Japanese Fried Chicken with Quick Cucumber Pickles

Our stomachs were feeling much better by lunchtime and I had seen Cook's Country make some chicken nuggets last night, so I decided that I'd do a Japanese take on fried chicken.

Need:
boneless, skinless chicken thigh, cut into 1.5 inch chunks
plenty of soy sauce
rice wine
ginger
garlic
black pepper
flour
corn starch
s+p
cayenne pepper
garlic powder

Pickles:
cucumber
white vinegar
sugar
salt
drop of sesame oil

 

Grate ginger and garlic into a bowl. I like to keep ginger roots in the freezer so that they keep for longer and are way easier to grate when frozen. Garlic too.

 

Add soy sauce, rice wine, and black pepper. Add chopped chicken. The soy sauce acts a little like a brine. Let marinate for 10-30 minutes.

 

Mix well: flour, corn starch (2:1 ratio), garlic powder, s+p, and some cayenne pepper.

 

Toss chicken in the flour coating and set into frying oil when hot enough.

 

While chicken is frying, peel cucumber and slice.

 

Put into a bowl with vinegar, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp sugar, and sesame oil. Set aside.

 

Chicken frying. My son was very excited about this...

 

Place finished chicken on a cooling rack. If you put it on a plate with a napkin to drain the oil, the fried food starts to get a little soggy. This helps to cool the chicken while maintaining the crispiness.

 

Serve with rice and pickles. Yup. That's my BBQ sauce on the plate. It went very well together. Hmmm, this almost looks like a smiley face. A good reflection of what my face was doing while I was eating it.