During the COVID pandemic, I eat a lot of lunches during weekdays at home. To save time, I buy pre-cooked dishes from a local Japanese grocer. Chicken pirikara is always in my shopping bag. You can also buy pork and squid pirikara from the grocer. In Japan, these are popular bar foods. In China, there are similar dishes which could be either spicy or non-spicy. This is where my title could be confusing because pirikara means spicy, but my dish is not (I could make it spicy though). I don’t know a good title for those similar Chinese dishes. So, I borrowed the title from Japanese. My kid once told me that a popular chef/youtuber (with over 5 million followers) added tofu to fried rice. It is terrible to add tofu to fried rice as nobody would do that in China. I told him, for a non-native chef, he/she doesn’t see any boundaries of ingredient combinations or cooking techniques.
If we just leave the title/origin struggles behind, I have to say this is a great dish. The ingredients are simple and readily available. Like our local grocer, you could replace chicken wing with chicken breast chunk, pork, seafood and even tofu. The cooking technique is also basic. Like how pirikara is used in Japan, it is a great dish for sports event or gatherings.
Chicken wing pirikara/fried chicken wing 日式炸鸡翅
Equipment
- 10“ frying pan
- large zip bag
Ingredients
- 1.5 pound chicken wing (no need to be accurate)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground pepper
- 4 tbsp starch or all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup oil
- 4 tbsp soy sauce
- 4 tbsp mirin or cooking wine
- 1.5 tbsp sugar
- 0.5 tsp chili powder (chili oil) (optional)
Instructions
- Gently cut the chicken wings to leave two shallow marks.
- Sprinkle salt and ground pepper.
- Put all the seasoned wings into the zip bag. Seal the bag, shake, and set side for 20-30 mins.
- Add the starch/flour to the zip bag, seal, and shake for 2-3 mins to make sure all chicken pieces are coated.
- Put the frying pan on the stove top. Turn heat to high. Add the oil.
- Once the oil is hot, turn heat to medium. Add the chicken pieces.
- Fry for 1-1.5 mins and flip. Repeat this process, and make sure each side is fried for about 4 mins.
- Take all the chicken pieces out, and pour the oil to a separate bowl for future use.
- Put the pan back on the stove. Turn heat to mediuem. Add soy sauce, mirin (cooking wine), and sugar.
- Once the sauce starts bubbling, add all the wings. Flip the wings to make sure all pieces are coated with sauce.
- Put the wings to a plate. Sprinkle sesames to decorate.
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