Serves a Crowd

Korean Oven-fried Chicken

by:
February 13, 2012
4.4
8 Ratings
Korean Oven-fried Chicken
  • Serves 3
Author Notes

There are two places in the world to get great fried chicken. One is the American South. The other is South Korea. Why these two places? I do not know. Perhaps there is something about being at the bottom of a compass that lends one to boil things in oil.
Anyway, deep frying at home can be fun, but it can also be a big pain. And not healthy. But Korean Fried Chicken is so good. So here is a hybrid between Korean fried chicken and Amanda's oven-fried chicken. Beautifully crunchy skin and a delicious rich and spicy sauce (like insanely good Asian barbecue sauce). The sauce is from Saveur, made without a food processor because cleaning the food processor is a pain. —The Pasta Man

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • For the chicken
  • 3 tablespoons Kosher salt
  • 8 chicken thighs or equivalent mixture of thighs/wings/drumsticks
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • For the sauce
  • 5 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tablespoon ginger, minced
  • 3 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 3 tablespoons gojujang (available at Korean grocery stores)
  • 1.5 tablespoons rice vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon sesame oil
  • 1 tablespoon honey
Directions
  1. Combine 2 tablespoons salt and about a cup of warm water in a large bowl and add the chicken. Cover with cold water and add a tray of ice cubes. Chill for a few hours.
  2. Make sauce by combining garlic, ginger, gojujang, soy sauce, sesame oil, honey and vinegar in bowl and whisking together.
  3. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Put the butter in a roasting pan big enough to fit the chicken and put in oven.
  4. Remove the chicken from water and pat dry with paper towels. Add flour to plastic bag with remaining salt and some black pepper. Add the chicken pieces one at a time and shake them until thoroughly coated. Remove from bag, shaking vigorously to remove excess flour (do not skip this step).
  5. Put chicken pieces in roasting pan skin-side down and cook without flipping until skin gets crispy, at least 30 minutes and possibly longer. Then remove pan from oven and remove chicken to paper-towel lined plate. Drain pan of grease.
  6. Cover chicken with sauce. Return chicken to pan, now skin side up, and return pan to oven. Cook until chicken is done, not much longer, probably not more than 10 minutes. Serve.
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1 Review

Hazzer J.
Hazzer J. November 6, 2019
I signed up to effectively say two things. One, is that this recipe is actually rather good in regards to a simple Sweet and Sour gojujang-based sauce. The method of cooking the chicken can be swapped out, and indeed it can be mixed with yoghurt and create an excellent marinade for BBQ.

The second is to comment on the original poster’s comment regard the only two places to get great fried chicken — the US South and Korean. What an utterly naive, rude and unbelievably typical, clichéd American comment. I’d like to point out that fried chicken is an almost global phenomenon and was being mastered long before the USA even existed. For those interested, try Japanese tempura chicken, or pretty much any Chinese fried chicken dishes for alternate Asian flavours. For Europe, try German schnitzel (or Israeli which is also amazing) - effectively breadcrumbed chicken fried in butter, or again a host of Italian fried chicken dishes available online. Pollo Frito from the Dominican Republic and other South American countries with their own twist, Kerala-style fried chicken is a great place to start with India’s vast cuisine. And so on and so on. Just don’t be mislead by the above tragically misinformed comment, regardless of how genuinely great this particular Korean-fusion recipe is.