Opinion – Marcão’s Recipes: Korean ‘Fire Chicken’ is a spicy snack to go with beer

Korean culture has been in vogue for a few years now, thanks to music, cinema and, not least, the country’s food. Two things stand out in the Korean way of looking at food: the pepper and the drink to relieve the pepper.

Koreans love to drink and eat spicy things.

So today’s recipe is a Korean bar snack. The buldak, an expression that literally means “fire chicken” – then you can already imagine what to expect from this range.

Reproducing Korean cuisine can be tricky because of the ingredients. Much of the recipe is based on prepared foods and condiments, traditionally prepared at home and, today, more commonly found in the industrial version.

In São Paulo, where the Korean community is large, there are markets where you can buy these ingredients – especially in the neighborhoods of Bom Retiro, Aclimação and Liberdade.

The “fire” in the buldak comes from something called gochujang: fermented soybean paste, chili peppers and various other briquettes. In this recipe, I experimented with miso and cayenne pepper. It works, but it’s a workaround. If you can buy real gochujang, do it.

In addition to the miso and pepper, I used honey, garlic and hot paprika – this goes in to intensify the characteristic red color of gochujang. You can also use sweet paprika, depending on your taste for pepper. There’s no point in suffering with something too spicy just to play at being authentic.

Another very peculiar ingredient is tteok, a kind of rice dough with a firm and elastic consistency. Also found in Korean grocery stores, there is no similar that can yield an improvisation.

In case you don’t get the tteok, you can just omit it. Or add boiled green corn – it’s a reasonably common extra for the buldak in bars in Bom Retiro.

The version of the flaming chicken that follows also has gratin mozzarella. It’s chijeu buldak, or, in common Americanism, cheese buldak.

Important: this recipe does not use salt because miso, soy sauce and gochujang have a very high sodium content.

The animal is spicy, so don’t forget to put some beers to cool before cooking.

CHEESE BULDAK

Yield: 2 servings

Difficulty: medium

Ingredients:

For the pepper paste

50 g of miso

1 crushed garlic clove

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons hot or sweet paprika

2 tablespoons of honey or glucose syrup

for the chicken

200 g boneless and skinless drumstick, in cubes or strips

2 tablespoons gochujang or chili paste

3 crushed garlic cloves

½ teaspoon (coffee) black pepper

1 tablespoon shoyu

1 teaspoon(s) grated ginger

1 tablespoon glucose syrup or sugar

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

½ cup boiling water

50 g of sliced ​​tteok (or ½ can of boiled and drained corn)

100 g of mozzarella

Green onion to taste

Way of doing

1. If making the chili paste, mix the ingredients the day before and store in the fridge.

2. Heat the oven to maximum temperature (use the grill function if possible).

3. Mix gochujang (or chili paste), garlic, black pepper, soy sauce, ginger, glucose and half the oil. Add the chicken, mix well and let it set for an hour or two.

4. Heat two pans, one filled with water and the other with the remaining oil.

5. Brown the chicken pieces in the oil. Dilute the marinade in hot water and add it to the chicken.

6. In the other pan, cook the tteok until tender. Drain and mix with the chicken (or use boiled corn).

7. In a refractory, accommodate the chicken with tteok and cover with cheese. Take it to the oven to gratin. Sprinkle chives before serving.