Karaage (Tatsutaage) - Japanese fried chicken

The Japanese alternative to Southern fried chicken or flour coated chicken. You should use only leg meat for this recipe, as its texture makes the risk of overcooking it very little and you can leave it to fry until it gets good and crispy. Also, breast meat would kind of dry up too quickly so leg (thigh) meat is the only option for this dish.
The first step is preparing a marinade of soy sauce, ginger and garlic and leaving the meat in it for a while, and then it is removed from the marinade and coated in starch (which gives the chicken a more durable crunch).
As for the dish's history, I'll render the words of the original author: "Pronounced kah-rah-ah-geh, the name literally means “Tang fried” (Tang as in the Chinese dynasty). Like Gyoza and Ramen, Karaage is an example of Wafu-Chuka (Chinese style Japanese) cuisine, whereby dumplings, noodles, or in this case fried chicken, was borrowed from the Chinese and turned into something uniquely Japanese." (Source of inspiration for the recipe and the source of the passage above: Marc).
All in all, it's a quite fuss-free dish and with a more approachable taste range if you're new to the Japanese cuisine and you're not too sure how well you can take its flavors. We loved it. Enjoy.





Ingredients (serves 2):

• 1 large chicken thigh and leg

• 2 garlic cloves

• 3 tablespoons soy sauce (make sure it's Japanese soy sauce, not Chinese)

• 2 teaspoons grated ginger

• 1 teaspoon sugar

• oil for frying

• 1/2 cup of cornstarch

• salt to taste

First, make the marinade by mixing the soy sauce, sugar, ginger and peeled and minced garlic:

Then, wash the chicken, pat it dry with paper towels and cut the raw meat into strips, following the natural lining.

Put the meat in the marinade and let it soak up the flavors for 30 minutes - 1 hour. When you're ready to fry it,  put the cornstarch on a plate and start dredging the meat pieces through it:

Heat oil in a frying pan and put the starch-coated strips in it:

After 3-4 minutes turn them on the other side:

And after 3-4 minutes more fry them again on the first side, and so on until they look really browned and crispy. Don't worry, the insides don't overcook and if the starch coating gets blackened in some spots it can be easily scraped off with a knife's blade. When the first batch is fried, repeat with the remaining pieces:

After all is fried, season with salt. It's ready, dig in! :)