Cooking with Colm O'Gorman: Korean fire chicken with cheese
As regular readers of this column may have noticed, over the past year I have become a little obsessed with Korean food. Asian food is one of my favourite regional cuisines, it just so wonderfully diverse in style and flavour.
Asian street food in particular, is a joy. Bao Buns from Taiwan, Yakisoba from Japan, Pho from Vietnam, Dumplings from China; the variety is endless and always delicious. Korean street food is no exception.
Korean fried chicken is incredible, as is Tteokbiokki, a spicy dish made with cylindrical Korean rice cakes. This week’s recipe is a relatively new street food dish called Buldak.
The name translates as Fire Chicken, which is rather self-explanatory.
It is a fiery dish of chicken in a spicy red pepper paste, topped off with bubbly melted cheese, spring onions and toasted sesame seeds.
It is fantastically delicious and satisfying. I serve this with plain boiled rice and some bok choy simply stir-fired in a little toasted sesame oil with garlic and a splash of soy sauce.
In Korea Buldak is sold from food trucks that grill the chicken over open fires, but you can cook this at home easily using a skillet pan and a hot grill.
The key flavour here comes from Korean red pepper flake powder, one of my favourite chilli powders. You may remember my using this ingredient before and I really do recommend that you get hold of some.
It is available from most good Asian supermarkets. I bought a kilo of it last March and we love it so much that I had to replenish my stock last week. It is the key ingredient in lots of Korean food and in Gochujang, the beautiful chilli sauce that is also used in this dish. I have added my recipe to make your own Gochujang below.
It is so much better than the store-bought variety and very quick and easy to make. It is wonderful with any grilled meat, phenomenal on a steak for example, and fantastic on a grilled cheese toastie. It is also a key ingredient in my recipes for Korean Fried Chicken Burgers, and could alos be used for the Korean Chilli Beef Rice Bowl from last week’s column.
Do try it, if you like a good chilli sauce, you will adore this.
First, make some Gochujang.
- 100g brown miso pasteÂ
- 50g honeyÂ
- 25g Korean red pepper powderÂ
- 1tsp Apple cider vinegarÂ
- 1 clove garlicÂ
- 50ml cold water
Grate the garlic, pop it and all the other ingredients and whisk to combine.
Transfer the sauce to a clean jar. You can store this in the fridge where it will keep for a week or two easily. It never lasts that long in ours though.
Now you can prepare the chicken.
- 750g skinless, boneless chicken meat
- 20g Korean red pepper flake powder
- 2 tbsp Gochujang
- 3 tbsp runny honey
- 2 tsp soy sauce
- 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and grated
- 1 tbsp fresh grated ginger
- A good grind of black pepper
- 250g buffalo mozzarella
- 100g grated vintage cheddar
- 60ml water
- A good grind of black pepper
- To serve:
- 2 spring onions finely chopped
- Some toasted sesame seeds
I use a mix of boneless, skinless chicken thighs and mini breast fillets for this dish. Trim away any fat from the thighs and cut them into strips the same thickness as the mini breast fillets. Then cut all the meat into pieces about 3-4 cm in length. Combine the red pepper flake powder, gochujang, ginger, garlic, honey, soy sauce, and black pepper in a big bowl and add the chicken.
Mix it well to fully coat the chicken pieces. If you are worried about this being a little too spicy for your taste, reduce the amount of red pepper flake power to suit your taste. It is, as the name suggests, fiery, but the cheese and the sides you add do temper that a fair bit, so do not be overly cautious with the spice.
Heat a little olive or rapeseed oil in a heavy skillet pan over a high heat. Add the chicken and all the paste from the bowl and reduce the heat to medium.
Cook for about five minutes, stirring occasionally before adding 60ml of cold water. Stir it well to combine and cover the pan. Let it simmer away over a medium heat until the chicken is cooked through, about another five minutes. Slice the mozzarella and grate the cheddar.
If your skillet is oven proof, simply layer the mozzarella over the cooked chicken and scatter the grated cheddar on top.
Use a little more cheddar if you prefer, this is indulgent dish, you might as well go for it. If your skillet cannot go in the oven, transfer the cooked chicken to a baking dish and add the cheese.
Grill the dish under a hot grill until the cheese is golden and bubbly. Finally add the chopped spring onion and the toasted sesame seeds. Serve with plain boiled rice and some stir fried greens of your choice.
We wolfed this down.
The combination of melted stringy cheese with eh sweet, spicy chicken was fantastic, and the bok choy and plain rice were the perfect accompaniments.
Next time I think I might add a little grated parmesan at the end too.
