🏠 Karaage – Easy Tasty Japanese Fried Chicken Recipe

Karaage is Japanese for fried chicken. The name comes from Kara being China where it originated, and A-Ge meaning to deep fry. With a soy base flavour, Japanese fried chicken is amazingly tasty.

This recipe doesn’t need overnight marinating, and it’s so flavoursome it doesn’t need any dipping sauce – it tastes better than izakayas in Japan!

Ingredients

Marinade:

• Soy sauce – 3 table spoons (45ml)
• Sake – 1 table spoon (15ml)
• Mirin – 1 table spoon (15ml)
• Garlic – 3 cloves, grated
• Ginger – a thumb, grated
• Nutmeg – 1 tea spoon
• Ajinomoto (optional) – 3 tea spoons

Other important stuff:

• Chicken thigh pieces (preferably skin on) – 400g
• Tapioca starch to fry with
• A pot of oil to deep fry

How to make Karaage (Japanese fried chicken)

1. Mix the marinade ingredients and soak chicken pieces for at least 30 minutes.
2. Coat chicken pieces in tapioca starch as you pop them into the deep fryer pot.
3. Take them out of the deep fryer as they float to the top, and rest them on a grate or paper towel.

My go-to recipe for Karaage is heavily based on Ryuji’s Buzz Recipe below. I add grated ginger for that extra bit of spice, and use tapioca starch as coating as I think it makes them taste lighter.

But, as he mentions, the best karaage is now at home 😀