Korean Spicy Saucy Fried Chicken
Adapted from Ellie at Kitchen Wench
Preparation time: 20 minutes plus marinating time
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Chicken Marinade Ingredients
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2kgs/4.4 pounds chicken wings
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1 cup milk (can substitute with soy milk if lactose intolerant)
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2 teaspoon salt
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3 teaspoon ground pepper
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2 tablespoons white sugar
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1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
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5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
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1/2 onion, finely chopped
Chicken Coating Ingredients
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3 tbsp Korean curry powder (Ottogi Korean curry powder if you can find it, I couldn't and used a Baba's meat curry powder)
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1/2 cup potato starch (use cornflour or cornstarch if you can't find this)
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1 1/2 cups tempura flour (or if you can't find this, use 1 cup plain all purpose flour and 1/2 cup cornflour or cornstarch)
Sweet & Spicy Sauce Ingredients
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3 onions, finely diced
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2-3 tablespoons oil
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1 cup tomato sauce (Western-style, not the Asian ones which taste completely different)
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1 cup sweet chilli sauce
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3 tablespoons Worcestershire/Worcester Sauce
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1 1/2 cups water
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dried chilli flakes to taste (I used about 6 teaspoons so they were spicy!)
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Sliced green onions to serve (optional)
Step 1 - Prepare the chicken wings. Using a large knife or cleaver, separate the wing from the drumette and the tips. Cut three slashes into the into each side of the drumette and mid-wing section - this will allow the pre-frying marinade to get right into the meat to keep it moist and impart a little flavour. You don't need the tips for this recipe and we ended up giving them to Gina and Hot Dog's puppy dog Indy. Isn't he cute?
Step 2 - Place the marinade ingredients in a large bowl and soak the chicken pieces in it for an hour. After the hour is up, drain the pieces and discard the milk.
Step 3 - Meanwhile, and this was because the menfolk were starving, I prepped the sauce and the chicken coating ingredients. For the sweet and spicy sauce heat a large frying pan on medium heat and add the oil and saute the onions lightly until soft and fragrant. Then add the tomato sauce, sweet chilli sauce, Worcestershire sauce, water and chilli flakes. It will look pale and uninteresting for a few minutes and then will turn into a glistening deep ruby red sauce. Try not to eat it as it is because you need it for the chicken.
Step 4 - For the chicken coating, I put the three ingredients into a bowl and stirred them and then put them in a large ziplock bag. Then I realised that I could have skipped the bowl step all together and put them directly into the large ziplock bag. When the chicken is drained add half of the chicken wings and toss around until coated and place on a large tray. Toss the other half and place on tray too.
Step 6 - Heat your deep fryer to 160C/320F and have two large trays ready. Fry the chicken in batches-not too many as putting too many will cause the temperature to drop too much. We did these in about 4 batches. Fry for about 3 minutes and then remove from the fryer and set aside to rest for 10 minutes resting on a single layer. After they have rested turn the heat up to 180C/350F and fry them again for another three minutes. Ellie's instructions were to cook them for longer but Hot Dog and Gina know the exact time their fryer takes to cook chicken wings as they make them a lot and it was six minutes and they were perfectly done. And I think a deep fryer takes less time too.
Step 7 - Transfer them to the pan and coat them in the sauce and then sprinkle with green onions. And then have bibs, napkins and hand towelettes messy because it is going to get messy but you just aren't going to care ;)