The Best Korean Fried Chicken At Home

It's a fair debate. What is the greatest fried chicken in the world? You might be looking at it. Korean fried chicken is by far one of my most favorite bites of chicken for almost any application, whether it's wings, a sandwich, or just a leg fried that you gnaw on until the bone is clanking against your teeth. It's a special thing because it's both crispy yet sauced, and it's one of the only breadings in the world that can withstand a heavy sauce. This is kind of a riff off of Yangnyeom chicken, which if you don't know or you haven't had, this is the time to do it because anybody can make it, but I would highly recommend that if you think you've had the best fried chicken ever and you've never had Korean fried chicken, this is your chance. So that being said, let's make this, shall we? So we're gonna start by marinating our chicken. We have two versions, a classic wing and a bonus nugget version. Then we'll whip up a beautiful, perfect gochujang sauce, bread our chicken, double fry, sauce, and serve. For our sauce, small sauce pan onto a flame, and we're gonna add a lot of different little fun, little thangs in here, okay? I'm making a big batch of sauce. We're gonna put three quarters of a cup of gochujang in here. Yes, it's a lot. It's going to be a larger batch of sauce. Then you're gonna add six tablespoons of rice syrup. This is more of a traditional ingredient choice. You could use just regular sugar. You could use, honestly, oftentimes I use honey as a replacement. I find that rice syrup is more traditional from an ingredient standpoint, but also just like a flavor standpoint. Is it all that different from honey? Yes, no, maybe so. Then we're gonna add a third cup of dark soy sauce, six tablespoons of white distilled vinegar, a third cup of sweet soy sauce, and then you're gonna add a half cup of good old-fashioned ketchup. Sounds like something you should skip. Trust me when I say it's the secret ingredient. It just is. Now, mix it all together, set it over medium-high heat, and you're gonna let that boil and reduce for just about two to three minutes. Now, while that's boiling, we're gonna chop up the most important ingredient, seven cloves of garlic. Make sure that you do not add this while it's boiling. We're gonna add it at the very, very, very end. So you can put this in a food processor. You can smash it with the flat side of your knife. And as I've said many times, I mean, it's almost mint at that point. Okay, rinse and repeat with all your cloves. And then you just need to run your knife through it a couple of times. Till it is fine or not fine as you want. That is plenty. Now, sauce has been reduced. The heat is now completely, completely, completely off. Do not boil your garlic in this. It'll turn bitter and acrid. Always add it at the end of the sauce. We're gonna add all of our garlic in, stir that in. You can leave the garlic in there completely and just serve it as is. For this one, I would actually recommend letting it steep for about five to 10 minutes and then just straining the garlic out before you serve it. Or let it steep until you're about to use it, then strain the garlic out through a fine mesh sieve. It's a nicer looking sauce. That's really the only reason. I have two options for you. We've got a nugget and then we have wings. The one that everybody loves, but not split wings, whole wings with the flat and the drumette attached as you can see here. So we're gonna essentially dry brine these. First, two teaspoons of salt, kosher salt. About a half teaspoon of granulated sugar. And the most important ingredient, one teaspoon of MSG. Yes, I like it, I love it. I want you to put it in your chicken. And then about roughly a teaspoon of fresh cracked black pepper. And then a one inch knob of ginger grated. Really this is more of like a cure. Pop some gloves on and then just massage all that into the chicken. I want it as evenly distributed as physically possible. Super important that you do this part, okay? It's not a negotiable piece. I think it makes the chicken that much better. You ever make fried chicken and then by the time it's done, you're like, ah, it doesn't have that much flavor because you didn't add it to the physical chicken. You just added it to the breading. So by the time you get to the meat, there's no, there's just nothing. It's just bland chicken. You don't want that, right? This is gonna give your chicken the, uh, boom. And then the sauce is just there to be its best friend, if that makes sense. Now, once that's done, you can use these right away and fry them right away. I totally get it, life is busy, but ideally you let these sit covered with plastic wrap in the fridge overnight to sort of cure and let that salt penetrate the chicken, okay? No dirty thoughts. Okay, this is a two station breading station. What is a two station breading station? I don't know, I just made it up. Basically, dry dredge and a wet batter. They go hand in hand because you must make the dry to make the wet. Yeah. So two cups of potato starch, one cup of all purpose flour, and the various seasonings being two and a half teaspoons of kosher salt, half a teaspoon of sugar, one teaspoon of MSG, one tablespoon of garlic powder, and one teaspoon of white pepper, which for some reason kind of smells like someone's bad breath. I don't know why. Whisk that together until thoroughly combined. Now that we have this, we can make our wet batter. We have our dry dredge, we mentioned it earlier. You're gonna take about a third cup of that dry dredge, put that into a separate bowl, along with one and a half teaspoons of baking powder. Whisk that together, and then add two thirds of a cup of cold water. So we essentially have a dip. We got our chicken wings. So essentially you'll take your wings, right? Wet hand, dry hand, always have a wet and a dry hand. Trust me, otherwise you're gonna have clumping on your hands to make it much harder to do this. So wings are gonna go into the dip, and you're gonna fully coat them. Then I want you to drop them in your flour mix. Coat thoroughly, toss it around, press the flour mix in, make sure it's completely and totally coated. We want no, no bald spots, okay? Shake off the excess, set on a dry baking sheet, and repeat the rest of your chicken. Another technique if you wanna do this, by the way, is before you actually start breading these, you can take your wet hand, dunk it in your sort of dip, and flick that dip, couple tablespoons of it into your dry batter, mix it around, and that'll give you little balls, little crispy crunchies that'll get attached to your chicken when you then lay it in there and bread it. Okay, so we're frying these two times. Very important for Korean fried chicken. So the first fry is to cook it all the way through and get us a sort of a protocrust. So 325 degree oil in a seven and a half quart pot, around three quarts of oil, halfway up, right? We're gonna drop our wings in, away from us, right? You don't drop it towards yourself, why? Come on, let's think for a second as to why. So you fit as much as you reasonably can in there. You might not be able to fit more than about, let's say, four or five whole wings, that's all good. You're gonna let that fry for about eight to 10 minutes, just until cooked through. You don't want really any color on it quite yet. Now we're ready for the most crucial part, the Korean fried chicken classic method, which is the double fry. So we're gonna increase the temperature to around 350 Fahrenheit. You can also go up to 375 if you want. I do 350, so it's a little bit slower. It has more time to get extra, extra crispy. So crank the heat all the way up. While you're waiting for this to come up, one thing that you can do is you can clean up the oil really quickly with a skimmer, if you have one. If you don't have one, that's fine. You can skip this part. I like to do it so I don't end up with little speckles of brown bits on my finished chicken. So to do that, you're going to scoop in one direction and sort of create a whirlpool and catch the little dried bits of flour. Look at that. All that was sitting in the bottom. Tap that out. And you can repeat that as many times as you want until the oil is as clean as you can get it. Now we're at temperature, so we're gonna drop our chicken wings back in. They will start popping, that's for sure. The oil is extra hot now. Fit as many as you can without overwhelming the oil. I got two left behind. It will be loud. This is fine as long as your oil's not erupting over the sides. If it starts to erupt over the sides, cut the heat off immediately. Now after about two to three minutes, you're gonna get a nice, beautiful golden color on these. These won't turn as brown as if it were all AP flour and that's because potato starch doesn't brown quite as much. That's okay. Point is that they will be very crispy. So we'll pull those out, drain them on a wire rack, let them cool off and get rid of that excess oil. Any wings you have remaining, keep that heat cranked. You can always drop those in. I have literally two more wings left. I might as well drop them in, right? Once your wings are done and drained, place those into a bowl while they're still hot. Drench them up with as much or as little sauce as you like. Toss and stir to coat completely. If you need help coating it, you could always brush it with some of the sauce as well. Then just plate those bad boys up. Put them in a bowl. You could stack them up in a bowl. You could daintily lay them in a plate like I am here and garnish with sesame seeds toasted and thinly sliced green onion. Now for your nuggets, we have boneless, skinless chicken thighs. We've got about six of them. They will vary in size and poundage. We're gonna take those, put them on a board and then just cut them into bite-sized pieces. It's really not that complicated. You don't even have to remove the fat. Like just make it easy on yourself. Cut them into bite-sized pieces and then plop them in a bowl. We're gonna do the same thing with the thighs that we did with our wings, which is to cure them. These will actually, in my opinion, cure even better because there's no like skin or anything or bones that are getting in the way of that seasoning. So the seasoning is really gonna get deep in the thigh. Now, remember, same exact thing, okay? This time, one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt, half a teaspoon of sugar, half teaspoon of MSG. Then finally, again, one inch knob of grated ginger directly in there. And then another teaspoon of fresh cracked black pepper. And then again, just mix and combine thoroughly. Make sure every single piece of chicken is evenly coated in the sugar and salt and everything. Nice spice. If you don't do that, you end up with some of your chicken that's really salty and some of it that has nothing on it. Please just take your time. Get in there, get dirty. Whether you got gloves or not, I don't give a ----. Just get your hands in there. You can always wash your hands. That feels nice. Okay, again, this, because there's no skin or bone, you could use this right away and honestly, it probably would be fine. But if you let it sit in the fridge for at least an hour or overnight, it'll have more time for the seasoning to penetrate it. The same exact technique will be used for the chopped chicken thighs, aka the nuggets. You go into the wet batter, then into dry batter, and then onto a sheet tray, and then we'll fry them. Exactly like our wings. You know, till done and crispy. Then aggressively toss them in your sauce. You want total coverage. And finally, pop them into a beautiful bowl stacked nice and high. Add a little green onion and dig in. I have a bonus trick for you. What do you do with all this oil, Josh? Everybody always asks me, what do you do with the leftover oil? Do you splash it in your face, throw it down the drain? Do not drain, please, dear God. You know, for many years, what I used to do is I would pour the cooled down oil in the remaining jug of oil, in the empty jug that the oil then came out of, put it back in and threw it away. Till I found a better way to do that. Look for some form of cooking oil solidifier. This one's called Fry Away. I'm not sponsored by them. You don't have to buy this brand. I don't give a. The point is just buy a oil solidifier. Follow the directions. This is one scoop of it per quart of oil. So I'll do three scoops. You know what? I'm very much of a, hey, I'm not around here. So I'm gonna do four scoops just in case. You give that a little stir. And this has to be done while the oil is still hot. Make sure it's dissolved and well incorporated. Now, once this cools down, it's gonna solidify into a solid block and you just dump that in the trash can. You're done. Clean the thing out. You're ready to go again. And it's biodegradable, which is pretty awesome. So love that for us. We've made it to the final taste test. I'm a little messy because I splashed some sauce on me. That'll happen. Maybe you don't wear a white shirt when you make this or any clothes for that matter. Let's start with the classic, the wings stunner. These have been sitting for so long. I doubt they're still crispy, but I would be wrong. They are still crispy. That's the beauty of, God damn, those are crazy. This might be one of my best recipes of all time. If I'm being flat out, I gotta be real with you guys. If you make this recipe to spec, it will boggle your mind. I mean, from the flavor and the depth of the flavor from the chicken that's brought out in the way that it's cooked, the crispiness, the flavor of the sauce being so perfectly balanced from salty to sweet, a little acidic, tiny tinge of spice that most people can handle. Not crazy at all in terms of the spicy department. It's like a nice warming heat. But just overall, it's like a perfect food. It's everything you want in one bite. Fatty, crunchy, chickeny, meaty, beefy, or beefy, Jesus. I'm like saying things that aren't even there. It's so God damn good. Honestly, this is a 9.5 out of 10 wing, at least. Okay, nugget though, how does that compare? Equally great in its own right. Honestly, I love the ease of making the nugget. You cut up the chicken, it fries really quickly, it's simple, it's fast. But nothing compares to the satisfaction of eating a whole wing. You got the God damn filet mignon right here. You got the ribeye right here. It's almost like two cuts in one. You get to experience all that fatty deliciousness. Then you have the leaner part of the drumette. It's crispy in some areas, more skin in other areas. I mean, it's just perfect food! Korean fried chicken, you can make it at home two different ways. Love you so much, subscribe. Get the, get the recipe in the ring first. Get the, am I having a stroke? Get the recipe in the link in the description. Subscribe, love you so much.