About the Recipe
The Koreans call this dish Yangnyeom chicken. I've eaten it in Korea several times and I've always found it too hot for my liking, so in this recipe I've toned down the spice a little (so it's still spicy but not runny nose spicy, if you know what I mean!) The best way to produce a nice, crunchy coating on the chicken nuggets is to use a 50% / 50% mix of plain wheat flour and potato flour. You can substitute cornflour for potato flour if you wish and you should get much the same result.
Ingredients
450g boneless chicken thigh
50g potato flour
30g plain flour
a little salt & pepper
1 tsp ginger paste
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp japanese cooking sake
for the spicy sauce:
1 tbsp Gochujang (korean red chilli paste)
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp garlic paste
2 tsp toasted sesame seeds
veg oil for shallow frying
some kitchen paper
Preparation
cut the chicken thigh into bite sized pieces. put the chicken pieces in a bowl, add the salt, pepper, ginger, soy sauce & cooking sake - mix together well
combine the potato flour & plain flour in a different bowl and mix together
give the chicken pieces a good coating of flour and set aside
to make the spicy sauce:
put the gochujang, tomato ketchup, sugar, soy sauce, garlic paste and golden syrup in a frying pan. stir everything together over a high heat until the sauce comes to the boil and slightly thickens (don't over thicken the sauce or it will burn when you fry the chicken)
turn off the heat and set aside
put 1 cm veg oil in a pan , heat to 180C / 350 F & fry the coated chicken pieces for 5 mins, turning a few times to ensure a nice uniform brown colouring
when the kitchen is cooked, drain on kitchen paper
now, add the fried chicken to the pan containing the sauce and stir everything together for 2-3 mins over a low heat