Shallow-Fried Chicken with Gochujang Sauce and Slaw

*Originally published June 2, 2020

I’ve been cooking at home for a long time, and the food I’ve made — while sustaining — hasn’t always been very good. My mom gave me a great head-start, and I knew I wouldn’t be going hungry any time soon as long as I had access to heat and modest ingredients. But I always wanted to up my game in the kitchen.

I wanted my food to taste as good as it did when I visited my favorite restaurants.

To all the home cooks out there putting food on the table for picky, young eaters and meat-and-potatoes only, please, partners — I feel you. Dinner is served, and while it might not be Michelin-starred, it’s home-cooked and it’s better for you than most processed and fast food options.

That being said, if you want to grow your skill set, there are many great online learning platforms to help you do just that. Nearly all the restaurant chefs I follow on my social media platforms share videos and stories featuring their recipes and techniques — perfect opportunities to learn how to cook better and most of them are free.

Virtual Cooking Schools

Full disclosure: while I absorb as much as I can through those complimentary formats, I am not above paying for additional supplemental education in my quest to make things taste better. Cooking a dish again and again produced quite a bit of confidence, but I knew that for me to be a better cook, I needed some additional instruction as well as inspiration. Most recently, I became a patron of Chef Melissa King (currently KILLING it on Top Chef) and subscribed to her monthly membership at Patreon. In the month since I joined I’ve had a virtual coffee date with Melissa, watched as she showed me step-by-step how to butcher a chicken, and scored the recipe for the Corn Coconut Soup which won her the vegetarian episode several weeks ago on Top Chef.

Another fantastic resource for online instruction is Master Class. You’ll find heavyweights like Thomas Keller, Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck, Gordon Ramsey, and Dominique Ansel cooking their hearts out and sharing it all with you.

Most recently, I’ve been testing the beta version of Yes Chef featuring more heavy hitters like Nancy Silverton, Edward Lee, and Jose Andres. If you check them out, be patient - they’re still in testing mode so things are a bit bumpy, but it’s time well spent if you have a few minutes to spare.

Shallow-Fried Chicken

I’ve cyber-stalked chef Edward Lee for a very long time. I have both of his cookbooks. Asian cuisine is hands down my favorite food to eat, so he fits into my wheelhouse in that regard, but I love that he’s found his niche and taken his talents to the south — he has three thriving restaurants in Louisville, KY, and one (with two locations) in Maryland. Each of these restaurants features his take on Southern cooking. I, for one, can’t get enough.

What I love about watching him on Yes Chef, is that the recipe/cooking segments are of course fantastic, but I also enjoy the “on-location” footage which gives me a bird’s-eye view of the day-to-day life of some of my favorite people in food. That’s where the inspiration comes into play. As much as I love Lee’s recipes from his cookbooks, this platform gives me the chance to see how he cooks from the inspiration behind his recipes to where he sources his ingredients.

Edward Lee cooks slow. What does that mean? It means he takes his time with the dish, from the prep-work to the plating. I absolutely love watching him. And while this is probably different than how he’s forced to work in the kitchen of one of his bustling restaurants, at home he can slow down and really enjoy the process. We, as home cooks, almost always have that privilege.

The recipe I’m sharing today is Lee’s fried chicken. In the video he mentions that a “little old southern lady” taught him this technique of “shallow-frying” and he’s never fried chicken any other way.

I’m here to tell you I’ll never fry chicken any other way than this, either. I’m sold. Hooked. ECSTATIC over this method and I can’t wait to cook my next batch.

Here is the problem I have always had with MY fried chicken: half of the delicious crispy coating stayed behind in the frying oil and never made it onto my plate. I’ve tried double-breading. I’ve tried using alternative flours (which provided different crunch factors but still - only half of the crispiness made it into my mouth). I’ve tried double-frying at two different temperatures (with moderate success). Edward introduced me to two small tweaks that have not previously been a part of my technique and it has completely changed the outcome of my fried chicken.

1.     You’re probably frying your chicken too quickly after you coat it in the flour.

2.     You’re probably cooking it over too high heat, and not long enough.

The Coating Process

After you bring your buttermilk-rested chicken out of the fridge and dredge it in the seasoned flour, Lee instructs you to rest the chicken pieces on empty egg cartons so there is only the smallest amount of surface area that comes into contact with what the chicken is resting on. Even if you rest your chicken on a rack over a sheet-pan, more of the chicken is going to come into contact with that rack than with the little humps in an egg carton. And the resting time isn’t super long. Give it at least 15 minutes while your oil is heating — that’s plenty of time.

Shallow Frying

Using a large, shallow skillet (like a 12-inch cast-iron) allows you to bring your oil up to temp pretty quickly and will make it easier to maintain at 350-degrees after you’ve added your chicken. The key is to keep the oil temp relatively low, and turn the chicken often, every 2-3 minutes, so it crisps and browns evenly, giving the chicken time to cook through without burning.

Those two little things: letting your chicken rest on a surface that provides less contact, and continually turning the chicken (gently!) throughout the cooking process produces shatteringly-crispy chicken, which is what you want if you’re going to toss it in a spicy Gochujang sauce.

A note on the sauce: I made it to spec the first time (which is what you should always do the first time you try out a recipe) and after tasting it, added an extra tablespoon of honey to tone down the spiciness, but when it came time to eat I found the sauce still too hot — and I’m a hot chicken queen! Maybe I’m not the bad-ass hot chicken lover I think I am, so I’ve adjusted the recipe here, and also included Lee’s original ingredient amounts as well. I recommend starting with mine, then adding more gochujang if you want. You can easily add gochujang, but it’s hard to tone down the spiciness without adding a bunch more of the other ingredients and ending up with a ton of sauce.

Though now that I think of it, having extra sauce around might not be a bad idea …

The acid and crunch from the slaw, loaded with ginger, helps cut through the richness of the fried bird, and of course you can enjoy your fried chicken “naked” without any sauce. But I vote for the sauce ;)

Fried Chicken with Gochujang Sauce and Slaw

Recipe adapted from Yes Chef - Edward Lee video tutorial

Serves 4-6

Gochujang Sauce

2 T honey (Lee: 1 T honey)

2 T soy sauce

2 T sesame oil

1 T Dijon mustard

2 t garlic powder

2 t bourbon jalapeno pickle brine or hot vinegar (pickle brine recipe below)

2 T Worchestershire sauce

3oz gochujang paste or miso paste (Lee: 6oz gochujang - if you’re using miso, you could probably stick with the 6oz as well as miso isn’t spicy)

*water (as needed to thin the sauce)

1.     How to make Bourbon Jalapeño Pickle Brine: Transfer 1 pound sliced jalapeño peppers into a sterilized 2 quart jar. In a small pot, add 1 cup bourbon, 1 1/4 cups apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup of sorghum syrup or honey, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, 2 teaspoons fennel seeds, and 2 bay leaves. Bring to a boil and let it simmer for a further 5 to 7 minutes. Pour the hot brine into your jar until all the jalapeños are covered and close with a tight-fitting lid. It should stay for 3 days in a refrigerator before use and can go for a further 2 weeks.

2.     How to make Gochujang Sauce: Scoop 3 (or 6) ounces of gochujang to a medium-size bowl. Add 2 tablespoons sesame oil, 2 tablespoons bourbon jalapeño pickle brine, 1 tablespoon honey, and 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard. Add 2 teaspoons garlic powder, 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, and the same amount of soy sauce. Whisk together until combined, then add 1 to 2 splashes of water. You want to turn this from a paste into more of a sauce - it should run off the whisk pretty easily but still be substantial enough to have a good mouth-feel. Set aside until needed or cover tightly. Store in the fridge for up to a week.

Asian Pear and Cabbage Slaw

1/4 c rice wine vinegar

1 T salt plus more to taste

3/10 cup cilantro roughly chopped (?)

2 Asian pears peeled and cut into batons

1 t sugar

1/2 t ground white pepper

*3 inch fresh ginger peeled and grated (fresh ginger can be quite spicy, so if you’re not huge into spice, you can cut this back a bit)

3 large savoy cabbage leaves thinly sliced

1.     Peel and cut 2 Asian pears into batons. Thinly slice 3 savoy cabbage leaves and roughly chop 3/10 cups of cilantro. Add to a large bowl.

2.     How to peel ginger: Firmly hold a metal spoon on the right hand and ginger on the palm of your left hand. Run the edge of your spoon down the ginger to scrape it. Grate your *3-inch peeled ginger and grate to the same bowl. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon white pepper, and 1 teaspoon of sugar.

3.     Finish with 1/4 cup of rice wine vinegar and toss well to combine. Allow the slaw to rest for a few minutes before serving.

Shallow-Fried Chicken

2 cups AP flour

4lbs chicken drumsticks/thighs bone-in, skin-on

Furikake seasoning to garnish (furikake is a Japanese seasoning consisting of a mixture of dried fish, sesame seeds, chopped seaweed, sugar, salt, and msg)

1 tsp ground *white pepper (please try to source white pepper - it has a unique spice to it that is different than black pepper

1 T salt plus more to taste

1 L corn oil

1 L buttermilk

1 tsp smoked paprika

1.     Pour 1 liter of buttermilk into a large bowl. Completely cover 4 pounds chicken drumsticks in the buttermilk. Marinate at room temperature for at least 1 hour or 12 hours in a fridge. More time makes it more tender.

2.     Add 2 cups flour, 1 tablespoon salt, 1 teaspoon ground white pepper, and 1 teaspoon smoked paprika to a large shallow bowl and mix. Place chicken on the flour mixture and coat evenly.

3.     Place dredged chicken on egg cartons for 10 to 15 minutes or until the flour has formed a crust.

4.     Pour 1 liter of corn oil to a large shallow skillet and let it get to 350°F on medium heat. Slightly space out the chicken in skillet and cook for 12 to 16 minutes while frequently flipping. Once ready, drain excess oils using a fine sieve, this oil can still be re-used in other dishes. Dry the chicken on paper towels.

5.     Serve chicken on a serving dish. Optional: Serve a bowl of slaw on the side and right before serving your fried chicken, coat it completely with gochujang sauce. Garnish with furikake to add a punch of color and texture. Serve immediately. Enjoy!