- 1 hour ago
Chef Junghyun Park of Atoboy’s in NYC joins Bon Appétit to show how he makes perfect Korean Fried Chicken. Crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside, Park uses a double-fry technique and a fermented jalapeño marinade. From achieving a crunchy texture with rice flour batter to achieving bold flavor with gochujang and Korean sauces, these chef-level techniques will completely upgrade how you make Korean fried chicken at home.
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00:04My name is Jung-yeon Park.
00:06I'm the chef and owner of the Atto Boy restaurant.
00:08Today, I'm going to show you how we make the perfect Korean fried chicken in our restaurant.
00:16Fried chicken is my signature dish.
00:19People's favorite for sure.
00:20Perfect Korean fried chicken is crispy outside,
00:24very thin crust with moisture and a lot of flavor inside.
00:27Looks very simple, but it's a lot of techniques and a lot of time to take.
00:31But when you taste this fried chicken, you never regret about your time.
00:38So first step of the today is going to be we brine the chicken.
00:42I recommend using the chicken thigh, the boneless and skinless meat.
00:46It has more flavor and different texture compared to chicken breast.
00:50So brining technique looks very simple.
00:52We only using few ingredients to make the brine.
00:54So we need the water.
00:56Salt is key element of the brine.
00:59And whisking well.
01:00And the yandu is a fermented vegetable flavor enhancer made with fermented soybeans.
01:06Similar with the soy sauce, but it has different complexity of the flavor.
01:10If you cannot find out yandu and your grocery store, fish sauce or the soy sauce as well.
01:15And also garlic powder and onion powder.
01:18Compared to the seasoning salt on the top of the chicken,
01:22brine solution is absorbing to the protein of the meat evenly seasoning,
01:26making more moisture inside of the protein after cooking as well.
01:30Typically, we brine this one about the six hour to eight hour.
01:34This is actually a very important step for frying chicken.
01:38After this brine, we're gonna marinate this chicken with a different flavor.
01:41And then we're gonna mix it up properly.
01:45One of the main parts and then secret ingredient of our marinade is fermented jalapeno.
01:50Jalapeno is very spicy and green and sharp.
01:54It brings a hint of the acid and sweetness and give you some extra layer of the fermentation as well.
02:00If you don't have food processor, you can just chop it really finely.
02:04And we also add in garlic.
02:06If you just only put some jalapeno, it's dominating the jalapeno flavor.
02:09Garlic is helping about round up different flavors.
02:12Some salt, a little bit of sugar, so adding some fish sauce.
02:16The sugar, the sweetness actually to give some other flavor to the bacteria.
02:19So I'm going to blend this one into a robot cube.
02:22This is mostly designed for the professional kitchen.
02:26So try to evenly blend it really well.
02:28See a little bit still chunk of the jalapeno, but it's evenly blended with garlic.
02:33And I'm going to ferment about seven days.
02:36So I have a big jar of the fermented jalapeno.
02:38You can see a little bubble comes out.
02:40It's during the fermentation process.
02:43Yeah, smells like kimchi.
02:44Next step is going to be actual marinade.
02:47So using the fermented jalapeno and ginger and garlic and the pineapple.
02:52So everything going into the robot cube.
02:54The pineapple is a key ingredient for this marinade.
02:57Pineapple is an enzyme to actually making tenderizing the meat.
03:00So even after double cooking, double fry, the meat themselves is still very tender and moisture.
03:09So chicken, we took it out from the brine.
03:11And we are going to mix with this beautiful marinade.
03:14So marinade is going to be about 10% of the weight of the chicken.
03:18Mixing really well, evenly coating with this beautiful marinade.
03:22So brine is basic season.
03:25And then this marinade is going to be another layer of flavor.
03:29So if you want beautiful, crispy, juicy, and flavorful chicken,
03:33I think that this two step is very important.
03:36You can sit this one about another four to six hours.
03:38Let's go ahead and mix it up.
03:42Our batter is actually a two-step process.
03:45We're making the dry batter and the wet batter for the frying.
03:48Korean frying mix, they contain the onion powder, garlic powder,
03:52little of the baking powder as well.
03:54If you cannot find out this one, you can replace it with AP flour.
03:57One of the surprising ingredients, we are mixing with rice flour.
04:01It doesn't have any gluten, so it gives it some more like delicate crunchiness.
04:04So we're mixing into the batter base.
04:07Tapioca starch also gives another texture to your batter as well.
04:11Kind of sharpened texture.
04:13And then Jantanga.
04:14It's helping to emersify.
04:16So when you're coating your ingredients with this type of batter,
04:20Jantanga is actually holding your batter with your ingredients.
04:23It can make it more crunchy and crispy,
04:26but at the same time, more sharp and clean.
04:28So we're making actually this dry batter,
04:30and also it's going to be the base for the wet batter as well.
04:33It needs to be like mixing really well.
04:35It's spreading really evenly on your batter base.
04:39So next step is we are going to be wet batters.
04:41So we're going to add some little bit more salt.
04:44And also black pepper into it.
04:47And whisking well.
04:49And we add water.
04:51So texture we are looking for is,
04:53you can see it's like still very fluid,
04:55but at the same time, it's almost like pancake kind of batter.
04:58So now we have the two different batters.
05:00So this is a dry batter and this is wet batter.
05:03So we ready for frying now.
05:08So the marinade chicken,
05:10so you can put into the dry batters.
05:11Usually in our restaurant,
05:13we can put like seven or eight piece as a warm portion.
05:16Coating lightly and just using your hand,
05:19dusting a little bit out,
05:21coating properly everywhere.
05:23And I don't want to have flour on the top of it.
05:26So just like very lightly coating with a dry batter.
05:29So you can see it's like already making crust outside.
05:34So we're using this kind of proof because it's more kind of sharpened on the corner.
05:39So it's easy to control your pressure on the chicken.
05:42So we're covering up with this wet batter like properly.
05:47So as you can see, it's like still dropping a little bit, but not too much.
05:51Because of the jantan, it's like kind of holding the batter really well.
05:54And carefully, you can put into your frying oil.
05:58So if you drop it, it's going to be stuck on your like the nest.
06:02So I think better to be holding a little bit until like they're making crunch outside.
06:06And then just like let it go on the oil.
06:09So we're going to fry this one about two minutes in as a first frying process.
06:15So we are cooking with the canola oil.
06:17It's very neutral flavor.
06:18And then we heat up on to like 350.
06:20I think it's like perfect temperature.
06:22So it's actually create the outside structure of the frying food.
06:26So it doesn't fully cook the chicken themselves.
06:29But this kind of gives some structure of the frying.
06:32So it has created like crunch texture a little bit.
06:35So you have the water and starch inside your batter.
06:40So starch actually cook in the hot oil.
06:42So it's making crunchy texture.
06:43The water is escaping from the batter.
06:46It's making the air polka.
06:47So that air polka is making your crunchy part.
06:50You need to be really well balanced between about how much air polka you're looking for.
06:54And then how much crust you're looking for.
06:56You can see the chicken is actually inside of the batter.
06:59And batter themselves is frying in the oil.
07:01So making like beautiful crust.
07:03Then after cooking about two minutes in the oil.
07:06So we take it out from the heat.
07:08So we last thing on the basket.
07:10I don't want to like really overcook the chicken.
07:12So I want to be like more juicy and tender inside.
07:14So we are deep frying one more time to make a crust really crunchy.
07:19And having beautiful texture.
07:21But I want to keep inside.
07:22It's just done cooking properly.
07:24So we're gonna fry another three minutes in the fryer.
07:27This is very important step.
07:28Because of the lasting process and the pre-fry process.
07:31I think the meat themselves is like almost ready to go.
07:34But I want to be looking for the texture of the outside crunchiness.
07:39It's like really comes out beautiful.
07:41When you frying is properly done.
07:43It's all the chicken is actually floating almost on the oil.
07:46So you can see the actually texture.
07:48And I'm also looking for the color.
07:50It's like beautifully kind of golden brown rather than the pale white.
07:54So you can tell how the texture and then color by the eyes.
07:59I think the most mistake that home cooks easily making is they're operating about amount of the oil themselves.
08:04They're worried about, oh, am I need to using this much oil to fry?
08:08Big amount of oil is making the better quality.
08:10Because when you drop some ingredient into the oil,
08:13the temperature oil is not drop as much as if you're using the small amount of oil.
08:17As you can see, the color is almost ready.
08:20You can see the golden brown and the batter themselves covering all your chicken properly.
08:25This is what we are looking for.
08:26So you can put into the tray carefully.
08:29Because here it's very hot and it contains a lot of the moisture inside because of the chicken themselves.
08:34So if you put on the like flat tray, it might be the bottom part is going to be a
08:38little bit soggy.
08:39So I want to be air circulating, making the more crunchy part, even the base.
08:43As you can see, it has like beautiful outside texture of the crust.
08:48It's actually, you can touch it.
08:50It's like very crunchy.
08:51You can see the air bubble inside, which is making the other layer of the crunchiness.
08:55So this is our beautiful Korean fried chicken.
08:58Made with the chicken thighs, the boneless.
09:00You can just right away chew and crunch texture outside and then moisture inside.
09:05Beautiful heat comes from the fermented jalapeno
09:07and natural sweetness from the pineapple and the beautiful texture.
09:13It's still like very like juicy and very like moisture inside.
09:17But you can feel the outside texture is like very crunchy.
09:20But not too brittle kind of crunchy.
09:23It's more kind of softened.
09:25The crust of the outside is still very crunchy.
09:28But inside is like very juicy and moisture.
09:30And we're serving in the two beautiful sauces.
09:33The first one is a fermented peanut butter sauce.
09:35Mix this peanut butter water, some mirin rice vinegar with fermented jalapeno.
09:40It's nutty and creamy and a lot of flavor comes out.
09:44So the second sauce we're serving is a yangyumi sauce.
09:47Tomato comes from the tomato can, ketchup, gochujang.
09:50So fermented chili paste, some salt and sugar,
09:53juice from the gingers, water, minced garlic, corn syrup.
09:57Heat it up a little bit on the stove.
09:58It's more like heat and sweet and also lamentation flavors.
10:02I'm going to dip with the peanut butter sauce.
10:08Balance in between the fermented jalapeno flavor
10:10and also a little bit of the rice vinegar and medium.
10:12So give it some other layer of the flavor.
10:15And actually it doesn't feel like too greasy or too heavy with it.
10:19Even with the frying food, it kicks your mouth feel very like amazing flavor together.
10:23The last bite, I'm going with the yangyumi sauce.
10:28It's delicious.
10:29So I think it's really representing the what Atto Boy is looking for.
10:32I think that we're looking for keep the Korean flavor as a tradition.
10:36So always involving about the different flavor.
10:39Atto, A-T-O.
10:41As an ancient Korean word, it means gift.
10:43So I want to bring some Korean culture.
10:45I want to be shareable this kind of banchan culture to our restaurant as a gift.
10:50Of course, the fried chicken is the best gift.
10:51To A-T-O.
10:56I want to bring the kitchens in a new store.
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