#Korean fried chicken baltimore skin#

So although I’m not very good at fried chicken (“The Man Who Fried,” Eat Me, Dec. In the meantime, the best option for the curious is to either find someone to be a chicken mule, or to suck it up and go DIY. The good news is that apparently a KoFC place is opening up soon inside the HMart in Catonsville. It’s good, finger-lickingly even, but not life-changing, and probably not worth a trip halfway around I-495. The meat itself is unseasoned, but extremely moist, protected from drying by its cornstarch cocoon. Similarly, the composition of the famed crust is not really original, since the aforementioned ggahng-pung gi, along with many other fried-then-sauced dishes, is coated in a batter made with cornstarch, which stays crunchy in the wettest of environments.įresh, in my opinion) a glaze that possesses a pretty straightforward combo of salty, sweet, and in the case of the “spicy,” a fast-acting, mouth-filling heat and an exterior that although is often described as “shatteringly crispy” is more accurately somewhere between crispy and crunchy, with just a tiny hint of chew. So my guess is that double frying probably helped in birthing Korean fried chicken, since it definitely predates it, as opposed to it striking the Korean version of Harland Sanders like a million-dollar bolt from the blue. Deep frying’s magic lies in the hot oil’s ability to rapidly vaporize water, enabling lots of delicious browning to occur, and for tiny pockets to be formed by the escaping steam, and then quickly cook into place within a coating.

#Korean fried chicken baltimore skin#

But in addition to reducing final cooking time, the second fry enhances crispiness, possibly because the first fry, and subsequent resting period, have eradicated much of the moisture from the skin and/or batter. With plain-old wings bound for chicken boxes, or even chunks destined to be General Tso-ed, the pieces are often par-fried in advance, if only as a time saver, shaving off precious minutes during a busy lunch rush. I say ostensibly, because double-frying is pretty common practice, at least in many Korean- and Chinese-owned carryout joints.

And that last part is why, ostensibly, the most talked-about aspect of Korean fried chicken exists-the double fry. The key distinctions are that instead of a whole bird, it’s usually just wings and drumsticks (as a countermeasure for the hormone-fueled hugeness of American birds, according to some), and that the pieces are seasoned almost entirely via a post-cook glazing of sauce, which, in order to stave off sogginess, necessitates an exceptionally sturdy coating. And it is a variation of this that defines Korean fried chicken in the current context. Man that was some good-ass fried chicken.įinally, there is something called tong dak, usually a small chicken, lightly floured, fried whole, and then chopped into small pieces, that is popular in Korea as anjoo, or foods that are specifically intended for consumption while drinking alcohol. But it was in Korea, and significantly different than any Popeye’s chicken I’ve had in the States, so that counts, right? I remember it being perfectly crunchy, extremely juicy, and really fucking spicy. It was from a Popeye’s (yes, that Popeye’s), from what I can recall the first one to open in the country. Then there is my personal experience with some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever had in my life, when I was about 13 and spending a summer in Korea. That in turn sounds a lot like General Tso’s chicken, which is in fact probably more American than Chinese in origin. While deep frying isn’t very common in Korean cuisine, there is a Chinese-influenced dish called ggahng-pung gi, which consists of chicken chunks coated in batter, fried, and doused in sweet-spicy sauce. This was indeed the response from about half of the total strangers I decided to survey on a downtown street one afternoon, while the other half figured it was some obscure, possibly ancient, Korean delicacy. Here in Baltimore, we have the ubiquitous “chicken box,” which is simply fried chicken (usually whole wings), fries, and some sort of sauce-“mambo,” “tiger,” or plain old “hot.” And since many chicken purveyors around here seem to be Korean, it’s natural for locals to assume it just means fried chicken served up by Koreans. So what is Korean fried chicken? Well, the amount of potential overlap in defining such a term is kinda staggering.