This Gochujang Chicken for a Fast and Easy 30 minute Meal

Chicken that is not boring. This Korean-style chicken is smoky, a little spicy, and packed with flavors that will wake up your taste buds. And you'll love just how easy it is to make. Hey everyone, I'm Flo, duties behind the camera, and we're all about simple food, simple faith. Every recipe video that we film week to week is based on recipes that I cook on a regular basis, and today's is no different. Today I went shopping for chicken for this particular recipe, and I found that boneless, skinless chicken was like twice the amount of the bone-in with skin on. So of course I had to buy the regular thighs, and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to debone them myself. And those bones can be used for soup at a later date. I've already deboned four pieces of chicken thigh, and I have one left that I'm going to show you how, and it's really quite simple. So you'll see that the bone stretches from side to side, and we're just going to take our knife and cut as close to that bone as possible down one side. And then from there, you're going to go underneath, and be careful, don't cut your finger, and the same with on top, and then the other side. And you kind of just, I just kind of scrape it to get close to the bone. And it doesn't matter to me if I leave a little bit of meat on there, because again, if I use it for soup, it's just going to add flavor. So just be careful, then cut off this side, and the other side. Ta-da! Okay, and if you end up with some cartilage that's still there, you can always just remove that as well. And that didn't take long, just takes a couple of minutes to get all the bones out of all the chicken that you're using. So I estimate that I have about a pound and a half of chicken meat. Okay, then I just put the bones in a freezer bag to be used at another time. And what I do also is just keep adding bones to this until I get a decent amount, so that I can make broth, or congee, soup, so many options. I'm opting to keep the skin on, and actually, if you wanted to make a chicken steak with chicken thigh, you just remove the bone, and if you stretch it out just like this, it's a nice looking piece of steak, and fry up. But I'm going to cut this down, and again, I'm opting to keep the skin on. You can remove the skin. We're going to cut them into one and a half inch pieces, and we're going to stir fry them today, so that's what we're doing. All right, we're moving on to our marinade, and I'm going to start with the aromatics. I've got four cloves of garlic here. They're just normal sized garlic, not like the massive giant ones that I've been using. I'm just going to bash them a little bit to remove the skin. It also makes it easier for chopping, and we're just going to chop it up. All right, that's about right. You can chop it up finer if you want, or leave it chunkier if you want. Totally up to you. Okay, we're just adding this to a bowl. I also have a small piece of ginger. Give you about one to two teaspoons of grated ginger, and you can chop up the ginger if you want. I just find that the grater gets the ginger finer. We're adding three tablespoons of soy sauce, three tablespoons of Korean corn syrup, but if you don't have corn syrup, you can use honey or just sugar. Two teaspoons of rice vinegar, and I am using this gochujang paste, and we're going to use about two tablespoons of it. You can adjust it to however you like it. If you like it spicier, you can add more, and if you like it less spicy, you can add less, but the gochujang really does give this chicken its oomph in flavor, and adds a smokiness to the chili, or to the chili peppers, so it's more than just chili flakes. You're adding depth of flavor here. If you can get it, this is the way to go, but if you don't like spicy, you can just marinate it the way it is, and you'd still come out with a really tasty dish, just without the spice and smokiness. Okay, adding my chicken. Just make sure that this is well mixed. This smells so good already, guys. I can't even begin to tell you. So, super simple recipe. That's pretty much it, and then we're just going to cook it up. Easy enough for any night of the week, and bursting with flavor. We're just going to set this aside while I prepare the rest of the ingredients, and prepare the set. You don't have to let it marinate for too long, but if you want to, that's great. It'll be deeper in flavor, but even without marinating it for too long, it'll still be really tasty. I'm just chopping up a stalk of green onion, just for garnish and for added freshness. If you didn't want to add green onion, you don't have to. I'm just going to set this aside. All right, I'm going to heat up my wok, and I'm using a wok because I like the size of it, and I'm going to do my chicken in a couple of batches. We're going to turn it down to like a medium high, not too high. If you don't have a wok, you can use a large frying pan, and again, I'm doing it in two batches because I don't want to overcrowd the chicken and let it steam. I actually want to get a good sear on it on one side before flipping them over. Once you see that wisp of smoke, I'm going to add about a tablespoon of cooking oil. I'm using avocado oil today. Spread it out in one layer, and we're going to let it sear for about a minute, and that's going to give it that caramelized flavor and the stickiness of the sugars caramelizing on the chicken pieces. Oh, it looks so good already. The chicken is not completely cooked through, and because I'm doing it in two batches, I want to sear the chicken first, and then I will cook it all back together again. It's partly because there's sugars in this chicken that is causing it to cook and brown and burn a little bit more than I would like, so I'm going to do it this way. Turning the heat back on, adding more oil. The rest of the chicken. Once you got the sear going on the second batch on one side, flip them over, and we're going to add the chicken that we took out earlier, put it back in, and then we're just going to let that cook for a little bit until all the chicken is cooked through, and we're going to move it around as soon as the other side of the second batch is seared. We're going to cook it for another three to five minutes. Just want to make sure that this chicken is completely cooked through. That's what I love about cooking chicken thighs, is because even if you cook it a little bit longer, it's still going to be juicy and really delicious. If you decide that you would like to do chicken breast instead, you can totally do that. With chicken breast, it's easier actually to tell whether or not it's cooked through by cutting through a piece to see if it's, well, no longer pink inside. But dark meat, it's hard to tell sometimes. All right, that's good. I'm going to turn it off. Adding about a tablespoon of sesame oil. And sesame oil is going to add another layer of flavor, and we want to add the sesame oil at the end, because otherwise the sesame flavor actually burns off if you add it earlier while cooking. I'm going to spoon this into our bowl. We're also adding some roasted sesame, so maybe about a teaspoon or so, and the green onion. You don't have to use all of it. And that is it. Are you all ready for... Oh, that smells really yummy. And as Flo said, what she cooks is what we eat. We eat well in this household. Smells fantastic. As usual, it's going to be really good because that sauce coated the chicken so well. You don't need a whole lot of sauce, but it did develop a sauce which would equate to going wonderfully with rice. Yeah, the smokiness with that sesame oil, it is so just appetizing before you even put it in your mouth. And that charring, it just has a really nice look to it. The sauce is wonderful. You definitely get that smokiness from the gochujang. The additional flavor of the caramelization for the sauce. And this is going to go wonderful with rice and your favorite sides. Great, thanks, Drew. Simple recipe using basic ingredients that you keep on hand will get you a very delicious meal. For this recipe, check it out on my website, flotam.com.