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Best of Inuyaki David Chang fried chicken Momofuku recipes

Cook the Book: Momofuku – Fried Chicken

Momofuku Week trudges on with a fried chicken recipe that’s my new favorite because it’s super easy and—as David Chang might say—fucking awesome. :)

Momofuku Fried Chicken

You might assume that this would be a recipe for Korean fried chicken (KFC), especially since Noodle Bar offers a bountiful platter of both Korean and American fried chicken for up to 8 people for $100. (If you think that’s expensive, it breaks down to $12.50 for 8 people, and in our ravenous group of 8, we had leftovers.) The fried chicken recipe from the Momofuku cookbook is quickly becoming an all-time favorite. It’s up there with the Ad Hoc fried chicken, but the two are so different that they live on their own perfect little islands.

Momofuku Fried Chicken PlatterNoodle Bar’s Fried Chicken Platter

The main reason this fried chicken hits home for me is the Octo Vinaigrette that’s used to dress the chicken before serving. The Octo Vin was originally designed as an accompaniment for a grilled octopus dish, but it works wonders on the fried chicken, as well. It’s not an ordinary vinaigrette because the oil/vinegar ratios are reversed, and it’s loaded with fresh garlic and ginger. The smell is enough to get me excited about eating this fried chicken.

Fried Chicken WingsWorks great on chicken wings, too!

Chang employs a three-step process for this fried chicken: brine, steam, and fry. This is similar to my modification of the Ad Hoc Fried Chicken Recipe where I brine, sous vide, and fry the bird. The brine is a simple salt, sugar and water mixture and the brining time is anywhere between one and six hours. The chicken is then steamed for 45 minutes for so and then cooled for a couple hours. I took the steamed chicken and let it sit on a cooling rack in the fridge overnight. This helps dry out the chicken skin and helps it crisp up really nicely when it’s in the oil.

Take the chicken out of the fridge at least 30 minutes before you want to cook them. Then fry the chicken in 350F oil for about 6-8 minutes. Since the chicken is already cooked, you really only need to fry until the skin reaches your desired level of crispiness. Remove the chicken from the oil and drain them on a rack or paper towels. Before serving toss the chicken in the Octo Vin and garnish with sliced green onions.

RECIPES

Fried Chicken Brine
Good for 3–3½ pounds of chicken. I prefer legs and thighs, but wings work, too.
4 cups lukewarm water
½ cup sugar
½ cup kosher salt

Octo Vinaigrette
2 tbsp finely chopped garlic
2 tbsp chopped peeled fresh ginger
1 small fresh jalapeno seeded and chopped, or 1 tbsp Sriracha
¼ cup rice wine vinegar
¼ cup usukuchi (light soy sauce)
2 tbsp grapeseed or other neutral oil
¼ tsp Asian sesame oil
1½ tbsp sugar
Freshly ground black pepper

Download PDF excerpts of these recipes (courtesy of Time Out New York):

Tomorrow: Roasted Rice Cakes

Categories
cookbooks David Chang Momofuku recipes

Cook the Book: Momofuku – Ginger Scallion Noodles

Day 3 of Inuyaki’s Momofuku Week lightens things up with a dish that has absolutely no meat in it.

Momofuku Ginger Scallion NoodlesGinger Scallion Noodles

One of the book’s easiest recipes the Ginger Scallion Noodles. David Chang says that ginger scallion sauce is “one of the great sauces or condiments ever,” and it’s one of Momofuku’s mother sauces. The ginger scallion sauce is a simple combination of finely minced ginger, thinly sliced scallions, light soy sauce, oil, kosher salt and sherry vinegar. I couldn’t find any sherry vinegar locally so I substituted it with rice vinegar, which worked nicely.

Chang says you can use this sauce on anything and encourages improvising, but I liked his suggestion of topping ramen noodles with the sauce, quick-pickled cucumbers and pan-roasted cauliflower. There’s a bunch of pickle recipes in the book, but my wife did her own version with sugar, salt, and rice vinegar to taste.

You can eat this on its own or as part of a larger meal. Either way, it’s a delicious and healthy option to offset the book’s meat-centric focus.

GINGER SCALLION SAUCE
Makes about 3 cups

2½ cups thinly sliced scallions (greens and whites; from 1 to 2 large bunches)
½ cup finely minced peeled fresh ginger
¼ cup grapeseed or other neutral oil
1½ tsp usukuchi (light soy sauce)
¾ tsp sherry vinegar
¾ tsp kosher salt, or more to taste

Mix all the ingredients together and let sit for 15-20 minutes before using. It’ll keep in the fridge for about a week…if it lasts that long. :)

Tomorrow: Fried Chicken

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cookbooks David Chang Momofuku pork recipes

Cook the Book: Momofuku – Pork Belly Buns

It’s Day 2 of Momofuku Week at Inuyaki and today’s post on Pork Belly Buns is a great way to use the Pork Belly I wrote about yesterday.

Momufuku Pork Belly Buns
Momofuku Pork Belly Buns

The Momofuku pork buns quickly (and inadvertently) became one of Noodle Bar’s signature items, and it’s nice to be able to recreate them at home. It’s basically a steamed bun with slices of pork belly, quick-pickled cucumbers, hoisin sauce, and green onions. My wife decided to pickle both cucumbers and carrots, and she julienned both instead of slicing them because it would be prettier.

The recipe for the steamed buns is in the book (link below), but I didn’t have time to make them, so I picked some up in the freezer section of a local Asian supermarket. They’re a little too thick and not as good as fresh, but they did the job. The second time I made this, I found a different style of buns in the refrigerated section of the market that were bigger and rounder and accommodated 2 slices of pork belly easily.

Momofuku Pork Belly Bun

Steam the buns for a couple minutes until they’re heated through. While the buns are steaming, cut 1/2-inch slices of belly across the grain and warm them up before using—I grilled them in a cast iron skillet for about a minute a side. Depending on how big your buns are, you may have to cut the belly slices in half to get them to fit on the bun.

To assemble the pork belly buns, open up a bun and brush some hoisin sauce on top and bottom halves. Put the pork belly slices on the bottom half and pickled cucumbers and carrots on the top half. Garnish with a little green onion and eat immediately.

For reference, here’s what the pork belly buns look like when the restaurant serves them up (from our trip to Noodle Bar in September).

Pork Buns
The “real” Momofuku Pork Belly Buns

Download PDF excerpts of these recipes (via Time Out New York):

Tomorrow: Ginger Scallion Noodles

Categories
cookbooks David Chang Momofuku pork recipes

Cook the Book: Momofuku – Pork Belly

Momofuku Week is a new series I made up yesterday after realizing an epic post I was writing about cooking from the Momofuku book was going to be too long. I decided to break up the posts over the next week since I’ve made enough dishes from the book to cover about a week’s worth of posts already.

Momofuku Pork BellyPork belly fresh out of the oven.

Momofuku’s pork belly is really easy to make, which is good because it’s used in a lot of other recipes in the book, including the famous pork buns, ramen, and sam gyup sal ssam. This was the only the second time I’ve ever made pork belly, and it’s safe to say that it was rousing success. (My first attempt at cooking pork belly was a sous vide version that was good, but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing at the time either.) I also have a piece of pork skin in the freezer waiting to become chicharrones. If I’m lucky, that might be the end of this week. :)

A skinless three-pound slab of pork belly sits in a simple 1:1 salt/sugar cure for between 6 to 24 hours. After discarding any excess liquid, put it roasting or baking dish and roast it fat side up in a 450F oven for an hour, basting it with rendered fat halfway through. Then reduce the oven temperature to 250F and cook it for another hour or so until the pork belly is tender and has—as the book says—”a down pillow-like yield to a firm finger poke.”

After cooking, save the rendered fat and cool the belly till you can handle it. Wrap it in plastic or foil and refrigerate until needed—the belly is easier to cut into uniform pieces when it’s cold. When you’re ready to use the pork belly, cut 1/2-inch slices from the short end of the belly (against the grain) and warm it up. I like to use a cast iron skillet over medium heat to lightly char each piece of pork belly on both sides.

Download a PDF excerpt of this recipe (via Time Out New York):

Tomorrow: Momofuku Pork Belly Buns.

Categories
bacon Best of Inuyaki David Chang Japanese Momofuku

Bacon Agedashi Tofu

David Chang will be the first to admit that both he and his Momofuku restaurants (Noodle Bar, Ssam, Ko) are overhyped and overexposed. The release of the Momofuku cookbook last month isn’t helping matters much since he’s making the rounds promoting the book around the country, and he’s actually doing book signings in the Bay Area through the weekend. I received the Momofuku cookbook a few days after Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home, and both books are the only things I’ve been reading since—aside from the Internet, of course. :)

(See EatMeDaily.com for great reviews of both books: Momofuku | Ad Hoc at Home)

Bacon Agedashi TofuBacon Agedashi Tofu, inspired by the Momofuku cookbook.

The first recipe in the Momofuku book that really got my attention was the bacon dashi. In the book, Chang says that when Noodle Bar first opened, he had a hard time finding good katsuobushi (smoked bonito) to make traditional dashi, the seaweed and fish broth that’s the foundation of Japanese cuisine. Chang started looking at other options to replicate the katsuoboshi’s smoky flavor, and good ol’ American bacon was the natural choice. Making the bacon dashi is pretty easy, and the final product looks and tastes like regular dashi but with a hint of smoky bacon flavor. It can be used in any application that calls for a regular dashi, and the first thing I thought of was one of my favorite dishes, agedashi tofu (fried tofu in broth).

For the broth, a.k.a. tentsuyu, I started by warming one cup of bacon dashi in a small sauce pan and added about three tablespoons each of shoyu (soy sauce) and mirin (sweetened rice wine). I did this to taste, but it should be salty and smoky with a hint of sweetness.

Butterfly a block of firm tofu and separate the two halves. Cut the tofu into rectangles and dry them for about 10 minutes on paper towels. Gently dredge the dried tofu in potato starch or cornstarch and fry them in 350F oil until they’re light golden brown. In a separate pan, fry up some finely chopped bacon until crispy. Chop up a stalk or two of green onions and grate some brown onions. Normally, you’d finish off agedashi tofu with grated daikon, but I didn’t have any on hand. Using onions did keep the dish a bit more on the American side and provided a similar texture to what grated daikon would have provided.

To serve, place three pieces of fried tofu in small bowl. Ladle enough sauce into the bowl so that half of the tofu is still exposed. Top with grated onion, chopped green onion and crispy bacon.