When I lived alone, one of the foods I cooked on repeat was no fry chicken with Korean inspired sweet and spicy sauce. I love eating fried chicken but I don’t like to fry food in my house. This is mainly because I dislike the clean up. One day I thought ” what if I made some Korean fried chicken but I don’t have to fry the chicken?” The lucky thing was that I had some frozen fried chicken I bought from Costco in my freezer. I pop these chicken in the oven and make the sauce on stove top. Then I just toss the chicken into the sauce, then I’m done!
While I still love the restaurant fried Korean chicken, this recipe is a great alternative and it’s quick to make on a weekday. For this recipe, I’ve decided to use some raw split wings. I recommend using air fryer to cook the chicken.
I love the fact that I can pop these into the ovens and leave it to cook so I don’t have to stand by the stove to fry each wing. When the wings are nearly done, I can make the sauce, heat it wok and toss the chicken in. It’s simple as that. I love this recipe when I don’t want to pay for delivery but still want something similar to what I can find in restaurant.
Korean Fried Chicken Sauce
The star of the recipe is the sauce, and it is simple to make. The main ingredient is gochujang or Korean red pepper paste. Korean red pepper paste is a very important ingredient in a lot of Korean dishes. It has so much flavor so you only need to add a few ingredients with the Korean red pepper paste to give you a delicious sauce.
One mistake I made before is making too much sauce, you only need enough to coat the chicken or you might end with too much sauce at the bottom of the pan.
Pro-tip:
- If using pre-made chicken, use non breaded chicken and lightly seasoned. I find it has a better flavour and doesn’t feel as heavy
- Start off with less chili flakes and see how you like the spiciness and add more if needed.
- If you don’t like it too spicy, decrease the gochujang and red pepper flakes, add more honey or sugar so it’s more sweet.
- If you like it more crispy, increase the temperature to 190 and just decrease the time by 5 minutes. Every air fryer is slightly different so cook according to your air fryer.
Air fryer Korean Fried Chicken (Yangnyeom Chicken)
Ingredients
- 2 lb split raw wings or pre-seasoned wings
- salt and pepper
- oil
Korean Chicken sauce
- 3 tbsp gochujang
- 1½ tbsp minced garlic
- 1 tbsp sugar/honey
- ½ tbsp Korean red pepper flakes
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 3 tbsp water
Instructions
- Pat dry the chicken wings
- Season the split wings slightly with salt and pepper and oil. Put onto air fryer basket with a liner (optional). Air fry at 170℃ or 338℉ for 25 minutes. Flip halfway through.
- If using pre-seasoned wings, follow instructions on the package.
- Mix gochujang, red pepper flakes, sugar, soy sauce and garlic together.
- Once the chicken is done, set aside and let it cool
- Put the sauce into wok on medium high with some oil. Add some water to thin it out. Toss the chicken into the sauce. Make sure all of the chicken is coated.
- Plate the chicken and serve with some sesame seeds
