Japanese fried chicken thigh fillets with a light ultra crisp crust coated with Chinese-style sweet sour sauce spiked with Korean chili flakes.
Cook’s notes
Chicken breast or thighs?
Here at home — thigh fillet with the skin on is always preferred. The higher fat content of the dark meat of chicken thighs ensures that despite the intensely high heat in which the small pieces of chicken are cooked, the inside stays moist.Why skin on?
Two reasons. First, the fat in the skin adds more moistness to the meat. Second, the chicken skin adds a layer of crispiness because it turns into crackling during frying.Why fry the chicken twice?
The first frying (left) cooks the chicken through; the second frying (right) creates the lovely crust.Spicy sweet sour chicken karaage
Ingredients
Chicken
- 700 grams chicken thigh fillets (1.5 pounds) skin on is recommended
- ¼ cup Japanese soy sauce
- ¼ cup mirin
- 1 teaspoon grated garlic
- 1 teaspoon grated ginger
Spicy sweet sour sauce
- 3 cloves garlic peeled and grated
- 1 thumb-sized knob ginger peeled and grated
- 1 cup white sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ cup rice vinegar
- 3 tablespoons ketchup
- 1 tablespoon chili flakes (we use Korean chili flakes)
Broccoli
- 1 head broccoli cut into florets
- 1 tablespoon dashi granules
- 1 teaspoon sesame seed oil
Fried chicken
- ¼ cup potato starch you may need more, or less, depending on the size of your chicken pieces
- peanut oil or other oil with a high smoking point for deep frying
Instructions
Marinate the chicken
- Wipe the chicken thigh fillets dry with paper towels then cut into cubes. We like 2″x2″ cubes but you can make them slightly larger or smaller than that.
- Place the chicken cubes in a bowl, add the soy sauce, mirin, garlic and ginger, and mix well. Cover the bowl and marinate in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Cook the broccoli
- Boil about six cups of water with the dashi and sesame seed oil.
- Drop in the broccoli florets and cook over high heat for five minutes.
- Drain the florets and dump into a bowl of iced water. Leave until cool. Drain.
Make the sauce
- Place all the ingredients (except the chili flakes) in a sauce pan and boil over medium heat until reduced by half.
- Stir in the chili flakes and set aside.
Fry the chicken
- In a fryer, heat enough cooking oil to reach a depth of at least three inches.
- Drain the chicken and dredge each piece in starch.
- Over medium heat (310F to 325F if you’re using a thermometer), fry the chicken cubes in batches. Three to four minutes per batch or just until the coating starts to turn crisp.
- Let the chicken rest on a rack as you fry the next batch, and so on.
- When all the chicken cubes have been fried, turn up the heat to high (that’s 350F to 375F with a thermometer).
- Fry the chicken cubes a second time, in batches, for another two minutes.
Glaze the chicken karaage
- Place all the fried chicken pieces in a large mixing bowl.
- Drizzle in a quarter cup of the sauce and toss repeatedly until the sauce has been soaked up by the chicken.
Assemble the dish
- Arrange the broccoli on one side of a shallow bowl.
- Fill the other half of the bowl with the spicy sweet sour chicken karaage.
- Sprinkle in the toasted sesame seeds and serve.
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