Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- You know, nobody's going to argue with me when I say Korean cuisine is packed with flavor-- beef bulgogi, for example, or kimchi fried rice.

Now, I think the masterpiece of flavor when it comes to Korean cooking is fried chicken and their many different approaches to it there.

The one we're going to do today is moist inside, crisp on the outside, and coated in a glaze with gochujang and soy sauce.

It is spectacular.

So please stay tuned as we explore the big flavors of Korean cooking.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - Introducing Hestan ProBond, crafted from the resilience of cold-forged stainless steel.

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- 17 years ago, when I first came to Korea, some Korean friends told me they had to show me something, and they brought me out here, and it looked a little different.

It was just a one-story old building with a traditional kind of Korean roof on it.

And right here on the corner outside were some big cauldrons full of hot oil.

(sizzling) They're literally on the street frying the chicken in these giant cauldrons.

And the folks that wanted to show me this place, they wanted to get the purest, the naked fried chicken.

And I'm looking around at all this... other tables of this packed restaurant on, like, a Wednesday night, and they're all having the wet battered ones.

And I was like, "Can we get that one?"

My friend's like, "No!

This is the best."

(sizzling) So in all the older markets in Korea, traditional markets, you'll find this particular type of fried chicken, which is a wet batter.

Rather than a lot of flour.

they're using a whole lot of starch.

Potato starch or cornstarch is paramount.

That's how it gets so crispy.

It's going to go in once, come out, sit and drip dry, and then it's going to go in one more time just before somebody orders it.

(speaking Korean) I just really enjoy being on the farm and doing what we do here.

I've been in Korea for about 17 years now.

Was a culinary professor here for most of that time.

That's kind of what brought me here.

My father was adopted from Korea, and so I grew up in Texas mostly, always wondering, um, you know, what it might be like to visit and to check out this country.

This one blew my mind when I found the traditional market.

Tongjindak or whole fried chicken, or the pieces with a wet batter.

We don't really see wet batters on fried chicken in most parts of the world.

All right, let's get that going there.

(bubbling) Beautiful.

Frying in cast iron is one of the best, because that density holds in the heat.

And then sauce.

Let's start off with plenty of chopped garlic, a bit of soy sauce, red pepper flake or gochugaru, and rice syrup, and plenty of it.

This is gochujang, or fermented red pepper paste.

Smells pretty good, doesn't it?

It's actually making me hungry.

- You know, fried chicken is one of those things that we do here in a very particular way.

- Mm-hmm.

- We have, you know, parts and buttermilk, et cetera.

And it's great, I love fried chicken.

But in South Korea, there's tens of thousands of places, and it's totally different.

It's a totally different approach.

And it's a great example of taking something that is very much American now and has been totally transformed in another culture.

- About the only thing that's similar is that the chicken is fried in oil.

(laughs) - That's it.

And it's chicken.

- And every step along the way, they add on flavor on top of flavor.

It's just a bomb of flavor, it's incredible.

So what we're going to start with is a marinade.

Now, in the U.S., we sometimes marinate the chicken in buttermilk, just tenderize it a little bit.

This is marinated in soy sauce.

Two whole teaspoons of pepper and ginger to give it a lot of flavor.

And we're using boneless chicken thighs.

That's another thing you mentioned-- in Korea, they have so many varieties of fried chicken.

You might see the whole entire chicken fried.

A half a chicken, big parts.

And here, also bite-size little pieces that you just pop into your mouth.

So that's what we're doing with the boneless thighs.

Just put those right in.

We cut these in half.

These are maybe thirds, depending on how big the thighs are.

But you can see you want about two or three bites' worth in each piece.

Okay, there we go.

And we'll just coat that.

Let this sit about 30 minutes to 45 minutes in the fridge just to get some of that flavor soaked in.

Then when we take the chicken out of the marinade, we're actually going to use the remaining marinade in the bowl and make a slurry.

But we'll talk about that later.

- Well, one of the things going on is there's a lot of salt in soy sauce.

- Yes.

- It's that salt that's actually going to penetrate and help the chicken hold on to moisture when it's fried.

- And you, if you would, you have all the makings there for our sauce.

Now, this is the post-frying glaze sauce.

So we have just a couple of tablespoons of soy sauce for a little saltiness.

- Gochujang.

- Then the gochujang, yes, which is the base of the sauce.

- By the way, there's good gochuchang, and there's really bad gochuchang, which is not aged or it's done very quickly.

- We're adding a little honey and some raw sugar, and then the rice vinegar.

- With a little bit of garlic.

- That's great.

You know, gochujang is having its moment now, right?

It's sort of trending in popularity.

- Well, I was in the supermarket, I don't know, a couple of months ago, and they have gochujang potato chips now.

- (laughs) - So when you see it in a potato chip, you know, it's like it's made it into the mainstream.

- All right, so that's a beautiful red.

Set that aside, we're going to finish that later.

This will sit for another 30 minutes or so, and then we will start the frying process.

- Okay.

- All right, the marinade has done its thing.

We're ready to remove the chicken.

Use a slotted spoon so all the remaining marinade stays in the bowl.

We'll put this on some paper toweling, 'cause, you know, we do need to blot it dry before we use our batter.

Now, in South Korea, we made this fried chicken with several different chefs, and we were inspired by a lot of different tips that they gave us.

Like you said, everyone makes it their own way, right?

One chef in particular, Ryan Phillips, who's a Korean-American chef in South Korea, gave us some fantastic tips for this.

And one of these is instead of dipping the chicken in a thick batter or even breading it, he made a slurry.

- Hm.

- A very loose batter.

So we're going to use some of the marinade as the base of our slurry.

We only need about a quarter cup.

There we go.

Oh!

Look at that, almost exactly the right amount, so... put it right back in here.

And then to that, we will add a mixture of cornstarch and flour.

You know, you can use all cornstarch, as some chefs do.

Some chefs like both because they want a little bit of that glutinous quality.

- So in general, cornstarch or potato starch will give you a crispier, thinner skin, right?

- That is correct, yes.

And then this is more of a binder.

Okay.

And, of course, as you can see, it is very thick and stiff.

I'm just letting it absorb a little bit of that.

- Yeah, I was going to say you lied to me.

You said this is going to be a slurry.

But I do see some water over there.

The magic of water.

- Right.

- Add a little bit of water at first, get it to a pasty consistency, and you can get out more lumps that way.

Now, once this is kind of smooth, then you can add the rest.

- So a slurry, which obviously has more liquid in it, more water in it, one of the benefits is when you put the chicken with a slurry into hot oil, all that liquid has to evaporate before the temperature goes over 212.

- Right.

- Right?

So you end up not overcooking the inside of the chicken because the outside is wet.

And that has to actually evaporate before the temperature goes up.

- And also because the slurry is thinner, it allows the steam from the chicken to escape more, too.

Now, you just brought up a good point, because the other method we are doing with this is we are doing a double fry.

And part of it is to allow that steam to escape without getting the slurry soggy.

And the other is to not overcook the chicken while this gets super crispy.

So we want to dry this off on both sides.

So we're just going to dab it a little bit.

We want to make sure the chicken's not wet, or else the slurry will just drip right off.

While we do the first fry, we'll do it in three batches so we don't overcrowd the oil.

Then when we do the second fry, we can do it in two batches because the coating has already set some and they won't stick together as much.

So get about a third of this in here, and look how thin that is.

Think more crepe batter than it is pancake.

Let all the slurry drip back as much as possible so you just don't end up with a bunch of it in the oil.

Yes!

- Are you happy about that?

She just said "yes."

- You hear that?

- You're happy because it fries.

The temperature was good, yes.

- When we were developing the recipe, we used the wok, we used a Dutch oven, we used a large basic soup pot.

So any deep vessel will do.

You just want the oil to be at a level that the chicken is fully submerged.

Okay, so I'm going to add the next third to the slurry.

It only takes about two minutes at this point, we're just sort of par-frying, I guess you could say.

And when they're a light golden brown, two minutes or so, put them on the wire rack, and we'll do the next third.

Okay, the oil is back up to 350.

We'll fry these in two batches now.

This is the second fry, so you can separate them.

They can go right back onto the same sheet tray.

This is two minutes the first time, two to maybe three minutes the second time.

These pieces of chicken are small enough that it's going to get cooked thoroughly throughout.

And, you know, we're frying here.

We really should talk about the oil a little bit.

You want an oil that can tolerate high heat, obviously.

Peanut oil is really great for that.

Safflower oils are good.

Canola oil in a pinch... - No!

No!

No!

- (laughs) - Canola oil tastes like fish.

It's got a fishy smell.

I don't like canola oil, don't use it.

And that's how I really feel about it.

- All right, you heard it from him.

- And by the way, you can also use a low-quality olive oil instead of a light olive oil.

That won't smoke under 400.

Actually, you can use it-- now, you don't want to use it if it's expensive and it's really good.

- Right.

- How's that look?

- That looks great.

- I think we're good.

- I think we're good on those.

- Yeah.

So, it is interesting they double fry, and the reason is that if it cools down in between the two sets of frying, inside of the chicken is going to cool down.

You put it back in the oil, the outside is going to heat up fast, but you're not going to overcook the inside.

If you just left it for one whole fry, the inside is going to come up to temperature and overcook.

So it's a way of getting the outside crispy, but the inside juicy.

- Right.

And that brief resting period allows the steam from the hot chicken to come out a little bit so it doesn't make the crust soggy after the second fry.

- Look at that.

- That's gorgeous.

That is it.

Okay, now we will take all of this and add it to this umami-rich bowl of sauce.

Look at that.

- Ooh, that smells good, too.

Ooh!

- I can hear the crunch.

- Not many things beat this visually.

It's that deep red of the gochujang.

That looks pretty amazing, doesn't it?

- Mm-hmm.

Oh, my gosh, so delicious.

All right.

I mean, doesn't need anything, but you know what?

It does look gorgeous with these sesame seeds-- toasted, lightly toasted-- and some fresh green scallions.

- Ooh.

- I know, right?

(chuckles) - Sorry, I'm...

I'm not going to use a knife and fork for this.

Mm.

Wow.

- (chuckles) I mean, you get it all at once.

It's like a fireworks in your mouth.

Sweet, salty, spicy.

That gochujang is really delicious.

- The skin is super thin and crispy.

- Mm-hmm.

- e meat's juicy-- which is not always true of fried chicken.

And the marinade and then the gochujang sauce.

It's spicy, but it's not blow-your-head-off spicy.

It's just really good fried chicken.

- Mm-hmm.

- It's really good.

So, Korean fried chicken.

Double fried, thin and crisp on the outside.

Marinated, gochujang sauce, boneless.

It's thin and crispy on the outside, and it's a complete mess eating it, which is just fine, because it's fried chicken.

So I just love the fact, you know, one culture takes something from another culture and just has a completely different take on it.

- Yep.

- It is stupendous.

So the next time you make fried chicken, you might want to consider Korean fried chicken.

It's worth every second of effort, but it's really not, it's not that hard.

- It's not that bad, yeah.

- When you think of Korean food, the dish that inevitably comes to mind is beef bulgogi.

This well-loved dish is served in restaurants all over Korea and here in the States, too.

When you go to the restaurant, they have that wonderful little tableside grill.

You grill the pieces of beef yourself and eat it with that delicious sweet and savory sauce.

It's very simple to make at home.

Chef Ryan Phillips showed us his version, and we brought it back to the States to share with you.

Let's get started.

So one of the key ingredients in beef bulgogi is pear.

We use an Asian pear for this recipe.

It's very firm and sweet.

It also has an enzymatic property which breaks down the meat and makes it tender.

If you can't find these, a Bosc pear works perfectly as well, but use them when they're slightly underripe so they have a little texture left.

So I'll get started first on the marinade, the star ingredient being the pear.

We add a few more aromatics, some scallions, ginger, garlic, and a few key ingredients to make it nice and sweet and savory.

To prepare the marinade, first I'm going to peel, core, and chop an Asian pear.

It's about a half-pounder.

Then I'll peel a nice thick piece of ginger and cut about an inch-long piece and chop it up into coarse pieces.

For the scallions, I will remove the white part of the scallion and roughly chop them for the marinade.

And the greens, I'll slice on a bias for the garnish at the end.

The garlic is five cloves.

We're just going to smash them down.

So I'll transfer all of those aromatic vegetables to the jar of a blender and add our liquid ingredients: soy sauce, honey, sesame oil-- nice toasted sesame oil-- and some mirin, which is a sweet Japanese cooking wine.

I'm going to turn on the blender and grind that down until it's relatively smooth.

So the beef we're using today is ribeye.

This is a delicious, flavorful steak with lots of nice marbling.

You could also use sirloin and even flank steak if you like.

That marinade will really tenderize that meat, but this is the most flavorful and the most delicious.

So what I've done is thrown these steaks into the freezer for about 20 or 30 minutes, and what that does is firm up the meat so it's easier to slice.

The key to a delicious bulgogi is very thin slices so that it cooks quickly and is really pleasurable to eat.

It's nice and tender.

I'm just going to trim off a little of that excess marbling around the edge.

Now, when you slice, you want to go on a diagonal so that you get nice, long strips of meat.

And you want to go pretty thin.

No thinner than about an eighth to a quarter of an inch.

Now, if I hadn't frozen this meat, you'd have a really tough time slicing this this thinly, because the meat is so soft, it would just be compressing down.

And this keeps the slices nice and separate so that they'll absorb that marinade.

So I'll add all of my nice thin steak strips to the marinade and toss it well until it's very evenly coated.

I'll cover the bowl and refrigerate it for at least two hours.

Stir it once or twice through that time, and you can leave it in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours.

So the sliced-up ribeye has been soaking up all that delicious marinade for a couple of hours.

And I took it out of the refrigerator for about 20 to 30 minutes before I cook it.

And the reason I want to do that is I want to drain the excess marinade off.

And if it's a little bit more at room temperature, it will drain out easier.

We want to get a nice brown edge on the meat when we get it in the pan.

So this is a key step.

So press out as much marinade as possible.

Don't throw the marinade away; that becomes our sauce.

We're going to cook it with the meat at the end.

So that beef is ready to go.

First thing is to heat up my pan with a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil.

(sizzling) After it cooks a few minutes, it will start to caramelize around the edges, give it a quick stir.

So once I returned the marinade to the pan with the meat, I cooked it a few more minutes till this gets nice and caramelized and brown.

This looks great.

I'm going to turn off the heat, just give it a little bit of salt and pepper... and then we're ready to garnish and eat.

(sizzling) So, right on top, then those diagonally sliced scallions make a beautiful garnish.

And then to echo that nutty, toasty, roasted sesame flavor, the oil we put in the marinade, some roasted sesame seeds over the top.

And traditionally, this is served with steamed rice, preferably short grain rice, because it's a little stickier.

And then with chopsticks, you can wrap a strip of that meat around the rice and serve it with some crunchy kimchi on the side.

So there it is.

It's our delicious flavor-packed beef bulgogi from Korea.

It has such a nice, sweet and savory flavor from those ingredients in the marinade.

That Asian pear adds sweetness, a little bit of honey.

This is a really flavorful dish.

You don't have to go out to the Korean restaurant; you can make it yourself right at home.

When we were in Seoul, we ate many versions of kimchi fried rice.

We loved them all.

There are probably as many versions of kimchi fried rice as there are people who eat it and cook it.

We took elements from different versions of kimchi fried rice that we liked to make our version here at Milk Street.

One of the versions we ate that we loved was made in a restaurant by chef Choi Dong Mae.

She made this sauce that we couldn't get enough of, that we thought really transformed kimchi fried rice.

But it had a ton of ingredients.

So we're making a version that's a little more streamlined for the home cook.

One of the key ingredients is an Asian pear.

So you add a peeled and seeded Asian pear.

The whites from one scallion, two cloves of garlic, and about a half an inch of peeled ginger, Two-and-a-half tablespoons of gochujang-- a powerhouse pantry staple-- and two tablespoons of soy sauce.

We're also just going to add a little bit of salt, a quarter teaspoon, and about half a teaspoon of black pepper.

(whirring) All right, so we're going to take two tablespoons of this and add it to our pork.

If you want to make a vegetarian version, you could use tofu, I really like a mixture of mushrooms and eggplant, and leave out any meat.

In the bulgogi you saw earlier, the Asian pear was really used to tenderize the meat.

It's not so here.

Here, it's purely for the flavor.

You can make this fried rice in a wok, in a nonstick skillet, or, like I like to, in a well-seasoned cast iron pan.

We're going to add about a tablespoon of neutral oil.

Once it's nice and hot, we'll add the pork.

And one thing we love about Korean fried rice is it really can be a vehicle for all of your leftovers.

So if you have leftover pork that's already cooked, you could certainly use it instead of using raw pork.

We want to cook this until it's lightly brown and no longer pink.

All right.

This already smells so good.

We're going to remove the pork to a plate.

We're going to add a little more oil, about two more tablespoons.

And then one thing we learned in a home-cooked version of kimchi fried rice from Sung Min Lee was to really take time to caramelize some onions.

We liked that richness that it added to the base of the final dish, so we made sure to replicate that in our version.

We also want to add a quarter teaspoon of salt.

Put this over medium, medium-high, and let the onions cook until they're nice and golden.

It might take five to seven minutes.

So while our onions finish browning, let's talk about kimchi.

Because of all the varieties of kimchi fried rice we had, two things were ubiquitous: kimchi and rice.

Kimchi is a fermented vegetable.

It's one of my favorite pantry staples.

The most common variety we found used for fried rice is napa cabbage kimchi.

All kimchi has more than vegetables in it.

It has gochugaru chili.

It can have fermented shrimp.

It has scallions, different vegetables, different flavoring agents.

But it all sits and ferments and gets deeply savory.

It's got a little kick.

It's salty, it's piquant.

You could eat this-- I do-- out of the jar happily on its own.

We just want to give it a rough chop so that when we serve this, it's easy to eat.

That's fine.

You don't need to be particular, but you do want to save everything.

It's so delicious.

So now our onions are nice and golden, and on top of them, we are going to add our kimchi.

And then we're also going to add a little bit of corn.

We really liked it in one of the varieties in Seoul that we tried.

But again, this is sort of a template.

You could leave the corn out, you could add a different vegetable, but we like that juicy pop that the corn added as a textural difference as well as a flavor difference.

Once this is evenly distributed, we're sort of going to let it be.

We want to brown our kimchi to take away a little bit of that bright punch and make it a little more savory and robust.

To make this a complete meal, we like to top it with fried eggs.

And so while this kimchi browns, Wes is going to show you how we like to fry eggs at Milk Street.

A great way to top off a bowl of pasta or noodles or some kimchi fried rice like Rosie's making is a perfectly fried, sunny side up egg.

They're a lot easier to make than you think.

Here's how we do it at Milk Street.

So the perfectly fried egg starts with butter.

So I've got a tablespoon of butter in a non-stick skillet.

When that melts, it's going to start to foam.

When the foam subsides, that's the point at which we add the eggs.

And if they start to spread into each other, can just use a silicone spatula to separate them apart.

You can just kind of cut into them as they set up, but separate them out.

So the second great tip here for a perfect egg is to cover them, put a lid on the skillet.

It will trap the heat inside and cook the top of the egg without cooking the yolk.

We want that nice, runny yolk to crack open into our fried rice.

This takes about a minute and a half, and they're ready to go.

Here we go.

Perfectly set on top.

Nice and separate, still bubbling.

They're ready for some salt and pepper and a bowl of hot fried rice.

So Rosie's waiting.

I better get them out to her.

Hey, Rosie.

- Hi, Wes.

- I've got some fried eggs for you.

- Those are beautiful, thank you.

- la Milk Street.

- They're going to make this dish perfect.

- How much longer?

- Two minutes.

- Hungry.

- Okay, it's coming.

- Let's go.

- (laughs) All right.

So we have developed all this beautiful flavor by browning the kimchi.

Wes is hungry.

Let's finish this.

We're going to add our puree in, and this will help pick up any of the brown bits from browning the kimchi.

And now we're ready for the rice.

So one of the things we loved in many of the fried rices we had in Seoul was an equal portion of rice to kimchi.

So we have two-and-a-half cups of cooked rice and two-and-a-half cups of kimchi already in the pan.

We're also going to add back in the pork.

And now that beautiful kimchi juice we talked about earlier, two tablespoons.

So the kimchi juice brings back a little of that fresh pop that we cooked out with the kimchi when we wanted the browning.

We're just going to stir this all together until it's warmed through.

Takes about two minutes.

So to add some more fresh pop to contrast with this savory base, we're going to put in the greens from those scallion whites we used in the sauce.

You want to reserve a few for garnish later.

We want to stir these in and just sort of take that raw bite off, but keep them nice and fresh.

Don't cook this for too long.

As in we're done cooking, so we're going to turn the heat off.

(beep) You can either bring it to the table, all served in the skillet, which is pretty dramatic and beautiful, or do nice portions in individual plates.

Which beautiful fried egg do I choose?

How about this one?

You want to sprinkle some more scallions on top.

Sesame seeds are a nice crunch at the end, but also a little nuttiness.

And then a drizzle of now toasted sesame seed oil.

The final thing you want to make sure you do is crack that egg yolk right into the middle of everything and make sure your first bite has a little bit of it, some scallion, and some sesame seeds.

This is a home cook's fancy version of kimchi fried rice.

This is extraordinary.

This kimchi fried rice is beautiful enough and delicious enough for company, but easy enough for a weeknight when you have some leftover rice and a bottle of kimchi in the fridge.

You can get the recipe for this kimchi fried rice and all the other recipes from this season of Milk Street Television at MilkStreetTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

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From pad Thai with shrimp and no-fry eggplant parmesan to Korean fried chicken and salty honey browned butter bars, the Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, easier recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - Introducing Hestan ProBond, crafted from the resilience of cold-forged stainless steel.

We collaborate with top chefs to redefine cookware and the kitchen experience.

Italian craftsmanship meets innovation with Hestan ProBond.