Japanese Fried Chicken Karaage

hello hi everyone! Wesley here. Today we’re diving back into our now VERY extensive series dedicated to fried chicken with a shot at the Japanese popcorn chicken nugget known as chicken karaage. For those unfamiliar, karaage refers to a style of breading and frying in Japanese cuisine that broadly applies to a number of different proteins, (not just chicken), but in fact, squid and other seafood karaage are also quite common. Here in the states though as you might expect, chicken karaage is by far the most commonly found in restaurants, and iconically features a chicken breast or thigh that has been large diced into bite sized pieces, then marinated and coated in a potato starch breading. This of course makes most iterations of this stuff gluten free since it does not involve AP flour, which I gotta believe is purely unintentional, but still, for the gluten sensitive out there, there you go.

In addition to that though, our potato starch also helps to create a lighter quality to our breading with distinctive nooks and crannies to it for a craggily, crispy piece of chicken that is absolutely iconic to chicken karaage. Finally rounding this all out, im also gonna take my absolute best shot at recreating the Japanese sweet and savory mayo known as kewpie for our dipping sauce, which (amongst a few things) is going to include a pinch of dried dashi powder to help bring this to life. Hope you try it.