Curry Mango Korean Fried Chicken

Mango is in season!

I can’t recall if I ever blogged about the most delicious Korean fried chicken wings I ever had in my life at Turntable chicken Jazz in NYC. These people know how to make wings! The skin is thin, extremely crispy and light coated with sauce, just pure perfection in every bite. Since tasting them a few months ago I have been really trying to figure out how they do it. Made a few attempts on my own with ok results, delicious but never achieved the superb crisp that chicken jazz does.  Then I decided to bring out the big guns and see if the geniuses at serious eats food lab had taken on the task; praises be to God they pretty much figured it out! I made a few tweaks to their recipe to make the batter perfect for my taste buds and it complemented the epic curry mango sauce.

There are a whole lot of things happening here. This sauce has curry, mango and ginger all in one bite. You must be thinking what an explosion of flavor in your mouth. I will say it is probably one of the most subtle and delicate sauces I have ever made. I guess I expected it to be all over the place and wild, but it’s so smooth. My sauces always tend to be acidic an bright, with and abundance of garlic, onion, tomatoes, lime juice etc. So this one was a real change of pace.

One thing I will say, if you do make these wings “serious eats style” do not sauce them until its time to eat. The difference with these lighter batter fried wings, versus the heavy crunchy  flour and egg wash coated wings is that the heavier coating can stand up to a sauce without getting soggy. If you sauce these wings and they sit for a period of time you lose the crunch (I learned this the hard way) they are still delicious, but you don’t want to go through all the trouble of achieving perfectly crunchy wings only to have them loose the crunch because of premature saucing. So if you’re making this for a large gathering where they will sit in a pan. Go for the flour to egg wash to flour and fry method, or serve the sauce on the side to the wings.

Ingredients (printable recipe)

For the chicken (adapted from serious eats recipe)

Oil for deep frying

24 whole chicken wings

7 tablespoon salt

2 ¼  cups corn starch

3 teaspoon baking powder

1 ½  cup all-purpose flour

1 ½  cup cold water

1 ½  cup vodka

3 tablespoon Onion powder

1 tablespoon Paprika

1 tablespoon Allspice

For the sauce

3 large mangoes

2 tablespoon oil

1 ½ tablespoon curry powder

1 onion chopped

2 tablespoon fresh grated ginger

1/3 cup maple syrup

3 tablespoon soy sauce

¼ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoon chopped cilantro to garnish

Instructions

For the sauce

• Slice and peel the mangoes, remove as much pulp from the seed as possible, blend until smooth
• In a deep pot heat oil and add the curry powder, cook for a few seconds until it starts to darken in color
• Add the onions and sauté
• Once the onions are soft, add mango puree, ginger, maple syrup, sugar, soy sauce and salt.
• Mix until all the ingredients have come together, once they have and sauce is thick remove from heat and set aside.

Greedy Tip: I generally try not to cook mango sauces for too long, This one in particular taste less like mango as the sugars develop.. So don’t cook it for more than 5 minutes in order to retain as much mango flavor as possible.

For the chicken (get original recipe for wings here)

• Combine 3 teaspoons salt, ¾  cup cornstarch, and 1 ½  teaspoon baking powder in a large bowl and whisk.
• Add chicken wings and toss until every surface is coated. Shake off the excess thoroughly and place the wings on a wire rack set on a baking sheet
• place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes up to overnight to dry out
• Heat oil to 350 degree
• Combine remaining 1 ½  cup cornstarch, 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder, flour, and 4 teaspoons salt, onion powder, allspice powder and paprika in a large bowl and whisk until mixed. Add water and vodka and whisk until a smooth batter is formed.  Serious eats says: It should have the consistency of thin paint and fall off of the whisk in thin ribbons that instantly disappear as they hit the surface of the batter in the bowl.
• Work in a batch of 6 to 8 wings at a time, dip wings into batter remove from batter and allow as much excess batter to drip off as possible
• Place in the hot oil and deep fry for 10-15 minutes per batch depending on the size of the wings.
• Repeat until all wings are fried golden brown and crispy
• Toss with the sauce and serve immediately or serve with the sauce on the side. 

 

 Xoxo Greedygirl