Korean vs. Japanese Fried Chicken

fried chicken it is so so good and when i start thinking about fried chicken a lot of things start rushing through my mind at this point i've tried so many different types and just small changes in ingredients can make huge differences in the final result of that fried chicken there are two types of fried chicken that stand out in my mind the first is korean fried chicken which i'm sure you either know is amazing or just heard that it's top notch and it's true korean fried chicken is incredible but japanese fried chicken is a whole different beast and i've never actually been able to taste the two side by side so today we're gonna see which one's better japanese or korean fried chicken to start i hope you all know that i like drums over wings actually let me rephrase drums are wings i like drums over flats flats of course are those flatter chicken wings they're a lot thinner across and they always have that same oval shape but i've always opted for the drum first of all just look at that shape with me it's got a beautiful bulb of shape around the head right here but more importantly the whole thing's covered in that nice skin which is really protective and important when we fry chicken the reason being that skin on the outside gets very crispy along with whatever you dredge it in and it does a really great job protecting all that meat on the inside so we'll be frying with drums i'll start out with my two brining bowls one for japanese and one for korean i'll drop my drums into each bowl i already forget which one i labeled japanese and which one i labeled korean but we'll figure that out when we start to brine them now to our japanese wings we're going to add a little bit of soy sauce about the same amount of mirin which is a sweet cooking seasoning or sort of a sweet rice seasoning and then we'll go over the top of this with just a little bit of grated ginger if you're keeping ginger to great a really great tip is to leave it in the freezer it'll grate so much easier and so much better once i've added the brine to the japanese wings i'll mix these around a little bit and make sure they're all fully submerged if they're not feel free to add just a little bit of water to make sure that those really get that flavor pumped into every part of each drum now i'll move over to my korean fried chicken i'll cover all those drums with water and then put a nice generous handful of salt which is probably the most common ingredient used in a brine and then just a little sprinkle of sugar to sweeten things up a little bit again i'll get in there with my hands and mix these around just a little bit and then we'll let these both sit for about a half an hour to really pump in that flavor these are gonna be awesome while everything is brining we'll start by making the sauce for our korean fried chicken there are quite a few ingredients in the korean fried chicken sauce but don't let that scare you it's not too bad but i'm just gonna rapid fire these off one tablespoon of sesame oil one tablespoon of vegetable oil two teaspoons of minced ginger i'm just gonna grate it here to more easily get those finer granules of ginger here two fresh cloves of garlic which i'll just be lazy and use my garlic press for four tablespoons of soy sauce four tablespoons brown sugar two tablespoons of honey my favorite ingredient in korean fried chicken and then two tablespoons of gochujang paste which is a really traditional korean ingredient now i'll whisk this up until we reach the proper consistency and that's our sauce here's a fundamental difference you're about to see oftentimes japanese fried chicken isn't tossed in some sort of marinade before you eat it instead it's just really crispy and maybe has a really good dipping sauce that goes along with it that could be something like oyster sauce or japanese mayo so for our japanese wing sauce we'll start with about a half a cup of soy sauce then about a half a cup of mirin and we'll let that get nice and hot while i know i said it doesn't traditionally have a sauce i feel that would be really good to at least make a really thin drizzle that we can toss these in before eating them that'll help give a more even comparison across the wings and i think this is just gonna step up our game a little bit now once this is reduced down a little bit i'm gonna add a little bit of sake in here and do a bit of a flambe sake is quite similar in flavor to mirror it really just has that added alcohol at least that's how i've always looked at it your pan needs to be really hot and ideally you don't have a ton of liquid there then obviously it works a lot easier with higher alcohol content things that you're pouring in so here we go because that's such a quick flame you can tell that there's not a lot of alcohol in that socket but hey we still got the flame right let's go back to reducing this down and once it's that same thick consistency of the sauce we want to coat those wings in we're good for our dredge it's actually quite easy i'm always telling you to use potato starch and here's why to me japanese and korean fried chicken is some of the best out there and they both use potato starch here in the u.s for those who dare to branch outside of all-purpose flour we're typically known to use cornstarch but potato starch is a lot better so i'll dump a bunch of that into a large bowl and i'll be able to dredge all my wings in this bowl you can also add a little bit of salt here if you want but keep in mind we've done a really good job flavoring those wings before and we're going to coat them in a sauce after so this is just to get us crispy to start we'll burn our japanese chicken wings oh i just found a little piece of ginger floating around in here love that flavor i'll lightly shake off any of the excess liquid on this and then drop it right into the potato starch then i'll just toss some of that starch over this make sure the whole thing is nice and coated shake off any excess and lay it on my tray that right there is ready to fry i'll repeat this process with the rest of my wings and i'll tell you my number one trick keep one hand for starch and one hand for wings that way your fingers won't get dredged as well i'll drop it right in the starch coat it with my other hand roll it around just a little bit and then shake off that excess overall my best piece of advice here is to really make sure you're covering every possible crevice on every piece of chicken not adding this amazing crispiness is not only causing you to miss out on some of that crispiness but it may just expose certain parts of your chicken to getting overcooked now for our korean fried chicken same exact process let's grab our wings which by now will really have that salty briny flavor pumped into them toss them right in that potato starch and evenly coat them with our other hand roll these around just a little bit then give them a nice old shake now this too is ready to fry what i noticed about the korean fried chicken process is that getting them ready for frying is a lot simpler of a process the main focus seems to be lightly seasoning the chicken but then just getting them really really crispy and putting a lot of focus on that the sauce is the real hero in korean fried chicken something about putting together that goji chong with the honey and the soy sauce is just incredible but putting these wings head to head will be quite the fight so i can't wait to see who wins to start we're going to fry off our japanese fried chicken because we dredge those first you should fry as quickly as you can after you've dredged the wings that starch or that flour is going to start soaking up any liquid that it can find and it's just a recipe for slightly less crispy wings you want these hitting the oil right away we're gonna double fry all these wings the same way that i always do because it gets the best fry that you can get we'll start at 325 degrees fahrenheit for about five to seven minutes or so then bring up that temperature to 375 fahrenheit but keep in mind the second you drop all these wings in the oil the temperature will plummet so i like to start at 25 degrees or so above whatever it is i want to land at when i'm frying when we drop our wings in we'll sway back and forth and just gently lift them into the oil i'm gonna do all five of my wings here i'll place on my lid and set the timer this is the cooking stage of our frying and the next one will be the crispy stage now once those japanese wings rest for a minute just since we have this oil still at 325 we're gonna do the same thing with our korean fried wings i love the sound of that crackle when you're deep frying foods and keep in mind you can easily deep fry anything in like a dutch oven or even just a large stainless steel pot i just recently got this because i fry so much but never forget that it's really easy to deep fry stuff just at your house just be careful once those wings are nice and cooked from that first round of frying take them out they'll have a slightly pale but definitely crispy texture and then they can just rest for a second while you get ready to do that second fry at 375 fahrenheit now for that second round of frying at 375 fahrenheit i'll drop my wings back in at this point i don't have a specific time to tell you just watch those and make sure they don't get too golden brown take off that lid once it's nice and golden brown look how crispy and crackly those wings are i just love to look at those when they come out of the fryer first we'll toss in our japanese wings these happen to be a little bit darker than the korean wings albeit just as crispy that brine with the soy sauce definitely gave our chicken some color after it sat there for that long i'll pour a really light coating of my japanese sauce over these wings and then give those a light toss around to make sure they're nice and evenly coated these babies are ready to go next we'll add the korean wings drop those bad boys in and listen to how crispy they are i gotta say they sound a little bit crispier we'll quickly coat those in a really sweet sauce here and as i'm pouring this i'll say that i can really smell that honey and that brown sugar sweetness coming right out of there again i'm gonna give these a nice little toss and get that sauce really well coated in here and at this point we're pretty much ready to taste to finish off our korean wings i'm gonna add a few toasted sesame seeds which is pretty traditional for korean fried chicken and i'm gonna finish these off with a nice coating of honey because why not finish that off with a little bit more sweetness these babies right here are ready to eat now we'll move on over to our japanese fried chicken wings where i'll add some japanese mayonnaise all around these which is basically just a savory mayonnaise that's used a lot in japanese cuisine and i absolutely love it and then we'll finish that off with a few green onions because those go really well with wings now honestly at this point i can't tell which are more appetizing so let's give these a try now we've reached the moment we've all been waiting for trying our wings we're going to start with our korean fried chicken wings you have to admit those look absolutely insane i'm not even gonna say anything right now i'm just gonna crunch down on this thing in case you missed that let's just do another crunch oh my god whatever it's private this is so hot and mangled right now but it's also one of the juiciest wings i've ever seen without even trying the japanese wing i'm going to give this a nice clean 9.5 out of 10. this is an absolutely knockout wing right here the toasted sesame seeds are honestly just for looks here what really is important is that brine that keeps the chicken really really juicy and perfectly salted but that sauce is just mind-blowingly good that honey and that brown sugar gives a really nice caramelized flavor to the sauce it's just insane this is a perfect wing every bit is just crunch but before we go too deep into that let's try the japanese chicken wing because that thing looks insane now that right there is the japanese wing so let's not jump to conclusions just yet no winner has been declared yet in this wing off already i feel that this wing's gonna be the more savory wing but it has that creamy japanese mayonnaise that i put over the top as well as those beautiful green onions on there so i'm pretty pumped to try this out granted these have been sitting for a little bit longer so they're not gonna be as crunchy and crispy here we go oh wow those are really damn good wings but it's like about those korean fried wings can't be beat hello something on my mouth something about those korean fried chicken wings cannot be beat there is however something really cool about that buttery creamy mayo that's on here because japanese mayo is something special let me tell you i go through at least a bottle a week i'm not kidding and those green onions are really nice and you can taste that light oniony flavor on the edge that sauce is a little bit almost bitter when you try to reduce soy sauce too much it can get a little bit bitter and i don't love that part it's a little too savory for me or maybe i'm just comparing that to how sweet and delicious those korean wings are but i have to say i gotta give the victory to those korean wings they are an absolute knockout so damn near a 10 out of 10. i do hope you enjoyed this video i hope to do more comparison videos down the road because i think people like them and it's really fun to take two things together see which one you like better in the meantime please don't forget to like and subscribe i really appreciate all of your support and i really hope you love these videos as much as i'm loving making them as i always say we do have some really exciting stuff coming up so make sure you are subscribed so that you don't miss any of that to name a few we have an entire leg of harmony barraco and we're going to do something with an entire wheel of parmesan cheese and now that cove is easing up a little bit we may start doing stuff outside and going out and about a little bit more so i'm excited about that too thanks again i'm gonna go finish up these million chicken wings

Channel: Nick DiGiovanni

Views: 2,913,781

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Id: I4gWrboTXwA

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 03 2021