Ootoya's Black Vinegar Chicken Copycat Recipe (Tori Kurozu An)

Hey guys, it's Yuto here from slushyrecipes.com and today I'm going to show you how to make a tasty Japanese sweet and sour dish called Kurozan. It's made with fried chicken and crunchy vegetables in a delicious and well-balanced black vinegar sauce. This recipe is based on the signature dish of a popular Japanese chain restaurant called Otoya. Let's get started. First, we're going to marinate the chicken and for this you will need 250 grams or half a pound of chicken thigh. You can also make this dish with pork, beef or white fish too but I'm making the chicken version today. Then we add two teaspoons of soy sauce, one teaspoon of sake, if you don't have sake you can use white wine instead, half teaspoon of ginger paste and half teaspoon of garlic paste. Mix it up and leave it to marinate for about 10 minutes. We'll move on to the sauce next. For this you will need three and a half tablespoons of granulated sugar, two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, one and a half tablespoon of soy sauce, two teaspoons of black vinegar, two teaspoons of mirin, one tablespoon of sake or white wine and one tablespoon of water and one teaspoon of cornstarch. We mix everything in a jug until the cornstarch is dissolved properly and there are no lumps left. Black vinegar is a type of aged rice vinegar, you should be able to find it at Asian supermarkets but if not you can try adding one teaspoon of regular rice vinegar and one teaspoon of balsamic vinegar instead. So now we're gonna heat the oil and prepare the vegetables. I'm shallow frying and my oil is about one inch high. I'm heating to 180 degrees Celsius which is approximately 355 Fahrenheit. While the oil is heating up I'm gonna peel and cut the vegetables. Today I have one small Japanese aubergine, half a medium carrot, two peppers and half a white onion. I'm gonna cut the aubergine first because I want to soak it in water for five minutes before frying. I don't know the technicalities but soaking aubergine before frying stops it from absorbing too much oil. Next I'm cutting the carrot, just rough chunky pieces like this. Here I have two little green peppers called pimen in Japanese. They're pretty tiny so I'm using two but if you use green bell pepper you can just use one. Pimen is actually a bit more bitter than bell peppers but either work nicely in this dish. And lastly the onion, just cut it into chunks. This recipe is usually made with lotus root called renkon. If you use renkon just peel it and cut into eight millimeter slices. So my oil is ready. I'm gonna fry the carrot first for three minutes on each side. You might be wondering why I'm frying all the vegetables like this. Well it's a Japanese technique called shisuage. It means to deep fry vegetables quickly without any flour or butter. This is to keep their color, flavor and texture. It's also quicker than stir frying. This is a technique that is used at Otoya so I wanted to show you guys today. But of course you can stir fry your vegetables instead as well. The result and cooking time will be different though. Right let's transfer the carrot to a wire rack to let any excess oil drip off. Next I'm taking the soaked aubergine that I've dried thoroughly and placing it in the oil. You can add green pepper here and fry them together for one minute. If you use lotus root you'd add that here too. After one minute put them on the wire rack and then fry the onion. The onion also only needs one minute. I know it's a pain to fry them separately but the frying time isn't long and it means nothing is over or undercooked. So the onion is done. I'm gonna add it to the wire rack too. Don't worry about it getting cold because we're gonna heat it up in the sauce later. Now I'm gonna turn down the heat so that the oil is lower to 170 degrees Celsius or 340 Fahrenheit. Sprinkle about 2 to 3 tablespoons of cornstarch onto a plate or container and coat your marinated chicken. Add them to the oil and fry for 3 minutes on each side. So after the 6 minutes are up, turn the heat up to 190 degrees Celsius, 375 degrees Fahrenheit and fry for one minute on each side. I love this frying technique because it always comes out perfectly crispy. I also use it in my karaage recipes and Nagoya style tebasaki recipes. So if you're interested in those please check out. So the chicken pieces are ready. I'm gonna put them on a wire rack. Finally we're ready to put it all together. Heat up a large frying pan or wok on medium high with a little bit of oil. Add the vegetables and chicken to the pan. We're just gonna give the sauce a quick mix and then pour it in. Fry for a few minutes until the sauce thickens up. This part is very quick. Right, time to serve up. And there you have it. Delicious Otoe style black vinegar sweet and sour chicken. If you enjoyed this recipe, don't forget to like and subscribe. We have loads more tasty Japanese recipes on our channel. Thanks for watching. Hope to see you next time.