Korean Fried Chicken Sauce – The Sauce of Things to Come

Who says you have to read H. G. Wells to reference him? Anyway, this lovely sweet and sour sauce is part one of a two-part series on Korean fried chicken. That video will be posted on Wednesday, and if you want to enjoy it at 100% awesomeness, you’ll want to whip up a batch of this stuff.

As I disclaimed in the video, this is just my take, and while I think it’s pretty classic, there are a couple of things I do differently. I like to add lots of green onion and garlic, as well as not cook this quite as long as most recipes call for. The result is a sauce with those ingredients a little more up-front in the flavor profile. The only drawback is you don’t get quite as deep a red color, but I can’t even pretend to be concerned with that.

By the way, you should try to find some Korean chili flakes and/or paste if you can. I’ve used them before, and the flavor is great, and obviously more authentic, but if you can’t, any hot chili flakes or paste will work. Now, all we need is some “KFC” to spoon this over. Stay tuned, and as always, enjoy!

Ingredients for about 6 servings:

1/2 cup ketchup

2 green onions, chopped fine

4 cloves of garlic, minced fine

2 tbsp honey

1 to 2 tsp red chili flakes, to taste

1 tbsp sambal chili sauce, or other ground chili sauce/paste, to taste

1 pinch of salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 lemon, juiced, or more to taste

1/4 cup water to adjust thickness, more as needed

*Note: everything in this is “to taste,” so adjust until you think it’s balanced between sweet, sour, and spicy.

-- Combine ingredients and simmer on low for about 5 minutes. Cool and serve at room temperature.
*Click here for the Korean Fried Chicken recipe!