Korean fried chicken is a Korean take on the food we all know and love, fried chicken. It consists of fried chicken tossed in yamgnyeon sauce, a sweet and spicy dark red sauce that consists mostly of gochujang, ketchup, sugar, etc.
But what else differentiates it from the classic fried chicken besides just the sauce? What a lot of people don’t know is that this chicken isn’t fried normally. Most saucy fried chicken gets soggy pretty easily and loses crispness fast, however Korean fried chicken does not, and the secret to this is the double fry technique. Fry the chicken first for about 10 minutes in low heat (about 325 F) to cook the wings thoroughly and develop a light crust, before then doing a final fry at a high heat (about 375 F) for about 4-5 minutes to develop the extremely crispy skin. What this does is allow the chicken to get super crispy without it being undercooked.
But this isn’t all, the chicken has a dry dredge consisting of flour, egg, and the most important ingredient, potato starch. Potato starch is another big factor in why the chicken comes out really crispy, there isn’t much of an explanation to it but just know it works like magic. Also, using a small amount of eggs to a high dry ingredient ratio is how it stays so crispy while sauced, since if the dredge is too wet the chicken will have a very light crust.
My final tip for making Korean fried chicken, is the sauce itself. The sauce is made of many thick components such as, honey, gochujang, and ketchup. The sauce being thick can lead to the chicken getting really soggy, but simply adding a few spoons of water to the sauce will solve this. The taste will not be affected by the consistency of the sauce, as it will be much lighter leading to the perfect crispy Korean fried chicken.
