Karaage – Japanese Popcorn Chicken Recipe [Gluten Free]

Karaage or also known as Japanese Fried Chicken or how I like to call it Japanese Popcorn Chicken. It is super easy to make! If you know me, fried chicken has got to be one of top when it comes to favorite food to eat. However whenever I order fried chicken out, I am disappointed. The problem with store or restaurant fried chicken is that very few places do it well. It tends to be overly breaded for my liking, or overly greasy, or overly cooked. When you make it at home, you have the luxury of controlling all those elements.

I have had Karaage at Japanese restaurants and I got to say, they usually are pretty good. The reason why I like them so much is that it’s not overly coated. It’s light and fluffy and super flavorful. The trick to getting that texture is to use potato starch or corn starch rather than wheat flour for the coating. Since I had the deep frying oil going, I figured why not deep fry some broccoli tempura and serve it over rice and make it into a complete meal. Maybe at some point I will share my tempura recipe, but for now, onto the star of the show – Gluten Free Karaage Japanese popcorn chicken recipe.

Karaage - Japanese Popcorn Chicken

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Serves: 4 Prep Time: 15 Minutes Cooking Time: 15 Minutes

Ingredients

• 1lb of boneless chicken (dark meat taste the best, but white meat will work too)
• 1/4 cup of rice flour (I just ground some up with my Vitamix)
• 1/4 cup of potato starch or corn starch
• salt (to taste, start with approximately 1 TBL.)
• black or white pepper (to taste, start with approximately 2 tsp.)
• 1 TBL tamari
• 1 TBL rice wine
• 1 TBL sesame oil
• 2 TBL minced ginger or 4 drops of ginger essential oil.
• 6 cloves garlic (minced)
• Oil to deep fry

Instructions

1. Cut chicken into little 1 inch cubes
2. Marinade the chicken with everything on the ingredient list minus the rice flour and potato starch. Set aside for at least 15 minutes.
3. Mix the rice flour and potato starch in a separate bowl.
4. Heat the oil to be about 350 degrees. A quick way to tell if your oil is hot enough is to stick a chopstick into the hot oil. If it starts bubbling, you are ready to deep fry.
5. Coat the piece of chicken with the rice flour and potato starch mixture before putting it in the deep fryer.
6. Fry until golden brown, should only be about 2 minutes, this highly depends on how small or thin you cut your chicken.
7. Remove from oil and put on a cooling rack for the rest of the oil to drip out.
8. Let chicken cool just a little bit before eating.

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Notes

Although not very traditional way of eating this, I like to serve this with a side of Sriracha mayonnaise. Simply mix about 2 TBL of mayonnaise with 1 tsp of Sriracha in a small dish. Dip chicken in sauce and enjoy!