I’m pro raising agent, which, thanks to the bubbles it produces when it hits the hot oil, yields lighter, airier results, but I don’t see enough difference from replacing some of the water in the batter with vodka to make the investment worthwhile. Cornstarch also can’t form gluten, so it doesn’t turn tough.” (The more readily available cornflour is also marginally preferable to the potato variety, because of its higher amylose content.)Īfter trying Geary’s more flour-heavy recipe and Maangchi’s starchy one, I decide on López-Alt’s 50:50 ratio as the best of both worlds: it’s delicately crisp, but has enough integrity to withstand the onslaught of sauce. Geary explains better than I can why the combination works: “The proteins in wheat flour help the batter bond to the meat and also brown deeply cornstarch (a pure starch) doesn’t cling or brown as well as flour, but it crisps up nicely … because pure starch releases more amylose, a starch molecule that fries up super-crispy. The simplest “batter” is Hooni Kim’s second layer of potato starch, which proves astonishingly crunchy, if a little powdery in comparison with the other recipes, which all use some wheat flour as well. Hooni Kim’s approach leads to an ‘astonishingly crunchy’ batter. The baking powder raises the pH of the skin, which apparently helps it crisp, while the cornflour absorbs moisture, creating a better surface for the batter to cling to, a science even I can understand. López-Alt likens his solution, in which the wings are dipped in a mixture of cornflour, salt and baking powder and left to air dry for an hour, to “a painter rolling on a layer of primer to make sure the paint sticks to the walls”.
#Korean fried chicken zippys skin#
The pre-gameĬhickens, inconveniently, come encased in skin that’s designed (let’s not get into that here) to repel water, a quality that is useful for the chicken, but less than ideal when you’re hoping to coat it in batter. That said, López-Alt favours “meaty, whole-wing portions with the tips still attached, rather than drumettes and flats”, so if you’re not handy with a cleaver, and don’t know a butcher who is, keep them intact with Kenji’s blessing. I would suggest separating them into the rather tweely named drumettes and wingettes, as Judy Joo and Geary explicitly recommend (photos of other recipes hint that some, such as Maangchi, assume this is obvious), because it makes them much easier both to cook and to eat. You’ll be in good company with wings, though: Michelin-starred chef Hooni Kim describes them as “my favourite part of the chicken enough fat and bone to keep the meat very moist during the cooking process”. Larger chicken breasts or thighs have a tendency to burn on the outside before they’re cooked through, so if you’d prefer to use those cuts, divide them into smaller pieces before use, and note that, as J Kenji López-Alt explains, dark meat, such as thigh, is better suited to the high temperatures involved. Wings are the thing here: portioned whole chickens are apparently traditional, but, as Andrea Geary explains in Cook’s Illustrated, Korean birds tend to be smaller than US ones, and thus lend themselves better to deep frying. But if you don’t, well, keep on reading.įor Andrea Geary, smaller cuts are much better for the deep-frying treatment. If you lived in South Korea, you could probably get them all delivered to you in less time that it takes to finish this piece. One of the things that sets Korean fried chicken apart from other varieties is that it often comes bathed in sauce – South Korean YouTube star turned author Emily Kim, AKA Maangchi, has seven different recipes on her website.
What was once an occasional treat has become the takeaway of choice, perfect for sharing with kids or to partner a cold beer. Despite its ubiquity – in 2016, there were more than twice as many fried chicken restaurants in the country than all the hamburger, pizza and sandwich joints put together – KFC is a relatively recent phenomenon, introduced, it’s said, by US soldiers during the Korean War, and made more accessible by falling food prices and a rise in disposable income in the decades that followed.
“K oreans,” according to Vice magazine, “are the undisputed Asian masters of chicken.” I suspect there may be some dispute over this, but even a few Filipinos, themselves no slouches when it comes to chicken, concede South Korea’s mastery of the deep-fat frier.
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