The ultimate guide to juicy, crisp and crunchy Japanese fried chicken karaage.
Have you ever watched Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma? It’s an over the top and hilarious anime (based on a manga) that revolves around food and cooking battles. A couple of the episodes focus on chicken karaage, which both Mike and I love. We’ve long finished watching that show, but we still love making chicken karaage and snacking on it while we watch hockey. Karaage truly is the best snack food.
What is chicken karaage?
Chicken karaage is Japanese fried chicken: bite sized, super juicy, intensely flavorful, with a crispy, cracker-y crunch. Technically karaage refers to the deep-frying part – anything can be karaage, but the most popular version is tori no karaage, which translates to chicken karaage.
How to make chicken karaage
- Cut down your chicken: Start off with cutting the chicken into bite size pieces. Make sure you cut all your pieces the same size. You don’t want thin pieces because they tend to be drier, so try to make sure they are kind of chunky and thick, about 1.5 inches to 2 inches in size.
- Marinate: From there you’ll want to marinate in soy sauce, sake, sugar, ginger, and garlic. It’s a pretty dry marinade so be sure to mix everything up evenly so that all the chicken pieces are coated. Marinate for at least 30 minutes. I like to leave the bowl in a cool spot in the kitchen so the chicken can come up to room temp. Tempering the chicken helps it cook more evenly and quickly than if you store and cook it straight from the fridge.
- Coat the chicken: After the chicken has marinated, you want to coat it in potato starch. You dont need to drain the marinade, since it’s pretty much a rub, so just go ahead and toss the chicken in the starch, being sure to coat evenly and shaking off the excess.
- Fry: From there you can either deep-fry, air-fry, or oven-bake. The choice is yours!