- Hello, my name is Andrew.
You might recognize me from the show Worth It
where I taste foods at different price points
with my buddies Adam and Steven.
In this video series, I attempt to recreate
my favorite things I had on Worth It
to try to better understand what makes great food
really delicious.
Today it's cold fried chicken.
As in temperature, cold, fried chicken.
In the Worth It fried chicken sandwich episode,
we had this spicy cold fried chicken
from a place called Fuku.
It was both exhilarating--
(Steven and Andrew exclaim)
(Andrew laughs)
- Oh wow.
- And fascinating that it was very tasty
despite being a cold piece of meat.
This fried chicken is actually based on a dish
from another restaurant that has not previously
been on Worth It, Momofuku Ko,
but I've eaten at before,
actually with Adam and Annie after a shoot once.
The original cold fried chicken is not spicy,
but possibly one of my favorite things
I've ever eaten.
And I think making this dish is going to help me
with something that I'm really curious in,
which is the fundamentals of why something tastes good.
Holy (beep).
Cold fried chicken sounds counterintuitive
and yet this dish is undeniably delicious.
To start off, I'm going to be speaking
with the executive chef from Momofuku Ko, Chef Sean Gray.
I'm really curious about this cold fried chicken
that you guys are pretty famous for now.
- It kind of came from two different places,
one of which was this like running joke
that we wanted to have a restaurant
that served food that was already all prepared.
And then we were doing this private dinner,
thought we would just do this fried chicken spread.
The dinner was going on much longer than we anticipated.
And we kept frying the chicken in these short bursts
to keep it nicely fresh for when it did go out.
Leftover chicken we put in the walk-in,
and towards the end of the night,
everyone kept going in and out of the walk-in
just eating this chicken.
And I was kind of like, you know,
maybe we could actually serve this,
like, maybe this could be a thing.
Everyone else working here was really amped up about it.
Having like a relationship to it of eating cold chicken
out of your fridge, late at night,
it's just very satisfying.
You know, we spent the next month
really working on the recipe, we worked out the flavors.
- From a flavor and texture standpoint,
why does it work cold?
- Well, I think with chicken and especially cooked proteins,
all of the juices and all of that fat and collagen,
all that kind of stuff,
stays in the meat versus like cutting into roasted chicken,
it's gonna steam out or it's gonna lose
some more moisture content.
- Right, no, that makes a ton of sense.
- You know, and then you pick it up
and it's like refrigerator temperature.
I can't think of any other cold foods
that have that kind of mild crunch,
like a 65% crunch.
I don't know, it's this in between texture,
it's like soft and crunchy at the same time.
- Is the cold fried chicken available right now?
- Doing the chicken, it's a to-go item.
We've been working a lot on pizzas,
so we're trying to have, like everything would just be--
Hang on one second.
- Yeah, no problem.
Is there one right in front of you?
Could you pan down and show me it?
- No, it's gone.
(Andrew laughs)
- Not a problem.
Well, thanks so much for chatting.
I'm really excited to make this chicken.
- Yeah, I'm excited to see how it comes out.
- Okay, Sean helped me out with some of the details
of the recipe.
So far one of the most curious aspects to me
is what is happening inside the meat of the chicken.
To start, we're making this brine.
First ingredient of which is liquid Koji.
From what I understand, Koji is the fermentation agent
in making sake.
That same fungus is also used to make soy sauce and miso.
I think in this recipe,
it's going to be doing a job similar to buttermilk,
which is to tenderize the meat.
And then just a bunch of water.
And then I put chicken in.
I'm gonna put a tiny plate on top
to make sure everything stays submerged.
Okay, so I'm gonna cover this up.
(rustling)
So this will brine for many hours
and then it'll be time for frying.
Oh God, this is gonna being a horrible shaped to fit
in my refrigerator.
So the chicken's been brined.
I also pulled it from the brine
and let it sit in the refrigerator uncovered for a while
to dry the exterior.
So before we fry the chicken,
there's a couple other elements we need to make.
First there's a finishing salt.
This is just a seasoned salt with nothing crazy in it,
you know, it's garlic powder, onion powder,
cayenne, stuff like that in here.
Really, not even a grain yet?
Come on.
Finishing salt is pretty interesting to me,
because it's not really a step of cooking
that I think about.
Usually the only thing that falls into the category
for me is like cheese.
The other finished element of the fried chicken
is a glaze for once it's done frying.
Okay, welcome to the stove area.
Water and sugar, little bit of salt, soy sauce,
and this is all comes together now.
This glaze is a prime example of how
what I'm able to do at home is going to differ a little bit
from what they do at the restaurant,
because I'm not able to find the exact same ingredients.
I should still be able to get a glaze for my chicken
that will be pretty flavorful.
Last thing we're adding is green hot sauce and Yuzukosho.
Yuzu is this citrus,
Yuzukosho is this Japanese fermented product.
Very citrus-y.
I don't know if like pine tree resin was delicious.
And that's that.
It's salty, sweet, it's a little spicy.
Makes me wanna do this.
This is cooled down.
I can now set this aside
for when I'm done frying the chicken.
Okay, now it's time to make the dredge and the batter.
Combination of wheat flour and rice flour and corn starch,
which I believe will help a crunchier final chicken.
I really like the way that flour smells.
It has a very cozy smell to it.
It reminds me of a pantry.
Oh.
Oh, God.
I'm wearing the wrong color for this.
Okay.
God.
This is going to be the dredge for the chicken
as well as the dry ingredient for the batter
and then the liquid elements,
which are beer and vodka.
Alcohol is the primary liquid in this batter,
I believe because it will evaporate faster
resulting in a crispier texture.
This needs to go in the fridge to stay very cold.
We'll set up the frying oil
and then dredge and batter right before frying.
Welcome to the fry zone.
So we have to fry this chicken four times.
And the first time is going to be
just in our flour dredge and into the oil.
Each time, it's at a different specific temperature.
And the interesting thing is that it's relatively low.
This happens for just three minutes.
Small kitchen problems,
I need to have a place for this chicken to land,
so we're gonna go right here onto a wire rack.
Okay, so I'm turning my oil off for now
because the chicken needs to cool
before the next batter and fry.
You can see where some of my chicken
came in contact with the bottom of the pot.
It got a little hotter than probably is desirably.
So there's also a specific instruction
to turn the chicken over after a few minutes.
Flipping it will help
more evenly drain the chicken, I guess.
So far this is unlike any way I've ever cooked meat,
so I don't know if I'm doing well or not.
The chicken is down to room temp,
so it's time to pull the batter from the fridge,
batter it, get this back in the fryer.
The fryer temperature is now a little bit higher,
up to 330.
Oh no, don't stick together!
Okay, these are getting quite dark,
so I'm gonna pull them out of the fryer.
I feel like mine have gotten very dark, very quickly.
They are quite crispy sounding already though.
Same thing's gonna happen here,
I'm gonna flip them after a few minutes.
In other news, I did not really understand
how long this was gonna take
and it's almost night time.
Now we wait another 15-20 minutes.
Fry number three, get the batter out of the fridge,
chicken back in the batter and into the fryer.
So each of these fries should take
between two and a half and three minutes
depending on the color.
And I'm just bobbing these babies up and down.
Okay, I'm pulling these bad boys out.
These are starting to look like what I recall
the chicken in the restaurant looking like.
The thickness of the shell,
not all of them are evenly so.
In my small pot, they're kind of bumping into each other.
And now we wait another couple minutes,
flip them again, let them rest evenly.
Oh, do you hear that?
It's like gravel.
Geez.
Now I'll just let these cool some more
and then the last fry.
Dammit, I've overshot the heat a little bit.
It's time for the final fry.
This process reminds me of a blacksmith's job
in perfecting steel.
It needs to be heated and cooled very carefully
to achieve the right hardness.
If it's too hard, it'll be brittle
and break on the first use,
but if it's not hard enough,
then it won't serve it's purpose.
Okay, so it's the very end of the day,
it's getting quite dark.
Last thing to do is to glaze the chicken.
So the instructions say to do this
in one swift motion.
(upbeat music)
It's very difficult not to each freshly made fried chicken.
I'm gonna pack these away and try them tomorrow.
Before I pulled out the fried chicken,
I'm gonna set up my plate.
And I think I can make it look
pretty close to what they do at the restaurant.
So first, they actually have some pickles on their plate.
And at Ko, they pickle their own cucumbers,
but I'm just gonna use my favorite dill pickle.
So I'm just gonna do a couple piled off to the side.
Now the chicken.
They look pretty accurate to me.
You can see where the batter has really puffed up
and achieved a shell.
But you can tell their not as even as would have been ideal.
Now to do the finishing salt.
So I believe at the restaurant you order them per piece.
At the time, there were three of us,
so we got three pieces.
So I'm gonna replicate that plate.
At first glance, it looks very good.
But the closer you look,
you can see uneven the batter and the frying was.
Now I eat it.
The flavor is incredible.
It's a little sweet, it's a little spicy,
very flavorful throughout the whole thing.
And it being cold really has the effect of being
like a treat.
How do I think I did?
Mine is not even close to the one at Ko,
but that's the be expected.
I mean, Ko is an amazing restaurant.
I think all of the food that they do there
has an incredible amount of thought
and attention and patience put into it.
It's a very interesting recipe to go through.
I mean, it makes you think a lot about why
anything you eat is the way that it is.
If you'd like to try an actually good version
of this fried chicken,
I highly recommend visiting Ko and having it for yourself.
It is really a one of a kind, unique treat.
(mellow music)