Korean fried chicken


Korean fried chicken, in Korean chikin, refers to a variety of fried chicken dishes created in South Korea. These include the basic huraideu-chicken and the spicy yangnyeom chicken. In South Korea, fried chicken is consumed as a meal, an appetizer, anju, or as an after-meal snack.
Korean fried chicken was described by Julia Moskin of The New York Times as having a "thin, crackly and almost transparent crust". The chicken is usually seasoned with spices, sugar, and salt, before and after being fried. Korean fried chicken restaurants commonly use small or medium-sized chickens; these younger chickens result in more tender meat. After frying, the chicken is usually hand-painted with sauce using a brush to evenly coat the chicken with a thin layer. Pickled radishes and beer are often served with Korean fried chicken.

Terminology

The Korean word pronounced chikin refers to fried chicken, while the name for the domesticated fowl is dak. The word is shortened from peuraideu chikin, which is a transliteration of the English phrase "fried chicken". According to the National Institute of Korean Language, the word chikin refers to "a dish made by coating chopped chicken with flour, and frying or baking it". Fried chicken that is not chopped before frying is called tongdak. Both chikin and tongdak are occasionally referred to as dak-twigim.
The unshortened form peuraideu chikin, despite being the "correct" transliteration, is not as popular in Korea. The more commonly used form, huraideu-chikin, may have been adopted in Korean owing to residual influence from the Japanese convention that persisted in Korea in the 1970s. The phrase huraideu-chikin is often shortened to huraideu and refers to a fried chicken dish without the seasonings added post-frying. This is often used to differentiate it from yangnyeom-chikin. The National Institute of Korean Language does not recognize huraideu-chikin as the conventional name, but insists on the transliteration peuraideu-chikin, which it also suggests should be "refined" to dakgogi-twigim.

History

The recipe for frying chicken was already a form of cooking in the 15th century, so it is presumed that it has been cooked since the Goryeo period. The fried chicken under the name of "Pogye" in the early Joseon dynasty was sautéed in oil while sequentially pouring soy sauce, sesame oil, flour mixed with water, and vinegar onto the chicken.
The trend of eating chicken began in Korea during the late 1960s, when Myeongdong Yeongyang Center in Seoul began selling whole chicken roasted over an electric oven. U.S. military presence after the Korean War introduced deep-fried chicken as a popular Korean cuisine. It was not until the 1970s when cooking oil was widely available that the modern fried chicken started appearing in Korea. The first modern Korean fried chicken franchise, Lims Chicken, was established in 1977 in the basement of Shinsegae Department Store, Chungmu-ro, Seoul, by Yu Seok-ho. It was "embraced as an excellent food pairing for draft beer"; the word for the pairing, "chimaek", is a portmanteau of "chicken" and "maekju", the Korean word for beer.
The well-known variety with spicy coatings, also known as yangnyeom-chikin, had its history begin in 1982 by Yun Jonggye, who was running a fried chicken restaurant at Daegu. He noticed that customers in his restaurant were struggling to chew on the hard, crisp layers of the fried chicken, which led to inconveniences such as scraped palates. Yun decided to pull a twist on the traditional fried chicken to soften the hard shells of the chicken and appease more Korean customers by marinating it sweet and spicy.
Fried chicken was further popularized when Kentucky Fried Chicken opened stores in South Korea in 1984.
The Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s contributed to the number of restaurants selling fried chicken as laid-off workers opened chicken restaurants. In recent years, owing to market saturation in Korea, many of Korea's major fried chicken chains, such as Mexicana Chicken, Genesis BBQ, Kyochon Chicken and Pelicana Chicken, have expanded to set up new presences in the United States, China, Canada, and Southeast Asia.
By 2013, there were more than 20,000 fried chicken restaurants in South Korea serving fried chicken and by 2017, 36,000. Almost a third of the chicken consumed in South Korea is fried; Smithsonian calls it a "ubiquitous staple".
During the COVID-19 pandemic, international chain Bonchon was one of few restaurant chains to continue to add stores.

Varieties

By seasoning

  • Huraideu-chikin – often simply referred to as huraideu ; this is the basic fried chicken.
  • Yangnyeom-chikin – fried chicken coated in gochujang-based sweet and spicy sauce.
  • Banban – shortened from yangnyeom ban, huraideu ban is often used to refer to chicken that is served half seasoned and half plain.
  • Ganjang-chikin – fried chicken coated in ganjang-based sweet and savoury sauce, which is often also garlicky.
  • Padak – fried chicken topped with or smothered with a large amount of thinly shredded scallions.
  • Honey-Chikin – fried chicken with flavours based on soy sauce, but sweeter and more sticky due to the addition of honey.

    By style

  • Tongdak – also called yennal-tongdak ; a 1970s-style whole chicken deep-fried in oil.
  • Sunsal-chikin – boneless chicken.

    Korean brands

  • Bonchon Chicken
  • Coqodaq
  • Kyochon
  • Nene Chicken
  • Pelicana Chicken
  • Vons Chicken