tori karaage

tori karaage - picture from bento.com

Tori karaage is one of my favourite Japanese dishes. It’s one of my favourite dishes, full stop, actually; there’s just something about the taste of the chicken that renders me a salivating mess every time a plate of it appears in front of me. Thus it is - naturally enough - a dish I have been trying to replicate in my kitchen forever, with varying levels of success.

Until today, when I had the most amazing homemade tori karaage ever, I am not even kidding. And it is SO simple - all you need is light soy sauce, ginger, and some kind of cooking wine (I used shao hsing jiu, which makes an acceptable replacement for sake when you’re a poor student in a pinch). The recipe I used was this one, from Just Hungry, a wonderful food site which I will definitely be patronising much more often in future.

I wanted to take a photo of my tori karaage, but it was so good that I literally completely forgot about it once the first piece came off the pan and I gobbled it up like the greedy karaage-loving monster I am. I just wanted to eat more. It isn’t often that I find an online recipe so good I have to blog about it and share the foodie love and goodness with everyone else… this one is a keeper for sure. Try it!