The Best Fried Chicken I've Ever Made...Taiwan Street Food Style - Marion's Kitchen

Crispy, deep-fried chicken bites and a spicy pepper sprinkle. This is my version of Taiwanese fried chicken. You guys know by now that anytime I'm frying chicken, I'm supremely happy. We've made a lot of fried chicken here. We've done Thai Southern fried chicken. We've done Japanese Karaage fried chicken. We've done smoky sriracha and lime fried chicken. So much good fried chicken. Can I say that this one is like right up there at the top. It is so good. It all comes down to the marinade and the sprinkles. Let's get started on the sprinkle part first. I want some white peppercorns and some Sichuan peppercorns as well. These guys have like a numbing kind of sensation when you eat them. Really cool. Definitely worth seeking out. Or you could just do a mixture of white and black peppercorns too. Just grind these to a fine powder. I want 2 tablespoons of this pepper mixture into a small bowl. We're going to make the sprinkle out of that. Now to that 2 tablespoons of pepper mixture, I want to add in about a tablespoon of salt. And then a good teaspoon of chili powder. You could add less if you like. But I like it spicy. Just give that a mix. That is your beautiful spicy sprinkle for the end. You'll probably have more than you need for this recipe. But that's not a problem. Just keep this in your pantry and sprinkle it on like anything. Makes everything taste good. Back to the little bit of pepper that we've got left in our mortar here. I'm going to put that into a bowl. We also want a little dash of Chinese five-spice. I'm using my homemade Chinese five-spice. You can find the video for that on my YouTube channel if you want to check it out. To that, I want to add some grated ginger. And a clove of garlic as well. Now for some seasoning bits and pieces. I've got some soy sauce and some Japanese mirin. This is a sweet cooking wine. It's going to add a little bit of flavour. But the alcohol molecules are also very volatile. So it's going to help with the crisping up as well. You can leave it out if you would like to leave this alcohol-free. Give that a mix. The smell of that already is so amazing. Just to help everything bind together and really stick to the chicken, I'm going to add a little bit of potato starch. I'm using potato starch for this marinade part and also to coat the chicken a little bit later on. Starch tends to be a lot lighter and crispier than regular flour. If you can't find potato starch, you could use cornstarch here as well. Or cornflour, depending on where you are. Same thing. Now let's prepare our chicken. I'm using chicken breast. I like to give it a bit of a going over with my heavy pestle or with a meat mallet. That way, we're kind of breaking down the fibres a little bit in that chicken, which makes it a bit more tender. So that's looking good. I just want little bite-sized pieces here. Now into our marinade. Give that a good mix. So to coat the chicken, I'm going to need some eggs. Because I want to keep this coating really light and that egg really whisper-thin, I'm going to add a little bit of water as well. As I mentioned before, I'm using potato starch instead of flour for this one. Now you want to grab some pieces of chicken. Pop those into your egg. And then into the potato starch. Now we come to the joyous part. That is the frying of the fried chicken, of course. So I've got some hot oil here. I'm going to put in a chopstick, a wooden chopstick. The optimal temperature is when you can see lots of little fast-moving bubbles. That's looking good. In goes my chicken. Now as always when you're deep-frying, don't overcrowd the pan because that will cause the temperature of the oil to drop, which means it's not as hot, which means it's not getting things as crispy. That's when you get oily fried chicken. Just make sure they're not sticking together. I like to always keep my pieces moving. That way you won't get any little brown hot spots. Now when that chicken is a really beautiful golden colour, pop it on some paper towel. And then straight away you want to hit it with some of that pepper salt that we made. Make sure you get both sides. And now in with the other pieces. Now this is an optional extra, but some crispy fried Thai basil is what you would usually put with these. They add a beautiful fragrance here. You can tell it's Thai basil by looking at the stem here. You can see it's purple. It has a beautiful aniseed aroma. Now if you can't get Thai basil, you can use regular Italian basil here. Okay now stand back from the oil because this tends to be a little dramatic. Now after that initial crispy crackling, I just want to give these another half a minute or so to really crisp up. Okay they're looking good. And now to serve these up. Just pile them up into a bowl. I like to do a little layer and then a little layer of your basil leaves. A bit more chicken. And then a final little sprinkling of that beautiful spicy mixture. There you go guys, Taiwanese fried chicken. It's so ultimate. Just wait. That flavour is ridiculous. You don't even need a dipping sauce with this guys. Just the chicken. Preferably just yourself also, so you don't have to share. Yum, so good. If you've got any comments or questions, pop them below. And if you enjoyed the video, why not hit that subscribe button plus the little bell one. That way you'll get notified every time I release a new video. Thanks guys!