Karaage (からあげ, Japanese fried chicken) is one of the most popular Japanese dishes you can find at Izakaya, restaurants, food stalls as well as in bento boxes. Japanese people often cook Karrage at home as well. It is a dish favoured by all age groups.
Karaage Flour
Even though making karaage from scratch with homemade marinade and potato starch coating is easy, Japanese people also love to use the karaage flour that can be easily purchased from Japanese grocery stores.
There are different brands of karaage flour you can choose from. One of the popular brands is Nissin karaage flour. They come with different flavours including soy sauce, yuzu pepper, and sea salt. They are the flavours from popular Karaage specialty shops which won Karaage competitions in Japan. Without going to Japan, now you can have the taste of Japan at home.
These karaage flour can be found at Genki Mart. From the left, soy sause flavour (black), yuzu flavour (green), umami salt flavour (blue).
Make Juicy and Delicious Karaage
Ingredients:
1 pack of Nissin karaage flour
100ml water
500g chicken thighs or breasts
Enough oil for frying
Instruction:
Cut chicken into bite-sizes.
Pour the water into the flour and mix well to make karaage marinade.
Marinate the chicken for 30 minutes.
Heat the oil to 170-180ºC and fry the chicken for 3 - 4 minutes or until cook through.
Serve the Karaage
You can serve the karaage with shredded cabbage, lettuce leaves, sliced tomatoes and cucumber, a lemon wedge or Japanese mayo.
Vegetarian and Vegan Option
Instead of using chicken, you can mix julienned carrot, diced onion, thinly sliced capsicum and sweet potato or other root vegetables to make kakiage (かきあげ, mixed vegetable tempura).
Kakiage is delicious to simply enjoy as a side dish. Or you can make kakiage udon by putting it on top of a bowl of udon with warm soup. It will warm your stomach and heart on a cool autumn night.
The Brisbane Japanese Language and Culture School