Korean Fried Chicken

This is just a throwaway post continuing my recent predilection for chicken. Korean fried chicken is apparently gaining some cachet in New York right now, and the New York Times even wrote an expose about this phenomenon. (You can read the article here.) As a child, I was generally unaware of this phenomenon, though my grandmother did make fried chicken wings smothered in a sweet-spicy sauce that I had always enjoyed. I also remembered eating fried chicken in Seoul back in '88, principally with regards to the sandwich bag of pickled radish and fried chicken feet.

Anyway, the primary difference between Korean fried chicken and Southern fried is that the Korean version is fried in two steps--cooked once and then left to sit for a while, and then cooked again to finish it, which apparently results in a thinner, crackly crust. This is of course in sharp contrast with the thicker, crunchy crust you get from the Southern style, which requires a longer cooking time, and hence tends to result in a greasier chicken.

To read more about Korean Fried Chicken in Korea, a blog post about the subject can be read here.


(N.B. Photo by The Daily Kimchi)