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.
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!
