Kkanpunggi

Double-fried chicken tossed in a sauce reduced to almost nothing, so it coats as a glaze rather than a liquid.

Chicken, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains chicken.

Ingredients

For the chicken

• 800 g boneless chicken thigh, in large pieces
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon grated ginger
• 1 egg white
• 100 g potato starch
• 1.5 litres oil for frying
• salt and white pepper

For the sauce

• 1 whole head of garlic, sliced thin
• 8 dried red chillies, snipped in half
• 1 green pepper, diced
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 4 spring onions, in 3 cm lengths
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons rice wine
• 3 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoon oil

Method

1. THE SAUCE IS REDUCED TO ALMOST NOTHING BEFORE THE CHICKEN RETURNS. Boiled down in the wok until there are two or three tablespoons of syrup left and it is just beginning to catch. The chicken then goes in and is tossed for twenty seconds, picking up a glaze rather than being cooked in liquid. This is the third double-fried chicken in the collection and the only one where the sauce ends up dry: the Korean fried chicken is tossed in a wet glaze, the tangsuyuk has its sauce served in a separate bowl, and this one has the sauce reduced onto it.
2. SO IT MUST BE SERVED WITHIN A MINUTE. A glaze this thin still softens the crust, just more slowly. Wok to plate to table.
3. A WHOLE HEAD OF GARLIC, SLICED, AND THAT IS NOT A MISPRINT. It is fried in the oil until pale gold before anything else goes in, and it is as much an ingredient as the chicken. Fried too dark it turns bitter and the whole wok is lost, so it comes out the moment it colours and goes back at the end.
4. IT IS FRIED TWICE, like the other two, and for the same reason as the Korean fried chicken: the second fry at a higher temperature drives off the surface moisture and sets a shell that can take a sauce at all.
5. THE DRIED CHILLIES ARE SNIPPED, NOT WHOLE, which is the opposite of the andong jjimdak on this site. There they steep for forty minutes and are left whole to stay mild; here they have twenty seconds in hot oil, so they are cut to let the heat out fast.
6. Chicken tossed with the soy sauce, ginger, salt and white pepper and left 20 minutes.
7. The egg white beaten in, then the potato starch worked through until each piece is thickly coated.
8. Oil heated to 160C. The chicken fried in 3 batches, 5 minutes each, until pale and cooked through. Drained on a rack and COOLED 10 minutes.
9. The oil brought to 190C and the chicken fried a SECOND time, 2 minutes a batch, until deep gold and hard. Drained.
10. The sauce ingredients except the oil stirred together in a jug.
11. A wok heated with the tablespoon of oil. The sliced garlic fried over a medium heat 2 minutes until pale gold, then LIFTED OUT.
12. The chillies and peppers thrown in for 30 seconds over a high heat.
13. The sauce poured in and BOILED HARD until reduced to 2 or 3 tablespoons of syrup, 2 to 3 minutes.
14. The chicken, the fried garlic and the spring onions added and TOSSED 20 SECONDS until coated.
15. Turned straight onto a plate and taken to the table immediately.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under South Korea · All recipes