Sweet and Crispy Chicken

I took this recipe from here.

Basically, when I make Korean food, it never, ever, ever turns out as good as my MIL's. So I really should learn to stop, but it's like a train wreck, I just can't stop looking online for something in hopes that maybe, just maybe, I won't have to endure my MIL's company for the period of time it takes for her to whip me up some amazing Korean food.

But I digress.

We didn't love this at all. We won't make it again. Part of the problem was the burned soy sauce flavor. I know a million people who aren't bothered by burned soy sauce. My husband grew up with the smell of burned soy sauce constantly. I feel the same way about roasted eggplant that he feels about burned soy sauce. I don't want to be anywhere near it, and once I smell it, it ruins my appetite.

So if burned soy sauce doesn't bother you (or it didn't, until I mentioned it) and you want something pretty easy to make, try this.

Start with about a pound of diced chicken thighs (or whatever floats your boat, you could use wings, breasts, drumsticks....), an egg, a 1/4 cup of flour and a 1/4 cup of tapioca starch (the recipe said starch, I had tapioca and corn so I went tapioca, though I imagine it should have been wheat starch), salt and pepper, dump it in a bowl, mix it by hand, shuddering the entire time. Seriously, it felt like grinding chalk with my molars.

Fry that nastiness in a bunch of oil and put it aside on a plate with about 16 paper towels. You'll thank me for that advice later.

For the sauce, you'll need 1/2 cup water (not pictured), 1 tbsp soy sauce (so you can smell the burning!), 1/8 cup rice vinegar, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup thinly sliced ginger, 1/2 cup honey. The recipe called for corn syrup, but I don't think I ever have corn syrup around so honey seemed like a good substitute, and perhaps a bit healthier, though not much.

Start by bringing the water to a boil in a pot or a wok. Once that boils, add the sliced ginger. Then add the soy sauce, vinegar and brown sugar. Let that boil for 5 minutes on medium heat. Doesn't that smell absolutely horrid? No? Then you'll probably like this dish!

Once the soy/water/vinegar/sugar/ginger mixture has boiled for 5 minutes, add the honey. Let this boil on medium to low heat for 30 minutes and thicken up. Basically, it should slowly fall off the spoon if you hold it above the pot. The color should lighten up too. Make sure not to overboil it or it will harden up.

At this point, you can either add the chicken right away to the sauce and serve it, or turn off the heat, cover the pot and reheat it later and add the chicken.

Added the chicken to the sauce and added about 1 tbsp of crushed red pepper and 1 tbsp sesame seeds.

Served with rice and fresh roasted peanuts sprinkled on top.

I'm not really sure how I could improve this. Perhaps if I just removed the soy sauce altogether it would be better? It would be less Asian-y but definitely lose the burned soy sauce smell. I could also imagine twisting this recipe into a really good orange chicken recipe, maybe using orange juice instead of soy sauce and water and adding orange rind instead of ginger? It would certainly make the rinds "candied" in flavor. That was one of the best parts of the recipe, was the candied ginger pieces. I think this is a good recipe for learning a cooking method that I wouldn't have really known much about, but I will definitely not make it the exact same way again. The nice part is I had all of the ingredients on hand (I store ginger in the freezer, and I had frozen chicken thighs so I literally had to buy nothing for this).

Nutritional Information: (without peanuts)
Total servings: 4
Calories per serving: 522
Total Fat: 11.5 g
Saturated Fat: 3.5 g
Cholesterol: 123.8 mg
Sodium: 269.2 mg
Potassium: 312.5 mg
Carbs: 80.5 mg
Fiber: 1.1 g
Sugars: 62 g
Protein: 26.7 g
Vitamin A: 1.5%
Vitamin C: 3.8%
Calcium: 3.9%
Iron: 14.3%