Text 30936, 107 rader
Skriven 2012-11-10 12:50:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: KFC 1
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Korean Fried Chicken that is...

MMMMM-----Meal-Master - formatted by MMCONV  2.10

     Title: The Best Korean Fried Chicken Pt1
Categories: Korean, Chicken, Info
  Servings: 4

    chicken

When it comes to frying chicken nobody, and I mean nobody, does it
better than the Koreans. My apologies to all you Southerners. Korean
fried chicken (or KFC as those in the know call it) differs vastly
from American-style fried chicken. Rather than the craggly, crusty,
significant coating you'd get on say, a Chick-Fil-A sandwich or a
Popeye's drumstick, you get an eggshell-thin, ultra-crisp crust
around a drippingly juicy interior.

The chicken: In Korea and in some of the Korean joints around here
in New York, I've had fried chicken made with both light and dark
meat. But we all know which one is superior, right? Dark meat can
withstand the high temperatures of frying and have a much greater
window of time between being perfectly cooked and overcooked.

With white meat, on the other hand, even a few degrees above the
right temperature, an extra 15 to 30 seconds in the oil, and you end
up with dry string meat. In Korea, they mitigate this by using very
very small, young birds that have a higher concentration of moist
connective tissue in their breast meat—the equivalent of using a
Cornish hen. And while frying Cornish hens is one very easy way to
guarantee moist breast meat, here's an even easier, tastier way:
just use wings.

Tastier and cheaper with a better ratio of skin-to-meat (that is,
more skin, less meat), they're a natural choice. I like to use meaty
whole-wing portions with the tips still attached rather than
drumettes and flats.

The batter: I started my testing with a very basic thin batter of
flour and water into which I dipped my chicken wings before frying
in hot oil. (Peanut oil or shortening are my frying media of choice
for optimum crispness and re-usability).

Korean fried chicken typically uses a thin, thin batter that barely
coats the wing in order to get that eggshell-thin crack. My first
task was to figure out a way to get that batter to stick. Chicken
wings are covered in fatty skin that is a natural repellent for
water-based liquids. Try dripping a wing straight out of the package
into a batter, and you'll find that it just runs straight off. Just
like a painter rolling on a layer of primer to make sure the paint
sticks to the walls, my chicken wings needed some kind of
pre-treatment.

I tried a variety of tactics including air-drying overnight
(successful but time consuming), salting to carefully draw out
moisture then drying (works!), coating with a salt and baking powder
mixture (also works! The baking powder raises the pH of the surface,
allowing it to crisp better), and tossing in plain cornstarch to
absorb some surface moisture and create a rougher texture for the
batter to adhere to.

The best was actually a combination of all four methods: I tossed
the chicken wings in a mixture of corn starch, kosher salt, and
baking powder, before spreading them out no a rack and letting them
air-dry for about an hour (overnight is better, but even as little
as fifteen minutes will work). Once the coating was in place, I had
no trouble getting my batter to stick.

The Starch: frying is about drying, hardening, and browning The goal
of frying a batter is twofold. First, hot oil causes moisture and
air inside the batter to evaporate, leaving you with a dried out
crust in place of a wet slurry. Simultaneously, protein networks
within the batter will harden, making your batter stiff and crisp.
While all this is going on, you're also browning both proteins and
carbohydrates, creating new flavorful compounds. So frying is about
drying, hardening, and browning.

Where does the recipe for batter fit into this? Well, working with
batter is a balancing act between crispness and structure. See, when
you mix flour with water, two proteins called gliadin and glutenin
start to bond with each other, eventually forming a stretchy,
net-like matrix of intertwined proteins called gluten. It's the same
protein network that gives good bread its structure or allows
pancake batter to hold onto its airy bubbles, and it's this network
that hardens when you fry.

Some gluten development is necessary—it provides structure and
support. But too much gluten development can lead to tough or
leathery crusts. Corn starch is a pure starch, meaning that its
protein content is essentially zero, and it produces no gluten when
combined with water.Using 100% flour gives you a thing that is
leathery and greasy—too much gluten forms, making the coating too
robust. On the other hand, 100% corn starch produces a coating that
is powdery with relatively little browning (the proteins in flour
aid with browning). To get a crust that's both robust and crisp, you
need to use a combo.

MMMMM-------------------------------------------------

YK Jim


... A megachain we hate to love and love to hate.

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