Spicy sweet sour chicken karaage
Japanese fried chicken thigh fillets with a light ultra crisp crust coated with Chinese-style sweet sour sauce spiked with Korean chili flakes.
Servings 3 people
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.
