Mom's Korean Chicken

My mother is a great cook. We grew up on mostly Korean food, but also an occasional random non-Korean item thrown in there. For example, she often made her famous inside-out ravioli (I will have to blog about that one day), or her not-so-famous prune cake (yuck!). One thing she would make pretty often that was always a hit was her CHICKEN.

I don't have an exact recipe for this dish, just the required ingredients, so I kind of experimented and came up with my own recipe. My mom's calls for chicken drumsticks, which are cheap and on the fattier side. To appease D, who is a self-proclaimed health nut, I also threw in two bone-in chicken breasts (but this goes against mom's original recipe!).

(D took this picture as I was removing the skin from the chicken.... sorry for the poor quality... ahem, D)

The first thing to do is rinse the chicken and remove the skin. This is not an easy task, I must say. I'm surprised I still have all 10 fingers. Honestly, I don't know why my mom removes the skin, but hey, it's her recipe! Plus, it makes it somewhat healthier.


Then, I put the chicken pieces in a large stockpot (or a dutch oven, if you have one). To this, I added a LOT of roughly chopped garlic (maybe 10 cloves?), a lot of fresh roughly chopped ginger, some gochu-garu (Korean red pepper flakes), and some sugar. For liquid, I added soy sauce and sesame oil I also added a sliced onion and some scallions, which are NOT part of my mom's original recipe, but I like onion flavor.


Then, I added water until the chicken was covered. I brought this to a boil, turned down the heat, covered it, and let it simmer away...


This takes a long time... after an hour or so, I opened the lid and turned UP the heat so the liquid would reduce. This took me almost another hour! But when it was all reduced down, the liquid turned into a dark thick sauce, and the meat was tender and almost completely off the bones.


I sauteed some Shanghai baby bok choy with some garlic and sesame oil, and served it all up with some good old Korean sticky rice. Enjoy!!


Mom's Korean Chicken

3.5lbs chicken drumsticks (maybe 10-12 drumsticks)
2lbs bone-in chicken breast
10-12 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
3" piece of fresh ginger, roughly chopped
1 onion, sliced
3 scallions, cut into 2" pieces
2 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp gochu-garu (Korean red pepper flakes)
1 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup sesame oil
5 cups water
salt and pepper

1. Remove skin from chicken. Be careful... let's not pull a Wendy's chili incident here.
2. Place chicken in large stockpot or dutch oven.
3. Add all the other ingredients to the pot, and add the water last, just to cover the chicken.
4. Cover the pot, bring it up to a boil.
5. Reduce the heat, let it simmer for an hour or so. Stir occasionally.
6. Take the lid off, turn up the heat, and let the liquid reduce into a nice thick sauce, stirring occasionally.
7. You'll find the meat has fallen off the bones. If you want, you can fish out the bones/cartilage. Mine ended up looking almost like pulled pork or pulled chicken in a rich sauce. Delicious!
8. Serve with some white rice, and maybe some sauteed bok choy, or even some kimchi!