How to Make Perfect Korean Fried Chicken Wings

Dan shows Julia how to make perfect Korean Fried Chicken Wings.

Get the recipe for Korean Fried Chicken Wings: http://cooks.io/2GM0JzX
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[Music] i love chicken wings and that’s because i grew up in rochester new york which is just outside of buffalo and i’ve eaten them my entire life and although i’m pretty much a traditionalist korean chicken wings have gotten my attention because they’re super crisp and they have this really cool sweet but spicy sauce and these wings are fairly traditional korean food right dan that’s right now julie by the end of today your family in rochester is going to disown you because you are going to fall completely in love with korean chicken so buffalo wings they stay crispy for what two minutes maybe yeah not too sauce these things are so crispy you can eat them for breakfast the next day out of the fridge still crispy there’s no leftovers in my house there’s no wing okay that’s a good point they may not last that long so in korea the chickens are actually really small so they’ll use a whole bird that’s broken down into pieces here in the states chicken wings are the best approximation so the first thing we’re going to talk about is the batter now unlike southern fried chicken where it’s all about getting a really thick heavy coating that’s crunchy we’re looking for super thin and shattery crisp so to that end we’re going to use a pretty thin batter for this we’re going to start with a cup of all-purpose flour and we’re going to add three tablespoons of cornstarch we saw recipes that actually inverted this or used all cornstarch while it gets crispy you don’t get any browning because there’s no real protein in corn starch but there isn’t flour so here we get nice browning next up we’re gonna add water and this is a fair amount of water it’s a cup and a half yeah that looks like a lot of water it does and it’s gonna look like a very thin batter you’re gonna feel like you did it wrong at first boy that really is a thin batter it almost looks like the consistency of heavy cream no it’s a very thin one and that’s on purpose cool so that is perfect there now let’s go on to our wings we’re going to use three pounds sometimes you can buy them and they’re nice and prepped for you no i love it when that happens it’s great and then you can choose like which ones you want like can you get more of the flats or the drumettes but sometimes you get them like this and then it’s good to know how to break them down so i’m just going to split them down the middle there’s a little joint right there that if you hit it it’s super easy if you don’t it feels like it’s going to be impossible to get through so just take your time and you can find that is a good way to go i also like to take off this little tip you can fry it up these are actually pretty big ones so i feel like i would probably eat that but generally we want to take them off well there’s no meat in there but it’s just good skin right depends on how far you want to go down that road right so right down the middle i’m getting lucky i’m hitting the lottery on a lot of these that goes in there tip over there these are good for stock too if you fry a lot of wings or you have a back left over from something else lots of collagen lots of flavor in there okay so we’ve got our wings we’ve got our batter nice to set up a little station as we move yeah look at that i’ve got two quarts of oil over here this is vegetable oil so it’s good for frying we want it at 350 degrees that’s good we’re a little bit over that’s okay so we’re going to do is add half of our wings to the batter here we’ll stir them around get them nice and coated okay so i’m going to do one wing at a time let it drip a little bit you don’t want too much excess it just falls off kind of dirties your oil up and then we’re going to pop it in here just give it a little time to set on the outside and then release i love that sound when the oil just starts to foam up it’s the best well i also like the trick that you’re holding it in the oil with tongs for a minute letting that coating set before you let it go so that when it falls to the bottom the coating doesn’t fall off exactly yep okay and last one of this batch so you can see these wings are starting to get a little golden oh yeah crust is definitely set but they’re not done at this point this is perfect though this is the first fry and we want to get them out still not bad right that’s pretty crisp so i’m going to leave those aside i’m going to bring my oil back up to 350 and i’m going to get the rest of the wings going and just do the same again nice and gentle so we’re going to hold them in there just a second let that exterior set here’s an interesting trivia fact did you know that chicken wings are white meat not dark meat they are yeah i always thought they were kind of like a combo which doesn’t make any sense well yeah so it’s pretty interesting it’s hard to think of them as white meat because they’ve got so much collagen and skin around them but we actually did some tests here in the kitchen and found that when you remove everything else and just look at the meat it’s much more like breast meat because it’s used in the same way that breast meat is right really rapid bursts of flight but they’re not using it like their legs to stand on and walk around that’s right so we’ve got another seven minutes here and then we’re gonna take them out let them rest again and then we’ll do our final fry so we’ve got our second batch out here and that needs to rest for at least five minutes the other batch obviously has gone longer but it’s just important that it has at least five minutes to sit okay so and you can actually go about two hours at room temperature is fine if they really cool down you may just need to go a little longer in the oil for that final fry oh it has gotten soggy right it’s like the steam from inside the chicken wing really came through the crust and sogged it out a bit exactly so we got to fix that problem right okay so i’m going to put them back in i’m actually going to put all of them in this time oh okay so we found that we could actually skimp on that last fry and do them all together because they’re already pretty warm so they don’t drop the oil too much and we’re coming up to 375 degrees instead of 350 here so an extra 25 degrees to kind of work with oh that is a happy looking pot it looks good right it does i love it when the oil is like that all happy and active so we’re going to let this go for another seven minutes and we’ll see them get really nice and golden brown that gives us time to work on our sauce here and this is a super complex sauce i love buffalo sauce i think it’s like one of the american mother sauces right very important but this sauce is is really incredible so it’s sweet it’s spicy it’s got everything going on we’re gonna start with a tablespoon of toasted sesame oil a lot of good flavor there then i have a teaspoon each of garlic this is minced garlic and ginger so these are aromatics it really helps if they see some heat with this oil yeah i was going to say you’re putting them into the sauce raw you know what i’m going to use is this really cool new thing we call a science oven also known as a microwave we’re going to go 40 to 60 seconds on this until it’s bloomed all right that’s perfect so we’re looking for it to be really aromatic but we don’t want it to brown at that point okay so now we’re gonna add the rest of our ingredients we’ve got a quarter cup of water three tablespoons of sugar we have three tablespoons of gochujang which i love so important to this dish right it’s great in bim bop it’s a fermented red pepper paste seek this stuff out because you’re going to use it on everything right mix into mayonnaise it’s the new it sauce so we’ve got a tablespoon of soy sauce as well so i’m just going to whisk this together and that’s it that’s it really really simple that is very simple okay that sauce looks perfect we’ve been seven minutes here let’s take a look i think we’re gonna be happy these look amazing oh yeah look at those so that’s the beauty of the double fry right there so we’ll take these out i mean it really looks like fried chicken it doesn’t just look like wings it has that golden brown of good fried chicken exactly we’re gonna let these wings sit here for about two minutes and that’s so that that hot crust which is a little flexible still is going to set into place so when we put it in the sauce that doesn’t sog out time to put them in the sauce they’re still a little bit hot so i’m going to use my tongs oh can you hear that oh i don’t have much self-control left i’m using it all right now not to just dive head first into that bowl so we’re just going to give this a little toss here it’s like tossing rocks in a bowl except they’re spicing and you want to eat them oh you can really hear that crazy i’m gonna put them back on the tray here so they’re not sitting in that moisture and kind of getting trapped there spread them out beautiful two minutes and then we can you’re kidding me i have to make you wait again oh i’m gonna make you pay for that they’ll be crispier for it probably all right they’re fine okay i can tell you’re ready there’s no pretense there’s no tongs just we’re just going to go with ourselves my manners just left too yeah this sauce is getting all over it’s going to be messy mmm that’s so good damn dan dan dan dan it’s so crispy dan you have outdone yourself this is by far one of my favorite all-time new recipes excellent mine too so for killer korean chicken wings make a loose batter made of flour cornstarch and water and after coating the wings with batter double fry them with a five minute rest in between for a sturdy super crisp coating that can withstand the test of time finally toss the wings with a classic sweet and spicy korean sauce so there you have it from our test kitchen to your kitchen a brand new recipe for korean fried chicken wings thanks for watching america’s test kitchen what’d you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you’re excited to 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