30So 160, that's the temperature we're going for for this size of chicken pieces.
06:35That'll get a great golden brown crust at the same time that it cooks through.
06:38It stays really juicy.
06:40So 160.
06:42And by the way, every time you deep fry, you want to use a nice big pan
06:45where the sides come up very high above the level of the oil
06:49so that if this does bubble up, it doesn't bubble up too much and overflow.
06:53All right, so we're going to take our marinated chicken.
06:56Just let that marinade drip off a bit.
06:58Throw a few pieces at a time into that seasoned flour.
07:02And you're going to want to fry this in batches, by the way.
07:04Don't try to do all of it at once because you will crowd the pan.
07:09That'll do two things.
07:10One, the chicken will stick together, and it won't cook nicely.
07:14And also the steam that generates from the chicken
07:17as the moisture inside evaporates away into the oil
07:20will actually start to steam the outside of the chicken as well.
07:23So you'll end up with sort of soft, sad chicken pieces instead of nice crispy bits.
07:28All right, so make sure that these are really well coated as well.
07:31The more coating you have, the crispier, crunchier they'll be.
07:33And also you want to protect that marinade from the hot oil
07:37because it does have sugar in it.
07:39It does have soy sauce, and it'll burn if it touches the hot oil too much
07:43or is in contact for too long.
07:45All right, so we're going to layer that into the oil.
07:49Lovely sizzle.
07:54Shake off as much flour as you can as well.
07:57And you're going to want to fry these for about six minutes or so.
08:01If you have a probe thermometer, a meat thermometer at home,
08:04it's a good idea to use this because you don't really know
08:07what's going on inside the chicken until you check it.
08:10And you can either do that by cutting into it or by probing it.
08:14It's the easiest way.
08:18There it is.
08:19Beautiful, golden, juicy, crunchy chicken karaage.
08:23And this will stay crispy for ages as well,
08:25so don't worry about doing it in batches.
08:27You can take your time with it.
08:29The main thing is just don't overcrowd that pan.
08:33You can just serve it as is, but when you bring it to the table,
08:37it's pub food again, so you don't have to be fancy with it.
08:42Sometimes people serve this with a dip like a mayonnaise
08:46or ponzu sauce, something like that.
08:48But to me, this chicken is just so crunchy and flavorful and juicy as it is.
08:53I don't really think it needs anything except for maybe some fresh lime.
08:58And that's it. That's chicken karaage.
09:00That is Japanese fried chicken, maybe the best fried chicken.