How to Make Kara-Age, Japanese Style Deep Fried Chicken

My husband and children love Japanese-style chicken, like chicken Kara-Age (Deep fried chicken) and Teriyaki-chicken. Few nights ago I made some Kara-age chicken at home. Here is how we made them. 

Making Kara-age chicken

To make Kara-age Chicken, you can purchase seasoning flour from Japan mart and other asian supermarket if you wish. Or, you could save some money by just using soy sauce and other locally available ingredients.

Ingredients for Kara-Age Chicken

What you need:

• Soy sauce (Japanese one)
• Standard flour
• Ginger
• Garlic
• Chicken of your favorite portion
• Oil for deep frying

This time, we purchased about 600g of some NZ chicken nibbles from a local supermarket.  

Chicken nibbles were on special!

We also need some soy sauce, ginger, garlic, pepper and flour. As coating for the chicken, the regular method is to use standard flour. You could also make it with rice flour, or corn flour if you prefer gluten free.

If you use corn-flour, the texture of the coating would turn out to be quite hard compared to when you use standard flour. Some people prefer hard, crunchy coating. If you use rice flour, it tends to result in thin and soft coating, but taste nice either way.

If you wish, you could also try mixing flour and corn-flour, or rice flour, to get right texture of coating for your taste. I normally just using standard flour. As for oil, we used cheap canola oil purchased from a local supermarket.

Preparation

As a preparation, we will marinate chicken in soy sauce. Ideally, this preparation should be done several hours before you cook and serve the Kara-age chicken, to give it enough time for chicken to be enriched with flavoring.

If you are planning to serve Kara-age chicken for dinner, do the preparation in the morning or lunchtime. You could even do preparation on the previous day and marinate chicken overnight. This time, I prepared my chicken after lunch and deep fried them for dinner.

First, chop chicken into bite sizes. I am using chicken nibbles so there was no need to chop them. If you are using chicken breast or chicken thigh, chop them into size that is easy to eat in 2 or 3 bites. Make sure they are only ~2cm thick or so. If you have a big chunk, it becomes more difficult and takes longer to fry.

Next, you need about 3cm of ginger and 2-3 cloves of garlic.

Grind both ginger and garlic. If you don’t have a grinder, chop them very finely.

Grind, grind…

Place chicken, ginger and garlic into a plastic bag. I am using cheap medium size freezer bag from homebrand.

Add 3 table spoons of Japanese soy sauce into the bag. This time, I am using Kikkoman soy sauce that is available from the international food section of a local countdown (also other from other supermarkets).

Tight the end of the plastic bag, and mix the content lightly. Place it in another plastic bag, double-bagging it just in case, and right the end again. Place in the fridge and marinate until cooking time.

Preparation finished!

Add Flour Just Before Frying

When you are ready to deep fry your chicken and serve for a meal, open the plastic bag with chicken and add about half~2/3 cup of standard flour (or any other flour of your choice) into the plastic bag. Hold the end of bag and mix the content in the bag.

Ready to Fry!

Deep Fry in Oil

If you have a deep fryer of some sort, you could certainly try using it to fry your chicken. I am using regular flying pan below. Either way, be very careful as cooking oil will heats up well above 100 degree Celsius. Do not leave kitchen while you are using oil. Definitely do not let children run around in the kitchen.

Put oil (~2cm) into a flying pan and turn up the heat to medium strength. Wait till oil heats up. If you sprinkle a pinch of flour into the oil and it sinks or stays still, oil is still way too cold.

If a pinch of flour sprinkled quickly bubbles and floats around in the oil, then the oil has heated up. If the oil starts releasing oily smoke and you can smell it, then it is too hot. Just turn it off for your safety, wait for it to cool and try again.

Take out coated chicken pieces from the plastic bag. Place one chicken into heated oil at a time. Gently place them so oil will not splash.

Oil around chicken piece should quickly start bubbling if the oil is sufficiently warm. If it doesn’t, the oil is probably still too cold. Just wait and watch as the oil heats up and bubbling up around the first piece of chicken, before adding another one.

You can see oil bubbling.

Keep the heat on medium, and let chicken be fried in oil for 5-10 minutes. If your chicken brown too fast, your oil is too hot.

Again, do not leave from the pan and oil while you are cooking. As it cooks, the coating on the bottom side of the chicken should start to harden and brown. At the same time, you will start to see a bit of red juice coming up on the top side of the chicken. When you see this, wait till the bottom side browns then flip it around to cook the top side.

On the left chicken piece, you can see the red juice coming up. Flip!

Once you flip chicken pieces, cooked, browned coating side is now facing up.

Cook for further 5-10 minutes, until the other side is crispy and brown. Try inserting a chopstick through the chicken piece. If clear juice comes out, the inside of chicken is cooked. If the juice that comes out is still pink, lower the heat, flip chicken again and cook some more. 

Once fully cooked, the juice from inside chicken should be clear, and chicken has shrunk in size from the beginning. If you are unsure, pick up a piece of chicken and cut in half to make sure it is cooked right through. Uncooked chicken poses risks of salmonella food poisoning so make sure your chicken is properly cooked.

Tips for Making the Crispy

When you are making deep-fried food, there are a few tips for making them crispy.

First, turn up the heat a bit so the oil is at higher temperature and really bubbling, right before removing chicken from the oil.

Quickly remove chicken pieces from the oil. When you do this, lift up the majority of a chicken piece from oil, but leave one end of the chicken piece still in contact with the oil. Hold this position for 2-3 seconds, then remove them from oil and place on a paper towel.

Apparently, above step helps cooking oil to be dragged back into the pan, leaving chicken crispy. This methods can be applied to other deep fried food too. Place all chicken pieces on the metal rack or paper towel to remove the excess oil.

Some finished pieces… yum!

Kara-age is finished! Enjoy as they are, or with some freshly chopped cabbage, rice and miso soup if you want a Japanese-style meal!

Authentic! 

Fishing in Auckland with Kids 1: Okahu Bay Wharf

Our 8-year-old son loves fishing, and wants to give fishing a go on a sunny weekend. Being new to the area and having no prior fishing experience ourselves, we started off by looking for potential fishing spots with my children.

  

Fishing in Auckland with Family

New Zealand is a beautiful country surrounded by the sea, and Auckland being the “City of Sails”, fishing is a popular hobby. We see many people with their own boats and fishing gear enjoying fishing.

There are also various fishing boat charter services providing half-day or day-fishing tours. We would love to give these a shot one of these days.

But for now, our son is only 8-year-old, and we feel it is a bit too early to go on a whole-day cruise to catch a snapper. He might get too tired during the trip, or worth sea-sick. These tours are quite expensive too.

So we have been searching for a local wharf where we could get some fishing experience first. Ideally, somewhere easily accessible and safe with children. This time, we tried “Okahu Bay Wharf”, which was described to be a popular spot around Mission Bay, on the internet websites.

Tamaki Drive, Okahu Bay Wharf in Auckland

On the day, we traveled from Auckland CBD towards mission bay on Tamaki drive. The target location, Okahu Bay, was on the left hand side along the stretch of the Tamaki drive. It was right opposite to the car parking area of the Auckland’s famous Kelly Talton’s SEA LIFE aquarium.

We parked on the road along side the Okahu Bay wharf and unloaded our fishing gear, food and drinks.

At the Okahu Bay Whar, there is a long stretch of walkway out to the sea, about 150m in length. At the other end, the walk way splits up to T-shape.

It is fenced all the way, but with plenty of gaps so I would not take an eye off little ones. But we our primary school age-son was quite comfortable there. Overall it looked like a nice spot where family with kids could give fishing a try.

Okahu bay wharf

Okahu Bay Wharf is a Popular Fishing Spot

On the day we visited, it was cloudy with some wind and occasional shower. So it was cold day.

When we arrived Okahu bay wharf just before lunch time, there were already three groups of people enjoying fishing there. At the far end of the walkway, there was a group of young man who were enjoying swimming! Oh how nice it is to be young…..

After we started fishing, people with fishing gear kept on arriving every now and then. A lot of people came passed us just enjoying walks too, some with kids and some with dogs.

The wharf had visitors on even such a cold cloudy day, so I would imagine that on a sunny day of early summer, a perfect fishing day, this wharf will be quite busy with people trying to do fishing here.

At the end of walk way

No Fish for This Day!! (Danm It!)

We tried fishing for about two hours on this day. But unfortunately we could not catch anything ourselves. A guy who was fishing before us, had caught something that appeared to be Kahawai, a locally seen type of Arripis. It was quite large, not fitting his small chilly bin, as he was taking it home.

Other than that, no one else caught anything while we were at Okahu Wharf. According to some website or fishing forum though, you could catch some snapper by casting your line as far as possible in summer.

We did see some “hard-core-fisher” people who had really nice fishing gear and setting multiple of them along the wharf. So there is little doubt in us that this is a good fishing spot that attracts a lot of people.

We did not have any luck this time, but we would love to give it another shot at Okahu Bay Wharf.

Bring Your Own Fishing Gear (and Food!)

This Okahu Bay Wharf is a public domain and there is no entry fee for fishers. But it also does not have any manager on site or shops nearby. So you will need to bring everything you need with you, including fishing gear, bait, drinks and snacks.

We picked up our fishing bait at a petrol station between Auckland CBD and Okahu Bay. You can normally pickup bait and ice from a petrol station located within short range from a coast. They are often kept in a freezer outside of the shop with a lock, and you may need to ask the shop staff for them.  

So that was Our First Fishing at Okahu Bay Wharf

Unfortunately we were unable to catch anything, but we did enjoy the experience there. It seemed like a nice spot and we will definitely give it another shot! 

It is near mission bay so we could plan a whole day outing with kids; some fishing at Okahu bay wharf followed by icecream and playtime at the mission bay.

How to Mochi- Sticky rice cake! Part 3

So now I have got both sweet rice and bread maker, it is time to give it a go at making mochi!

Click here for previous articles →　Part 1 and Part 2 

Let’s start making mochi! 

To summarize, below are things you need to make mochi:

• Mochi rice – today we are using Daichi Sweet Rice from California
• Bread maker (if your bread maker does not have sticky rice function, then you need both bread maker and a rice cooker)
• Corn flower (we will use it when we roll the mochi into small size)
• Chopping board (we will roll our mochi on this)

Step 1: Washing Mochi Rice

We need to first wash mochi rice with water. A good amount to cook mochi in a standard size home bread maker is 2 or 3 cups of rice at a time. Be careful not to be rough when washing rice to prevent them from cracking.

Measure 2 cups of rice and put in a bowl. Pour plenty of water from a tap into the container with rice, and stir gently.

In the first wash, the water will quickly turn cloudy so discard this water, carefully not to lose any rice. You do not need to drain completely. Just remove the majority of water and immediately pour new water and start stirring – this is the second wash.

Repeat washing rice for 4~6 times until the water no longer turns cloudy compared to the beginning. Drain the water, this time properly using a net or basket.

Step 2: Place Rice and Water into the Bread Maker Container

Once rice is drained, place rice into the bread maker container. Make sure the wing piece of bread maker is set right at the bottom of the container before placing rice over it. For two cups of rice, add 1 cup of water.

The strength (or stickiness) of mochi can be changed by adjusting amount of water for how much rice you are using. If you add more, like 2 cups of water per 2 cups of rice, then you will have thinner mochi. Softer and easier to eat/swallow so this might work better for some people.

Step 3: Start the “Sticky Rice” Menu

Set the bread maker cooking container into the bread maker machine, then close the lid of the bread maker. Choose “Sticky Rice” Menu on the Bread Maker, then press Start button.

On my bread maker from Sheffield, it is number 17 menu for sticky rice.

Now Bread Maker is Making Mochi!!

Initially, the home bakery slowly warms up without stirring. So there is no sound. After about 20 minutes after starting the “Sticky Rice” menu, the stirring piece started to rotate and you could hear the sound of moving motor.

I found it to be a bit noisy at the start, but I got quickly used to the noise. It is not bad at all….for a bread maker that was so reasonably priced.

Once stirring starts, sticky rice slowly start to get pasty. After about 40 minutes, you could see that it is a big mass of squashed rice. It is looking really good!

After one hour has passed, it nearing the end of “Sticky Rice” program. The content is looking smooth like it should be.

Step 4: Shaping Mochi

Once the program finishes, the bread maker makes a loud beeping noise to let me know. Get a chopping board and corn starch ready. Sprinkle corn starch over the chopping board. Also have some corn starch in a bowl nearby ready to be used.

Corn flour on the shopping board!

On a corn-starch-coated chopping board, pour the content of the bread maker. Be careful not to burn, both the container and the content are really hot! Let it cool down for a while until it is at a temperature you can touch.

Coat both your hands with plenty of corn-flour. Pull & tear to make mochi into small, round shape. You must do this while mochi is still warm.

Finished!

If you wish to eat them fresh, you can dip them in soy sauce and wrap them in Nori (seaweed sheet) to taste. 

You can alternatively have Kinako-mochi, by mixing sugar and soy powder in 1:1 ratio and coating a piece of mochi with this mixture.

Storage of Remaining Mochi

You can coat remaining mochi with spare corn-flour and place them in air-tight container.  Store in the fridge for a few week. They will not rot easily but watch out for any mold growth.

Eating Mochi Stored in the Fridge

Heat them in the oven for 10 minutes until the surface of mochi browns and becomes crispy. Crispy surface might break and sticky mochi may come out from inside – this is a good sign of roasted mochi!

ENJOY! Be careful not to choke on a mochi. Mochi can be a choking hazard for elders and children in Japan. They are super yummy but be careful when giving them to children or your elder family members. 

How to make Mochi, the Sticky-Rice Cake Part 2:sweet rice!

See previous article: Part 1

 

In order to make some sticky-rice cake, or Mochi, next step is to find, the main ingredient of mochi; mochi rice!

Main Ingredient : Sweet Rice!

Mochi rice is also called sticky rice, or sweet rice. The unique property of this type of rice is they become very sticky when cooked. They are often found in Asian market.

We live in New Zealand, and we first looked for some sweet rice in the local supermarket. Online search earlier suggested that sweet rice from Sunrice brand is available in some areas, but this did not apply to our area.

Japan Mart Sells Sweet Rice in NZ

So we went to a local Japan Mart, where they sell various food and food ingredients for Japanese cuisine. There are many Japan Mart branches in Auckland, such as in central city, Silvia park, Manukau city, and in Henderson.

You can check their website (https://japanmart.co.nz/onlineshop/) for their products and locations.

We went to the Japan Mart in Henderson, which is located inside Westfield shopping mall. Unfortunately on that day, they did not sell Japanese sweet rice. But a good news for us was that they did sell sweet rice that was produced in United states.

Sweet Rice from U.S.

This is the sweet rice imported from U.S. It is sold as sweet rice, brand name DAICHI. Daichi in Japanese means earth, so I would imagine someone who has knowledge or even a close relationship with Japan is producing this rice in U.S.

Apparently it is produced in California. I wonder if people in U.S. will be able to purchase these cheaper?  It cost us 15 NZD for 2.2㎏ bag.

There were fine, short-grain rice grains packed inside the bag.

Appearance of Sweet Rice and Regular Rice

Sweet rice differs in appearance from regular rice such that, sweet rice grains appear more opaque and white. In comparison, regular rice would appear only half opaque and half transparent.

On this photo above and below, ones on the right are sweet rice, ones on the left are regular sushi rice from SunRice brand.

From appearance, it is reassuring that these are authentic sweet rice, which should produce good mochi. As preparation, I washed three cups of sweet rice with water, then soaked them in water overnight.

We are READY to Make Mochi Now!

Now we are ready to make mochi, with home bakery appliance!

To be continued -> Part 3