Japanese Fried Chicken

Last night I made Milk Street’s Japanese Fried Chicken (karaage) for the second time. It’s surprisingly easy to make, though it does take a fair bit of time since the chicken has to marinate for 30-60 minutes and then chill with a cornstarch coating for another 30-60 minutes before you fry it. But the actual prep and cooking steps are fairly quick, so you interleave other activities with them (well, aside from the frying; you need to pay attention during that part).

The most annoying part of the cooking is grating the ginger, both for the marinade and for the dipping sauce. While overall I really like Milk Street recipes and enjoy the Asian influence (it’s nice to expand our cooking repertoire), their recipes seem to call for a lot of grated ginger (often a tablespoon or more), and I find grating ginger (we use a microplane grater) really tedious. Luckily for this recipe you can use a box grater for the ginger in the marinade, so it’s not quite as time-consuming. And I will say that finely grated ginger does blend with sauces a lot better.

If you’re a fan of fried chicken, this recipe is definitely worth making.