Tammy completed an awesome task in creating twelve different recipes for tteokbokki from different corners of the world while bringing it on home to Korea for the finale.

Once again, here are the recipes.

Day 1 – Szechuan Tteokbokki

Day 2 – Thai Green Curry Tteokbokki

Day 3 – Madras Curry Tteokbokki

Day 4 – Korma Curry Tteokbokki

Day 5 – Arrabbiata Tteokbokki

Day 6 – Beef Bolognese Tteokbokki

Day 7 – Chicken in Mole Poblano Tteokbokki

Day 8 – Texas-style BBQ sauce with Tteokbokki

Day 9 – Buffalo Chicken Tteokbokki

Day 10 – Hawaiian Tteokbokki

Day 11 – Ottogi Curry Tteokbokki

Day 12 – Gungjung Tteokbokki (Korean Palace Rice Cake)

We tried a little variation on the traditional TteokGuk this new year.  Usually TteokGuk is a broth made with beef brisket.  Well, not where Eun Jeong comes from.  She made something more akin to her mother’s recipe, which involved a briny anchovy broth with strips of steak replacing the stringy overboiled brisket.

As an extra bonus, we found these multi-colored Tteok at the supermarket and thought we’d have some fun.

INGREDIENTS

1/4 Dried Anchovies, cleaned
1/2 Daikon or Korean Radish, quartered
1 sheet Dashima (broth quality kelp)
1 White Onion, quartered
1 Leek, trimmed and sliced
Tteok (chewy rice cakes), cut into coin shapes
Mandu (stuffed dumplings)
Soy Sauce to taste
Leek or Green Onions, thinly sliced

GARNISH
250g Beef, steak or round, sliced into ribbons
2 cloves Garlic, minced
1 tsp. Salt
2 tsp. Fresh Ginger, minced
1 tbsp. Light Soy Sauce
1 tbsp. Sesame Oil
1 Egg, beaten
1 tbsp. Canola Oil
2 sheets Salted Dried Seaweed (Nori, or Gim)
Sesame Oil
Toasted Sesame Seeds

METHOD

1. Mix the Beef with the Garlic, Salt, Ginger, Light Soy Sauce and Sesame Oil. Cover and marinate overnight.

2. Put the Anchovies in a diffusion device (like a teaball) or wrap in cheesecloth and boil in a pot full of water, along with the Radish, Dashima, White Onion and Leek for 15 minutes.  Turn down to a simmer.  Cook for 15 more minutes.

3. Remove the Anchovies, Radish, Dashima, White Onion and Leek from the broth.

4. Add the Tteok and Sliced Leeks to the broth and boil, skimming the scum off the surface.

5. Add Soy Sauce* and taste.  It should be just a little bit salty but not overpoweringly so–like a slight ocean flavor.  Bring the heat back down to a simmer.

6. Cook the Egg in Canola Oil gently like a thin omelet.

7. Roll the Egg and slice it into ribbons.

8. Cook the marinated beef in a pan over medium high heat until just cooked through, around 5 minutes.

9. Put the Dried Seaweed in a bag and crush it.

10. Ladle the soup in individual bowls.

11. Garnish with the Beef, Egg, Dried Seaweed, Toasted Sesame Seeds and a drizzle of Sesame Oil.

* We recommend, if you can get your hands on it, “Joseon GanJang” 조선간장, which is a traditional Korean style soy sauce that is lighter than Japanese soy sauce.

More pictures here

새해 복 많이 받으세요!

Saehae bok manhi badeuseyo!

Happy New Year!

We’re having a small intimate new year in the ZenKimchi household.  Here’s a little party food that uses strange ingredients but surprisingly tastes good together, especially hot and fresh.  This is one of many types of jeon 전 (pronounced “john”).  Most people are familiar with pajeon, the green onion pancake.  This is a skewered version.  In this case, it was made with a few leftovers, but you can get the spirit of it.

INGREDIENTS

Spam, cut into 1/2-inch sticks
Imitation Crab Legs
Leek
2 Eggs, beaten
Flour

1. Make sure the Spam, crab and leek slices are around the same size.  Not precisely but close enough.  Then skewer them on toothpicks, one piece of each per toothpick with the leek in the middle.

2. Dust the skewers in flour and dip them in beaten egg.

3. Fry them in a 1/4-inch of canola oil until the egg starts to set and turn brownish.

4. Serve immediately.

And that’s it.

Posted by Tammy

새해 복 많이 받으세요! Today is the Lunar New Year, or Seollal (설날), in Korea as well as most of Asia. Our 12-day tteokbokki sauce recipe countdown has come full circle to Gungjung tteokbokki, which is the royal Korean court version of tteokbokki.

Thanks to the Korean TV drama Dae Jang Gum, this dish has become well known all over Asia. Gungjung tteokbokki was a special dish served in royal and noble households back in the days of the Joseon (Chosun) dynasty (1392–1910) on celebration days like the Lunar New Year or during ancestral ceremonies. The dish that people commonly call tteokbokki today with the fiery sauce and fish cakes is a modern, simplified version of this recipe.

There are several Gungjung tteokbokki recipes on the internet. The one most easily accessible to most Americans is posted at Chow, which is the basis of the recipe I made. If you want a downsized version, check out BlogCatalog.

This is the only tteokbokki recipe in which the garae tteok (가래떡) — the fat cylindrical rice noodles traditionally used in tteokbokki — are boiled beforehand and mixed in with the other ingredients quickly at the last minute.

Also notice the additional layers of flavor not seen in some of the other recipes, particularly marinating the meat and mushrooms separately before combining with the other ingredients in the final sauce.

There are two schools of thought on the egg garnish that I decided to use in this recipe. One school says to separate the egg yolk from the white and fry them separately, allow to cool and cut into thin strips, which is the version I use here. The other school says to separate the yolk and white, make the thin omelet and cut them on a diagonal to create diamond shapes.  I had great difficulty cooking the white just right without browning it. Practice will make perfect, someday.

There is one main difference between my version and the Gungjung tteokbokki recipes you will find online or in popular Korean cookbooks. The recipe books recommend using bulgogi type beef. I used ground sirloin in my recipe. I mixed the beef and the shiitake mushrooms in the recommended marinade and let them soak up the marinade for over 10 minutes. Then I  formed the ground beef and mushrooms into tteokbokki-shaped meatballs or sausages.

Main Ingredients
1 package (16 ounces) round (cylindrical) garae tteok (Rice cake)
6 ounces ground beef
1 small carrot, julienned matchstick-style
1 small onion, julienned
1 bunch enoki, separated and rinsed
5 fresh or dried shiitake mushrooms (if dried, pre-soak for 20 minutes and trim “mushy stems“)
3 eggs, yolk and white separated
3 ounces zucchini, seeds removed and julienned matchstick-style
2 ounces mung bean sprouts
1 large spring onion
grapeseed oil for cooking

Meat and mushroom seasoning

2 teaspoons soy sauce
5 shiitake mushrooms, minced
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 cloves fresh garlic (makes 1 teaspoon minced)
1/2 teaspoon doenjang (soybean paste)
1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

Gungjung Sauce

1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 cloves fresh garlic
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
1 green onion
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

1. Mince the garlic and place all the meat and mushroom seasoning ingredients into a medium mixing bowl and mix well.
2. Let stand ten minutes before adding the meat and mushrooms to the meat and mushroom seasoning mix. Mix until throughly combined.  Let stand an additional 15-20 minutes. Shape the meat into tteok-sized sausages.
3. Bring a pot of water to a full boil over high heat. Add the rice cake and boil for one minute.
4. Remove the rice cake from the pot and rinse immediately in cold water. Discard the boiled water.
5. Brush the rice noodles with sesame oil.
6. Separate egg yolks from whites.
7. Whip the yolks together.
8. Pour yolks into a hot oiled pan in a thin layer (tilt pan back and forth to cover bottom of pan).
9. Cook the yolks over medium heat until top is just firm but bottom is not browned. Flip and cook 15 to 20 seconds. Remove from heat and let cool.
10. Cut the cooked yolk into thin strips about 1/8 inch wide by 1 1/2 inch long.
11. Repeat steps 7 through 10 with the egg whites.
12. Place all ingredients for the Gungjung sauce into a bowl and mix well.
13. Lightly coat a stir fry pan with cooking oil and heat over medium to high heat.
14. Add beef and mushroom mix to pan and cook on all sides until they are completely cooked so they will hold their shape.
15. Quickly add all other vegetables and stir fry 30 seconds more.
16. Reduce heat to medium, add Gungjung sauce and the garae tteok, and simmer 10 minutes.
17. Garnish with egg strips and nuts then serve.

We have taken tteokbokki around the world and back again. I hope you appreciate this very versatile rice noodle and come up with your own creative ways of cooking it for yourself.

Tammy Quackenbush lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her love of Korean food started when she taught ESL in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do, back in 1996-1997. However, she didn’t become “famous” for her Korean cooking style until she started making cooking videos on YouTube as Koreanfornian Cooking in 2007 (had to put her college degree to use somehow). Her recipes and articles have been featured on Slice/Seriouseats.com, Foodbuzz, Korea.net and iFoodTV.com.

Posted by Grace Meng

There are a lot of hotteok recipes online.  Based on my blog stats, there are even more people looking for hotteok recipes.  It surprised me that a street food, a simple fried pancake stuffed with brown sugar and nuts, is so sought after.  And then I remembered what it tastes like.

My friend Diane and I agreed when we started working on our cookbook that we would focus on home cooking.  There were people who really wanted us to do a cookbook of Korean royal palace-style food, but we wanted to focus on the kind of food we like best: hearty, simple, and homey.

So where does something like hotteok (pronounced “hoe dduk”) fit in?  It’s not something Koreans generally make at home, though premade mixes are popular.  For all the food trends that come and go in Korea, hotteok has staying power.  The dough might change—one year, corn is in, another green tea—and the cooking contraptions change sometimes, too.  I’ve had hotteok that are practically deep-fried and hotteok that are airy, light shells around a thin film of sugar.  (They don’t taste as good as the greasy ones.)  But you can find it wherever young people are hanging out on the streets, even in the dead of winter, at rest stops all over the country, and even in chi-chi department store basement food courts.

I think this is why people outside of Korea are searching for the recipe online.  It might not be something you eat at home, but it’s still intensely familiar.  When it’s gone, there is a big hole in your life.  Like peanut butter for American expats in Europe, or Vegemite for Australians.

Having tried a couple of different recipes online, though, I have to say most of them are not quite right.  The biggest challenge is getting the perfect chewiness right.  It may be hard for you to find glutinous rice flour (also called sweet rice flour), but if the recipe you’re looking at only uses regular all-purpose wheat flour, you are going to wonder how these hockey pucks are supposed to resemble hotteok.  Gluten develops through kneading, and that can make an all-flour dough chewy to a certain extent, the way certain pizza doughs are chewy.  But hotteok aren’t tough-chewy, they’re tender-chewy, like Japanese mochi, Korean tteok, and other foods made with, you guessed it, glutinous rice flour.

The problem, though, is a recipe with a lot of glutinous rice flour is going to be ridiculously sticky.  I found one recipe that made a really wet, spongy dough, very similar to the dough from the mixes, and this one certainly resulted in a chewier pancake, but the dough was so sticky, my hands looked like those of a monster from the deep.  I had to practically sling the dough, misshapen as it was, into the pan, since it wasn’t going to separate from me otherwise.

So the following recipe is my two cents in the discussion of how to make good hotteok at home.  The ratio of glutinous rice flour to wheat flour is almost 1:1, but I keep the liquids low enough that the dough is still manipulable.  As lazy as I am, I’ve found it’s worth it to finely chop the nuts in the filling.  Otherwise, they take up too much space and not enough brown sugar ends up in the pancake.  It’s not as super-crispy as the almost deep-fried hotteok I saw last winter in Seoul.  Instead, it’s chewy with a crust that’s still a bit like bread, and the look is more traditional, a golden-brown center ringed with a paler crust.  Knowing me, I’ll probably tinker with it some more before it gets published in the cookbook, but if you get a chance to try it, I’d love to hear what you think.

호떡

Sticky rice pancakes filled with brown sugar and nuts

Hotteok

Makes 8 small pancakes.

• ¼ cup lukewarm water
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon active-dry yeast
• 1 cup flour
• ¾ cup glutinous rice flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup milk
• 3 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil

• filling:
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped walnuts or peanuts

Stir together the lukewarm water, one tablespoon of sugar, and active-dry yeast in a small bowl until the sugar and yeast dissolve.  Let it sit for 10 minutes, during which time it will start to bubble and foam.

Combine the flour, glutinous rice flour, salt and remaining tablespoon of sugar in a large bowl.  Add the yeast-sugar mixture and the milk.

Using your hands, bring the dough together into a sticky ball.  Knead it a couple of times, for about two or three minutes.  The dough will be sticky, but it should still come off your hands and stay together.  Cover with plastic and place in a warm spot for 3 hours.  (I put mine on top of my heater.)

After 3 hours, the dough will have doubled in size.  It will look pretty puffy.  When you knead the dough, the dough will almost puncture and let out some air, but remain relatively airy and spongy.  Knead the dough a couple times until it becomes more elastic, but keep in mind that it will never become a smooth, elastic ball of dough.

Combine the sugar, cinnamon, and walnuts in a small bowl.

Heat the oil in a large pan on medium-high heat.  Make sure your pan is hot before you start — your pancake should sizzle when it hits the pan or it won’t form a good crisp crust.  Oil your hands and pinch off a piece of dough, about 2-3 tablespoons.  Knead it into a smooth ball and then stretch it out into a loose circle, creating a depression in the middle.  Fill the depression with the sugar mixture, about a tablespoon worth.  (Ignore how large the walnut pieces are in this photo — this was an earlier draft experiment.)  Stretch and seal the dough around the sugar mixture and flatten it between the palms of your hands.

Drop the flattened ball of dough into the pan.  The oil should be hot enough to sizzle.  Smooth some oil on your spatula and press down on the ball of dough, flattening it further.  Continue making balls of dough until the pan has 3 or 4 pancakes in it. Be careful not to crowd the pan.

Fry the pancakes until golden-brown, about 3 minutes on each side.  Remove from the pan and let them drain on a paper towels or a wire rack.  Serve warm.

Grace Meng is a nonprofit consultant and writer living in Brooklyn, NY.  She was an immigration lawyer until a few years ago, when she ran away to Mexico to learn how to make mole negro and started blogging at One Fork, One Spoon.  She is now writing a cookbook on Korean food with her good friend Diane Choo, which has given them the best excuse ever to take road trips around Korea eating all the way.

Posted by shinshine

For someone like me who is not a big fan of salads, bibimbap is a delicious way to eat lots of vegetables.  I can hardly eat a couple of raw spinach leaves, but I’ll take a half bunch of spinach that’s quick-blanched and seasoned lightly with sesame oil and soy sauce, a typical ingredient of bibimbap, in one sitting.  The ingredients are easily adjustable, so I make a point to pack in vegetables I haven’t had in a while.

My favorite has always been bibimbap in stone pot (돌솥비빔밥; dol sot bi bim bap).  The hot stone pot keeps the content sizzling when it arrives at the table.  A major plus for this version is that the cooking lingers on to toast the rice coated in sesame oil on the bottom.  After eating the rice and vegetables mixed with gochujang (고추장; Korean hot pepper paste), the crispy rice on the bottom is like a dessert before dessert, a highlight of my bibimbap experience that is savored to the end.

So – why not cut to the chase and get the vegetables and the crispy rice?

To make a crispy rice crust) I cooked sweet rice (찹쌀; chap ssal) to maximize the contrast of stickiness on top and crispiness on the bottom.  Regular short grain rice can be also used.  Then I coated a hot cast iron pan with sesame oil.  After reducing heat to very low, I spread a thin layer of rice on the pan.  Then I just checked for the color on the bottom and turned the rice crust once in a while to even out the golden color.  It takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on the thickness and the color desired.

One way to cut this rice crust is to do it in about 10 minutes after spreading the rice on the pan, when the round shape has been set (meaning, the rice moves as one big piece when you gently shake the pan) and the bottom starts getting some color.  Cut with a dough scraper in 6 or 8 pieces.  This is when it’s easiest to get a clean cut, after the shape has been set but before the bottom crust has become too crunchy.

When the crust is done, place your toppings of bibimbap or anything else you’d like to create.  There are plenty of bibimbap recipes on the internet these days, which involve cooking short-grain rice, cutting and cooking (sautéeing or blanching to bring out the best color and taste of) various vegetables of your choice and finishing with a sunny-side up egg and gochujang.  I thinned out gochujang with vinegar and water so that I could drizzle it, along with the essential egg yolk, over the rice.  An after-thought was quail eggs on individual pieces to make everyone equally happy, if it is served at a get-togehter.

I was so focused on putting together my favorite parts of bibimbap, I only noticed the obvious visual similiarity to a thin crust pizza afterwards – which is another food I like.  As much as bibimbap has evolved to reflect seasonality and regional specialties and represents an aspect of Korean food – well-balanced, delicious, healthy meal – this crispy version of mine is probably reflecting a certain aspect of myself.

Shinshine grew up in Seoul and has been living in the U.S. roughly the latter half+ of her life.  She’s been living in New York since 2005.  Having switched careers from finance to food, she is now a full-time restaurant cook in New York City after culinary school in 2008.  Recently she started her food diary, www.shinshine.com, which is about three things in life she enjoys the most – food, Korea and New York

Posted by shinshine

Making do ga ni tang (도가니탕 – soup made mostly with ox knee bones), which is similar to seol leong tang (설렁탕 – soup made with ox leg bones, meat and organs), is not complex to make.  It just takes time and patience.  Various ox bone parts are found in Korean grocery stores.

1) Immerse the bones in cold water for 3 hours to draw out the blood from the bones.  I usually keep the pot in the refrigerator.

2) Empty the water.  Immerse the bones in new cold water in a pot.  Bring up to a boil, then remove from heat.  Throw out the water and rinse the bones.

3) In a clean pot, immerse the bones again in cold water (about 3:1 = water:bones).  Bring to a boil, then simmer for about an hour.  Skim the impurities and fat that rise to the top once in a while.

4) Add leeks, garlic, onion and ginger and simmer for another 4 hours.  Skim the top often.

5) Remove from heat.  Discard the vegetables.  Strain and reserve the broth (this is the 1st batch).  Any meat and cartilage attached to the bones should be soft enough to be manually taken off from the bones.  Reserve the meat and cartilage.

6) Repeat the steps 3) – 5) with the bones only (no meat attached), 2 more times.

7) Discard the bones.

8) Optional) Mix the broth from the 3 batches and boil one more time to even out the flavor/richness.

9) Cool down to room temperature then chill it in the refrigerator overnight.  Remove the fat that rose and solidified on top.  Underneath the fat layer, you should find gelatinous broth, which is caused by collagen extracted from the bones.

For serving, heat up the broth with the reserved meat and cartilage.  Serve with rice, sliced scallions, salt and pepper.  Oh, and kimchi!

At the end, I got about 6 quarts (~5.7 liter) from 6 knee bones over 3 days, taking the pot off from heat when I’m sleeping or not at home.  I guess if you have a big enough pot and plan a day for this project at home, this can be all done in one take – although the water level still needs to be watched.

I didn’t mix the three batches together.  I like the rich broth for do ga ni tang and freeze the thinner liquid to use as a base stock for stews (찌개; jji gae).

This is a project that requires patience more than anything.   It also gives me enough time to remind myself about the importance of the basics once again.  Cooking requires respect for ingredients and for people who would eat the end-product.  I’m all about time-saving tricks, but not at the expense of masking the time and effort with, shall I say, artificial enhancers.  It’s too bad that coffee creamers and milk are rumored to be used to mimic the milky, opaque color of this type of broth in less time at some places.

A bowl of broth is not to be messed with.

Shinshine grew up in Seoul and has been living in the U.S. roughly the latter half+ of her life, including the last 5 years in New York.  Even with her career in finance, her true passion, the kitchen, has always beckoned.  After culinary school last year, she is now a full-time restaurant cook in New York City.  Recently she started her food diary, www.shinshine.com, which is about three things in life she enjoys the most – food, Korea and New York.  When she’s not in the kitchen, she’s usually scouring New York’s markets and streets for cooking inspiration.

The most common recipe question I get and the most common request I find on forums, “How do you make Korean fried chicken?”

It’s a great mystery, even in Korea.  With my cultural background and family history, along with a lot of experimentation, I’ve become pretty good in the fried chicken arts–at least in the Southern fried chicken territory.  In the past, I have also succeeded in mimicking the flavor of my favorite Korean chicken brand, Two Two Chicken, which is the classic fried chicken hof style.  The hard part is getting the texture right.

The real Two Two Chicken

Eun Jeong and I went on the internet.  We also checked out a TV program that quickly went behind the scenes of a chicken joint but didn’t divulge the secrets.  I found a few recipes for Korean fried chicken, like this one in The New York Times from the cookbook Quick and Easy Korean Cooking (Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee), but none of them sounded like what we have in Korea.  Eun Jeong checked Korean sites, and none of them sounded definitive.  We then had a little pow wow about what we’ve heard over the years in Korean fried chicken techniques.

We decided to try three different approaches from our research to mimic the Two Two style.

Starch Only

Starch and Flour (3:2 ratio)

Starch and Water (thick slurry)

We used potato starch, but corn starch is more available in American kitchens.  To each of them, I added the flavorings.

• 2 tsp. Chinese Five Spice
• 1 tsp. Garlic Powder
• 1/2 tsp. Ginger Powder
• 1 tsp. Salt
• 1/2 tsp. Ground Cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. Black Pepper

Two Two has a distinctive Chinese five spice scent, particularly star anise, with a touch of cinnamon.  You can smell it whenever you’re in the vicinity of a chicken hof.

For an added bonus, I also experimented with making the Kyochon Chicken style.  Kyochon is batter-based and has a deep garlic flavor with a little sweetness.

• 1/4 c. Starch
• 1/4 c. Flour
• 1 Tbsp. Garlic Powder
• 2 cloves Garlic, crushed
• 2 tsp. Sugar
• 1 tsp. Ginger Powder
• 1/2 tsp. Black Pepper
• 1 tsp. Salt
• 1 tsp. Baking Soda
• Water (enough to make a thick batter)

Since my primary goal was hitting the right texture, I didn’t bother to marinate the chicken.  You can do that step if you want to.  A diluted solution of raspberry vinegar is my preferred choice, but use any acidic marinade you want.

Chicken in this part of the world isn’t cut on the joints like western chicken.  It’s hacked into bite-sized pieces with a Chinese cleaver or shears.  It turns it into a challenge when trying to distinguish white and dark meat.  But keeping it small helps it fry more quickly and evenly and works well for group eating.  I should also note that a lot of restaurants fry chicken halves or quarters and hack them up after frying.

Breaking out my candy thermometer, I heated some vegetable oil between 300 to 350 degrees F.  I had two or three pieces for each style and fried them separately for around five minutes each, draining them in a colander before putting them in their own little bowls.  Here we go.

When they had all finished, I pumped up the oil to 375 degrees F.  I then fried them a second time for around 2-3 minutes.

FINISHED.  Now for judging.

Starch Only

This one looked very close to the Two Two style.  The skin was papery and crinkled.  The breading was light.  Eun Jeong and I tasted it.  Our conclusion–it was light but not crispy enough.  In fact, it was a little rubbery and powdery.  But it was close.

Starch and Flour

This looked heavier than what we got at the restaurants.  Eun Jeong thought it looked the same.  When we bit into them, we felt they were just about right.  Just needed a little more salt.

Starch and Water

Scary looking.  Eun Jeong liked this a little bit.  I spit it out into the sink.

Kyochon Batter

We hit this one on the target.  Glassy shatter on the crust.  The inside exploded with juice.  The taste was strong in garlic with a hint of sweet.  In hindsight, I don’t think double frying was necessary.

So the winners were the Kyochon Batter and the Starch-and-Flour mixture.  Here are the formal recipes.

Two Two Chicken (TTC)

INGREDIENTS

• Chicken, cut up
• 2/3 cup Corn Starch (or Potato Starch)
• 1/3 cup All-purpose Flour
• 1 Tbsp. Chinese Five Spice
• 2 tsp. Garlic Powder
• 1 tsp. Ginger Powder
• 1 Tbsp. Salt
• 1 tsp. Ground Cinnamon
• 1 tsp. Black Pepper
• Oil, for frying

METHOD

1. Rinse and dry the chicken.

2. Combine all the dry ingredients.  Heat the oil to 300 degrees F, not going over 350 degrees F.

3. Dredge the chicken pieces in the dry mixture and dust off so that there is just a light dusting on the chicken.

4. Fry just a few pieces at a time for around 5 minutes.

5. Drain the chicken and increase the oil temperature to 375 degrees F.

6. Fry the chicken a second time for 2-3 minutes to get a crispy texture.

7. Drain and serve immediately.

Kyochon Fried Chicken

INGREDIENTS

• 1 Chicken, cut up
• 1/4 c. Starch
• 1/4 c. Flour
• 1 Tbsp. Garlic Powder
• 2 cloves Garlic, crushed
• 2 tsp. Sugar
• 1 tsp. Ginger Powder
• 1/2 tsp. Black Pepper
• 1 tsp. Salt
• 1 tsp. Baking Soda
• Water (enough to make a thick batter)
• Oil, for frying

1. Rinse and dry the chicken.

2. Combine all the dry ingredients.  Add water a little at a time until it becomes a thick batter, like pancake batter.

3. Heat the oil to 350 degrees F.

4. Dip the chicken pieces, one at a time, in the batter.  Let the excess drip off and fry them in the oil for around five minutes.  Don’t overcrowd.  Fry just a few at a time.

5. Drain and serve immediately.

BONUS: Yangnyeom Sauce

The reason a lot of people love Korean fried chicken is the garlicky pepper sauce.  You can glaze the chicken with this or use it as a dipping sauce.  I’ve seen many versions of this on the internet, and I’ve broken it down to its essential components.  You can add anything extra you want, such as pureed pineapple, apple or kiwi, which some restaurants do.  Replace the corn syrup with honey.  My version is very peppery.  What you’re trying to accomplish is a shimmering glaze that’s fruity, garlicky, slightly salty and smooth with a good pepper kick.  I’ve seen recipes that dilute it with ketchup, but no ketchup dares go near my fried chicken, bubba.

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup Gochujang (Korean red pepper paste)
• 1/4 cup Corn Syrup
• 1 Tbsp. Sesame Oil
• 4 cloves Garlic, crushed
• 1 Tbsp. Soy Sauce
• 2 tsp. Rice Vinegar

METHOD

1. Mix all the ingredients in a saucepan.

2. Heat slowly until it bubbles and the garlic has time to soften and steep.  Be careful not to burn.

3. Drench the chicken in the sauce and garnish with sesame seeds.

So here we finally have Korean fried chicken recipes on the internet from Korea itself, based on the flavors of real Korean chicken hofs.  Try this at home and add any techniques, observations or critiques in the comments.  Like all restaurant copycat recipes, these aren’t exact but pretty close.

To the uninitiated, this is a toughy to like.  Even to the initiated, it’s pretty scary.  But I’ve grown to like Myeolchi Bokkeum on a steaming bowl of white rice.  It’s also good in kimbap and bibimbap.  It’s the brininess of the sea with a little sweet and heat.

Here is how Eun Jeong makes it.  For her recipe, we use the medium sized dried anchovies.  You can find them at your local Asian or Korean grocery.  Since these are a little sizable, they need to be cleaned.

Pop off the head.

Split it in half.

See that nasty looking poopy stuff?

Remove it.  Toss it away.

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup Dried Anchovies, cleaned
1 tsp. Soy Sauce
1 tsp. Corn Syrup
1 tsp. Cheong Ha Rice Wine (can substitute Sake)
1 tsp. Sugar
1/4 cup Water
1 tsp Toasted Sesame Seeds
1 Green and 1 Red Korean Pepper (or Jalapenos), finely minced
Oil for stir-frying
Toasted Sesame Seeds for garnish

1. Toast the anchovies in a dry pan to bring out their flavors and reduce their fishiness.

2. Add oil and stir-fry the anchovies on high heat.

3. Add the peppers.  Careful, the house will smell like Gwangju in the ’80s.  After a minute or so of stir-frying, turn off the heat.

4. In a saucepan, combine the liquids and taste.  Adjust so that it’s a perfect balance of sweet and salty.  Err on the sweet side if you must.  Boil until it’s reduced to a sauce.

5. Add the anchovies and peppers.

6. Add the sesame seeds and stir-fry for another minute.  Plate and garnish with more sesame seeds.

If you don’t have an open mind, the idea of sweet tasting fish dishes is unsettling.  But the finished product should not taste too fishy, more like spicy kettle corn.