Hey there what is up you guys? I am Jerry, and
welcome back to the channel "The Chicago Griller!" This is the show where I share my favorite
tips, tricks and recipes for the Weber Q. If you think that I can help you out,
hit the like button and subscribe! The Tokyo Olympics begin tomorrow, so I thought
it would be fun to share another Japanese recipe on the channel. So today I'm sharing my version
of karage, which is Japanese fried chicken, tailor-made for the Weber Q. Let me
go in and show you how it's done. For today's karage recipe, I am starting off with
one pound of boneless skinless chicken thighs. As you can see, I have already cut these into
roughly bite-sized pieces. About half inch or an inch each. Now to make the marinade. First up you
need one tablespoon of sake. Follow that up with about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. As you can see
by the green packaging, I am using low sodium soy sauce, but regular is fine. After that I am adding
one tablespoon of ginger powder. You can of course use freshly grated ginger if that's preferred.
Next I'm adding one teaspoon of plain white sugar. And now two cloves of garlic. I'm gonna grab my
garlic press and press those right on through. Perfect! Now for our final
seasonings to this marinade... no surprise here, it's salt and pepper,
both grinded to taste. That will do it for the marinade, so with your hand,
mix everything thoroughly together. Once you've got your marinade ingredients
evenly coated on all your chicken thigh pieces, go ahead and place that in the fridge and let
this rest and marinade for about 15 minutes. And after a very quick 15 minutes it's
time to make our two ingredient batter. Go ahead and crack an egg and drop
that right into your bowl of chicken. Next up, I am adding 1/3 cup of corn starch. Now
traditionally, karage calls for potato starch, but cornstarch is a fine substitute, and quite
frankly is easier to find. And now once again with your hand go ahead and mix everything
together. Long time viewers of this channel are probably used to me using my bare hands,
which is perfectly fine. But as you can see, I'm using a glove today because this batter gets quite
sticky and messy. Anyways once mixed thoroughly, let's head out to the grill. Out on my back deck
today, we will be cooking on my Weber Q2000. It has been preheating on medium, with this cast iron
skillet filled with a thin layer of olive oil. Place your chicken directly into the skillet. I've
only placed half of my chicken into the skillet at this time. You don't want to cook it all at once
with such a small skillet, because if your chicken is too dense in here, this uncooked and sticky
batter will cause the pieces to clump together. Now it seems like my skillet is slightly
tilted because the oil is pooling a little bit, so let's even that out. Perfect! Now shut the
lid and let this cook for about two minutes. And after a very quick two minutes, I'm going to
go check on my karage, and give them all a turn. They don't look too special right now, but
don't worry they'll get there. And once again, I'm trying to leave just a little bit
of room between each piece of chicken, so that the batter is not
in contact with each other. Give it a bit of a toss and stir, then close the
lid and continue cooking. Repeat this process every two minutes or so for a total of
seven or eight minutes of cook time. By then your batter should start to turn golden
brown, and will not be so sticky. Instead it will be crunchy and crispy and delicious. Now the
nice thing about karage with chicken thighs, is that you don't really have to worry too much
about overcooking. Instead the batter will just get crispier and crispier and crispier.
That said my karage is looking pretty good, so let's pull these out of the skillet
and off the grill and see how they look. These smell delicious! That
soy and ginger marinade really brings out the aromas of the chicken. So traditionally, you'd serve up karage with
any number of dipping sauces like mayonnaise or mustard or tare or anything else in between.
But today I'm going to try this one straight up... Oh man! That is so good! Now wash that down with
an Asahi or two or three, and you may mistake yourself for being in an izakaya. The batter
really gives the chicken a unique crispiness. And because they're chicken thighs,
they are very, very juicy as well. I really love that soy and ginger marinade, it
really gives that extra punch that you might not be expecting. Anyways give this recipe a
go if you want to transport yourself to Japan. As always if you enjoy the content in this
channel and on this video, hit that like button and subscribe! I'll be back next week
with another great new episode! Sayonara!
