Here's how to make chicken karaage, a delicious Japanese fried chicken.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Hi everybody, I'm Tim Anderson.
00:02 I have a restaurant in Brixton called Nanban,
00:04 and I got a cookbook called Nanban as well.
00:08 We do what's called Japanese soul food,
00:11 so quite hearty, filling, kind of Japanese junk food
00:14 type stuff 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.
00:20 It's called chicken karaage, Japanese fried chicken,
00:23 which is in my mind probably the best
00:25 fried chicken recipe you can make,
00:27 and it's super easy actually.
00:28 (upbeat music)
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 and ginger and garlic and things like that.
00:39 My marinade or my recipe is significantly more complicated.
00:43 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,
00:49 but this is pretty close 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
01:07 or you can use a food processor,
01:08 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,
01:24 and I do wanna slice this fairly thinly before we blend it
01:27 because one of my biggest pet peeves in cooking
01:30 are the little fibers in ginger
01:32 that don't break down very well in blenders
01:34 or food processors if you chuck it in whole.
01:36 So you wanna slice this across the grain first
01:37 to break those down
01:39 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, lots and lots of seasonings.
01:47 We're gonna do half a teaspoon of salt,
01:50 quarter teaspoon-ish pepper.
01:53 That's white pepper,
01:54 which I really like in Japanese cooking,
01:56 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 spicy, 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.
02:11 It's got a little bit of sweetness to it as well.
02:13 It's a lovely vinegar.
02:14 Then we've got some mirin.
02:15 So mirin is a sweetened cooking sake,
02:19 and that's gonna add some lovely sweetness.
02:20 Then we've got some actual sake as well,
02:23 which is of course Japanese rice wine,
02:26 and that's got a lovely sort of savory quality to it,
02:29 like a fermented rice flavor.
02:31 Ah, then we've got some sesame oil.
02:35 Not too much 'cause it's quite a strong flavor.
02:37 That goes in as well.
02:38 Then some soy sauce, not too much
02:41 'cause if you use a lot of soy sauce,
02:43 this marinade becomes very dark,
02:44 and then it tends to burn when you fry it.
02:46 And finally, we've got some fresh lime.
02:48 So gonna give 'em a little roll,
02:50 just to get their juices flowing.
02:52 And I need about three tablespoons or so of this.
02:55 I'm gonna save one half of these limes back for garnish,
02:59 and just squeeze the rest straight in there.
03:03 If you can get yuzu juice, by the way,
03:06 that is excellent, but it is very expensive.
03:08 Limes are nearly as good,
03:10 but there's nothing quite like yuzu if you can get it.
03:12 All right, then we blend.
03:18 So that's done, so now we're gonna prep our chicken.
03:20 So one of the best things about chicken karaage
03:22 is the size and shape of it,
03:25 so that you get, 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.
03:38 And that's not just for flavor or texture.
03:40 That's also because it helps them cook evenly and quickly.
03:44 So you wanna cut chicken thighs.
03:46 And by the way, these are boneless,
03:48 but skin-on chicken thighs,
03:50 'cause there's so much flavor in the skin.
03:52 And thighs are great because they're very juicy,
03:55 they're very, very flavorful,
03:57 but they don't have a lot of weird sinews in them,
03:59 like a drumstick or a leg.
04:01 So most chicken thighs, you'll get about four pieces out of,
04:04 if the thighs are bigger, you get five.
04:07 If they're smaller, you'll just get three sometimes.
04:10 All right, so that's our chicken prepped up,
04:12 back in the bowl.
04:16 And then we add the marinade.
04:19 Mm, lovely.
04:21 Which has so much flavor in it.
04:23 Make sure everything's really nice and evenly coated.
04:25 And then this will marinate for at least an hour.
04:28 Actually, you could fry it just like this
04:30 and it'd be pretty tasty,
04:31 but the longer it marinates, the more flavor you'll get.
04:33 So this'll go into the fridge.
04:34 We'll come back later.
04:36 So we've got the chicken in its lovely marinade,
04:38 just chilling out in the fridge.
04:40 And most karaage, at this point,
04:42 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.
04:48 It's very, very light and very crispy.
04:50 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
04:56 and a potato starch texture.
04:58 So we're gonna start with that.
04:59 The other thing I'm doing that's slightly non-traditional
05:01 for my karaage is making a seasoned flour
05:04 like you'd get from American fried chicken.
05:06 'Cause I really like to pack as much flavor
05:07 into this dish as possible.
05:09 So we'll start with corn flour.
05:11 We're gonna add to that a little bit of salt.
05:14 A little bit of white pepper.
05:16 Black pepper's fine as well.
05:19 White and black sesame seeds.
05:24 Or just white or just black, it's all good.
05:27 We've got some chili powder, just a tiny bit.
05:30 Some dried ginger.
05:32 And then finally, this is dashi powder.
05:37 So dashi is, of course, a Japanese stock
05:41 made from smoked fish and kombu, seaweed.
05:44 It's a really, really lovely flavor,
05:45 really, really satisfying and smoky and fishy and fragrant.
05:49 And this is essentially the stock cube version,
05:51 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,
05:57 or like I'm doing now, your seasoned karaage flour,
06:00 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.
06:08 Nice and well-mixed.
06:09 There we go.
06:11 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,
06:19 so it's time for me to fry.
06:20 Temperature is important with this dish
06:22 because you really don't want this to burn.
06:23 It'll taste really nasty,
06:24 and obviously you don't want undercooked chicken.
06:27 Nobody likes that.
06:28 Not safe, not delicious.
06:30 So 160, that's the temperature we're going for
06:32 for this size of chicken pieces.
06:35 That'll get a great golden brown crust
06:37 at the same time that it cooks through
06:38 and stays really juicy.
06:40 So 160.
06:41 And by the way, every time you deep fry,
06:43 you wanna use a nice big pan
06:45 where the sides come up very high
06:47 above the level of the oil,
06:49 so that if this does bubble up,
06:50 it doesn't bubble up too much and overflow.
06:52 All right, so we're gonna 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 gonna wanna fry this in batches, by the way.
07:03 Don't try to do all of it at once
07:05 because you will crowd the pan.
07:09 That'll do two things.
07:09 One, the chicken will stick together
07:12 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
07:21 the outside of the chicken as well.
07:22 So you'll end up with sort of soft, sad chicken pieces
07:26 instead of nice, crispy bits.
07:28 All right, so make sure that these
07:29 are really well coated as well.
07:31 The more coating you have,
07:31 the crispier, crunchier they'll be.
07:33 And also, you want to protect that marinade
07:36 from the hot oil 'cause it does have sugar in it,
07:39 does have soy sauce, and it'll burn
07:41 if it touches the hot oil too much
07:43 or is in contact for too long.
07:45 All right, so we're gonna layer that into the oil.
07:49 Lovely sizzle.
07:50 Shake off as much flour as you can as well.
07:56 And you're gonna wanna fry these
07:58 for about six minutes or so.
08:01 If you have a probe thermometer, a meat thermometer at home,
08:04 it's a good idea to use this
08:05 'cause you don't really know
08:06 what's going on inside the chicken until you check it.
08:10 And you can either do that by cutting into it
08:12 or by probing it.
08:13 It's the easiest way.
08:14 There it is.
08:18 Beautiful, golden, juicy, crunchy chicken karaage.
08:22 And this'll stay crispy for ages as well,
08:25 so don't worry about doing it in batches.
08:26 You can take your time with it.
08:29 The main thing is just don't overcrowd that pan.
08:31 You can just serve it as is,
08:34 but when you bring it to the table,
08:36 it's pub food again, so you don't have to be fancy with it.
08:41 Sometimes people serve this with a dip,
08:44 like a mayonnaise or ponzu sauce, something like that.
08:48 But to me, this chicken is just so crunchy
08:51 and flavorful and juicy as it is.
08:53 I don't really think it needs anything
08:56 except for maybe some fresh lime.
08:58 And that's it, that's chicken karaage.
09:00 That is Japanese fried chicken,
09:02 maybe the best fried chicken.
09:04 (upbeat music)
09:06 (upbeat music)