Japanese Fried Chicken

I had no idea that Japanese Fried Chicken, or Kara-age could taste so good when you make it at home. I usually leave kara-age to those super duper ramen-chefs who I view as genuis holders of the ultimate secret recipes that I will never ever get to see. But we had too much chicken thigh today, so I decided to make some and wow…. and it was pretty easy too. I think the difference from western fried chicken is the use of potato starch (katakuriko) instead of flour for the coating, which gives it a light and crisp texture. These turns out to be not oily/soggy at all, what a wonder.

Ingredients for 2: (adapted from this recipe)

• 300g of chicken thigh meat
• 1 tsp of grated garlic
• 1 tsp of grated ginger
• 1/2 tbs of soy sauce
• 1/2 tbs of sake
• potato starch
• oil for frying (I like to use sunflower)

For the Negi-sauce:

• 50g of green onions
• 50ml of soy sauce
• 1 tbs of sugar
• 1/2 tbs of rice vinegar
• 1/2 tbs of sake

1. Grate your ginger and garlic:

Then in a bowl, combine the garlic, ginger, soy sauce and sake:

And chop your chicken into bite sized pieces and mix and marinade in this for an hour:

During this time, I decided to clean the kitchen. But then I remembered there was the sauce….!

2. The sauce – chop up your green onions:

Then heat up a little bit of oil in a small pot and lightly cook, taking care not to burn:

Then add in the soy sauce, sugar, vinegar and sake, bringing it to a boil and then take off the heat:

Once it’s cooled down a bit, set aside in a bowl/dish.

3. Heat up some oil (I always shallow fry, about 1/2 a cm to 1 cm worth) in a heavy frying pan. Then fill a bowl with some potato starch, and start coating each piece of chicken very generously and directly transfer into the frying pan:

Then cook until golden (because of the potato starch, it will look golden-white):

Then shake each piece off of any excess oil and transfer to a drip pan:

Then serve with the sauce!

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