Skip The Double Fry. Here's The Real Secret To Perfectly Crispy Korean Fried Chicken

Korean fried chicken is famously crunchy, and rumor has it that the secret is to double fry it. That may be the case at restaurants with endless supplies of oil and commercial deep fryers. But, we've consulted an expert to tell you that you can skip the double fry at home by following crucial dredging tips and ingredients. In an interview with Ji Hye Kim, owner and chef at Miss Kim in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she sympathized with home cooks.

"People often double fry to get that crispy texture of Korean fried chicken," Kim says. "But seriously, who has the time and more importantly, deep frying once at home is annoying enough, but twice? Pass. To make that crispy texture of Korean fried chicken easily at home, all the secret is in the batter." 

As with most breaded and fried chicken recipes, Korean fried chicken undergoes dredging to help deliver "the shatteringly crispy exterior that Korean fried chicken is known for." Normally, wheat flour is used in the batter for fried chicken, but Kim advises making a substitution to achieve the crispiest results. "For the dry part of your batter, add some rice flour, corn starch, potato starch or any mix of those to your batter instead of using just wheat flour," she explains. "They're lighter and without gluten, so it will result in thinner, more crispy fried batter on your chicken." 

For the wet station,"use half water and half clear liquor like vodka when mixing the batter." These supplemental ingredients for both batters have scientific explanations and applications outside of Korean fried chicken for frying practices.

Chef Ji Hye Kim's tips for crispier chicken are easy swaps, using staples you probably have at home. Now that the secret's out, you probably want to know why these swaps work. As far as dry batter goes, wheat flour is a starch that contains the protein gluten. While it's crucial for a stretchy and tightly bound bread crumb, gluten hinders a crisp outer layer to your chicken. So, an all-wheat flour batter is a mistake for deep fried chicken. Corn, potato, and tapioca starch are better options because "they're lighter and without gluten, so it will result in thinner, more crispy fried batter on your chicken." You can substitute wheat flour completely for a gluten-free dry batter, using this corn starch or tapioca starch.

A two tablespoons of cornstarch per half-cup of wheat flour ratio is what we use in our Korean fried chicken recipe. Kim's choice for adding water and vodka to the wet batter is based on a blend of gluten and gluten-free alternatives; "What both of these things [water and vodka] are doing is to inhibit/limit gluten development to avoid soggy and gummy coating." Vodka is more volatile than water, which means that it'll evaporate and draw moisture out of the chicken breading faster than water, thereby resulting in a more crackly, bubbly chicken crust.