More Korean Fried Chicken!

Not too long ago I wrote about having a dinner of fried chicken at Jinjja Chicken in the Bugis+ mall..

Then this popped up. 

Caught me a little by surprise- I'd completely forgotten about them- this Sunday lunch- which we'd self-collected from some place along East Coast Road and brought to eat back home. 

The specific name of the place I don't remember. 

But it might be K-Chicken. 

Because the chicken of the *fried chicken party* around the coffee table tasted just like the whole fried chicken we had at this East Coast Road place which we'd gone to before.. 

It's funny how your palate remembers things your mind don't.. 

One of the best charms about Korean-style fried chicken is their sauce. 

If at Jinjja Chicken we'd taken the sweet and spicy yangnyum, here we'd decided to go for the original, with a little side serving of sweet (and thick) honey butter sauce. 

It was so good. 

The sweetness wasn't overwhelming. 

And it blended well with the (marinated) salt from the fried chicken. 

Then there were these- the banchan(I think?) cubes of radish soaked in sweetened vinegar. 

They made for a refreshing complement to the chicken meal. 

It's been oft said that Korean-style fried chicken is significantly different from other kinds of fried chicken styles. 

But despite having had it so many times over the years, I still don't know what, or how.

One thing that's pretty obvious, however, is the size of the bird. 

The birds that the Koreans dunk into the deep fryer are bigger. 

I'm not kidding. 

They're really bigger.

The wings in this box were big. 

The drumsticks too. 

Today our meal consisted of all chicken parts. 

I don't think there was breast meat. 

I don't remember eating any. 

What I do remember, however, is the ton of skin.  

The crunch, the taste, the moisture.

You know how some chicken skins, although crunchy with lots of bits, tend to be very hard?

And how some chicken skins, despite being light, are so moist that they have no crunch, nor taste even, at all? 

This chicken balanced it perfectly well all.

Like it wasn't very moist- none of that wet sup-sup texture that  undercooked fried chickens have- but the skin slid easily off the meat and, once inside my mouth, burst off a mixture of flavors (including marination and oil) onto my tongue. 

I loved it 

I loved the crunch even better. 

It was, shall I say, comforting. 

Not hard, no taste of stale oil, and it felt really fun just chewing it down. 

If I thought the skin of the chicken was delightful, the meat of the bird did not disappoint either. 

The meat itself of course had a flavor but I couldn't tell what, and honestly, I didn't really care. 

There was no need for additional ketchup.

Nor a need for the honey butter. 

But, us being us, we dipped the chicken meat from our wings and our drumsticks into the sauce and enjoyed it whole anyway.