Japanese-Style Deep Fried Chicken

By Addie

"If you like the taste of Japanese dishes, you will love it. Very crispy, and my friends like it too. You can buy joshinko (rice flour), katakuriko (potato starch), and sesame oil at asian market. If you live in large city, you may find them at American grocery store. Joshinko and katakuriko taste nothing different from regular flour, but they really help to make crispy fried chicken. Do not use sweet soy sauce or too salty soy sauce." — AMY

Ingredients

• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon white sugar
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger root
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/8 teaspoon chicken bouillon granules
• 1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into 1 inch cubes
• 3 tablespoons potato starch
• 1 tablespoon rice flour
• Oil for frying

Preparation

Step 1

1. In a large bowl, mix together eggs, salt, pepper, sugar, garlic, ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce, and bouillon. Add chicken pieces, and stir to coat. Cover, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

2. Remove bowl from refrigerator, add potato starch and rice flour to meat, and mix well.

3. In a large skillet or deep fryer, heat oil to 365 degrees F (185 degrees C). Place chicken in hot oil, and fry until golden brown. Cook meat in batches to maintain oil temperature. Drain briefly on paper towels. Serve hot.
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REVIEWS:

This is an excellent recipe and it really does taste like chicken that you would find in an Asian restaurant. I couldn't find regular potato starch but I did find potato pancake mix and it worked beautifully. This is the only way I'll make fried chicken from now on. Thanks Amy!

This chicken is absolutely excellent! A thin, crispy, tasty batter covering tender morsels of chicken. I served this chicken with basmati rice and steamed carrots. I check the local supermarked for rice flour and potato starch and found they had rice flour but no potato starch. Then I came across a gluten free all-purpose mix in the same store. The mix listed rice flour, tapioco starch and potato starch as the first three ingredients and thus I decided to give it a try. It worked perfectly. Definitely give this recipe a try. You won't regret it.

Excellent! Japanese chicken just like in the restaurants. I made mine with wings and my 3-year-old son loved it so much he ate 7 pieces.

This was delicious and very easy to make.....the whole family enjoyed it, even Little Miss Picky. If you don't have a deep-fry thermometer, put a wooden utensil into the oil and touch the bottom of the pot. If bubbles rise from there, the oil is hot enough. If A LOT of bubbles rise, it's too hot, turn it down a little! I put paper towels in a pasta plate and kept it in the oven at 170 till all of the chicken was fried. Even the chicken I cooked first was still in good shape when it came time to eat!

Wonderful flavor! Instead of potato starch, I used instant potato flakes, and also used regular flour instead of rice flour. I even omitted the chicken granules. Still turned out excellent. Will be making this often.

This chicken has a really good flavor. I used regular flour and corn starch. It was really yummy and quick to make.

This is an awesome recipe! Me and my husband loved it. I followed another reveiwers suggestion and just used regular flour and cornstartch. Thanks for the recipe!

This is an easy to prepare/cook dish that tastes great. I cooked the 8 serve for 2 of us (fairly large eaters who had not had lunch) and use cornflour(corn starch) instead of potato starch but I did use the rice flour and it turned out perfect. Next time I will be serving it as sticky rice with the chicken on top and a small bowl of some sort of honey sauce to the side. A small garnish of coriander on the rice and chicken would not go astray either. But it was great.

This is a great fried chicken recipe. I usually chop more garlic & I agree with one of the reviewers: chop it garlic & ginger really small. I also just used regular flour & cornstarch & it turned out great. sometimes, if I've time, I prepare everything & marinate it overnight. To make it super crispy, oil has to be very hot before you dump chicken pieces in. It's very flavorful. I really enjoyed making it.

I was very pleased with the results. The chicken was delicious! I used a bit more garlic than the recipe suggested which turned out very well. Easy recipe, definitely worth the time and effort.

This was a big hit with the family. Definately one of our favourites. Thankyou Amy for sharing this recipe

Great! I make big batches of it, and freeze them for my daughter, so she can have her favorite chicken anytime! It still is crispy after freezing!

This is the best fried chicken I have found. My friends can't believe I made this. Thanks Amy

I'm from Hawaii and this dish is very common. It's called "mochiko chicken" as mochiko is the brand of rice flour/mochi flour that we have here. It costs less than a dollar a box. Try adding some oyster sauce to the mix too. Delicious!

Flavors are subtle, and the coating rocks!!!

We have made this with the rice flour/potato starch and then with regular flower/corn starch and did not notice a difference. It never got really crispy as we would have liked it, but it was still pretty tasty. Letting it marinate overnight gives it better flavor. We might add a few more items to give it more flavor - maybe some (bear with this spelling now) terriki sauce in the mix. Not a bad job however.

Very good- I was surprised at how much flavor it had after just 30 minutes of marinating. I'll be making this often! Thanks for submitting it!

I like the twist of ginger and the unique crispiness of this recipe!

My family liked this one! I also exchanged the potato starch for instant potato flakes. couldnt find ginger root in my grocery store so I used ground ginger about 1 tsp. and used just regular veg. oil. Just made the best of what I had. And I will make this again.

This is pretty close to the karaage chicken I had in Japan. I made this last Thursday, and today (Monday) my daughter has requested it for dinner tonight. I did not have on hand the rice flour or potato starch, so I had to substitute with regular flour and cornstarch. I can only imagine how much more delicious this dish would be if I had the original ingredients! Definitely will be a repeat dish for my family!

This reminded me of when I was a little girl a chinese place in the mall sold little chicken drumsticks that tasted just like this, a couple owed the resturant and it closed after the husband murdered his wife. I didn't think the batter was going to cover but it cooked up very nicely. It was not as crispy as I would have liked it but I used a very hot deep fryer, maybe next time I will pan fry them to be crispy. Very tasty, my children ate them up.

My husband and I really enjoyed the chicken. It tasted just like the chicken in Japan.

Didn't have sweet potato starch (just Katakuriko potato starch) to do Taiwanese popcorn chicken and already had the meat marinating with 2 teaspoons of 5 spice powder so I thought I'd do something with this recipe. I used Mochiko sweet rice flour, added 1 tablespoon rice wine, used brown instead of white sugar, had no sesame oil on hand and added 1 tablespoon tapioca starch after my first batch seemed flat. I used white pepper instead of regular and had to add quite a bit more rice flour. This recipe is so versatile - if you eye it, you can't go wrong. Thank you!

This is a regular dish of mine now for three years now. For better results, I double the amount of flour and starch (it's worth going out of your way for the correct flour), at least triple the amount of soy sauce and sometime substitute the grated ginger with powdered. Using light peanut oil makes a difference too.

Great recipe! If you can't find potato starch, use potato flakes and grind to a "flour" like consistency in a food processor. Mix with the corn starch. I make a big batch and keep on hand for next time. Also, to keep from biting into large pieces of garlic or ginger, grate them. Hope these tips help!