Shio Karaage Japanese Salt Fried Chicken

The most common version is seasoned with a soy-sauce-based marinade, but salt (shio) Karaage is another popular variation that highlights the savory flavor of the chicken. It’s a sublimely light and refreshing dish with garlic, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon juice, perfect for summer. There are a few tricks to ensure your chicken is packed with juicy umami and ultra-crisp, so keep reading to learn how to make the best Karaage.

Why This Recipe Works?

Using salt instead of soy sauce to season the chicken gives it a lighter color and taste that highlights the flavor of the chicken. Adding sake to the marinade provides a ton of amino acids that synergize with nucleic acids in the chicken to create umami in your mouth. Using skin-on chicken thighs ensures the chicken is juicy, and the skin fries up into a crisp crackling layer. Using potato starch to dust the chicken provides a light crispy layer that’s like coating the karaage in a potato chip. To have the juiciest chicken, I recommend single frying the Karaage. Double frying the chicken trades juiciness for a crust that stays crisp for longer.

Ingredients for Shio Karaage

Chicken - I recommend using skin-on chicken thighs for making karaage. Chicken thighs are more flavorful than breast meat, and they contain more fat which makes them more forgiving. While it’s possible to make juicy karaage using chicken breasts, the window of when it’s cooked to a safe temperature vs. being dried out and stringy is much smaller than with chicken thighs. I’ve been making karaage for years, and the only way I’ve managed to get chicken breast karaage to turn out well is to err on the side of undercooking it, which carries risks of food-borne illness. As for the skin, it does two things. The first is that it protects the chicken meat from coming into direct contact with the hot oil, which can make the surface of the chicken tough. The second benefit is that the fat renders out of the skin as it fries, making it cracklingly crisp. Garlic - I usually use ginger instead of garlic for my regular karaage, but I really like how a small amount of garlic plays with the black pepper and lemon in this recipe. If you really want to maximize the flavor of the chicken, you can skip the garlic, but I found the Karaage to be a little too one-dimensional without it. Sake - Sake is an alcoholic beverage that’s brewed from rice. As part of the brewing process, the proteins in the rice are broken down into amino acids. These amino acids are perceived as umami in your mouth. Adding sake to the marinade enhances the umami that’s in the chicken. Although the alcohol in the sake will burn off while frying the chicken, if you can’t get sake where you live, you can substitute water with a pinch of MSG. I would not recommend substituting mirin as the high sugar content will cause it to burn before the chicken is fully cooked. Salt - You could get fancy here and use an amino acid enriched salt like Mojio or a flavored salt like smoked salt, but I just used plain old table salt to keep it simple. Black pepper - The name Shio Karaage just means “salt karaage,” so pepper is not a required ingredient, but I like adding a bunch of freshly cracked black pepper to mine to add a spicy kick and its peppery aroma. Potato starch - Some recipes call for coatings like wheat flour or rice flour, but to make the lightest crispiest Karaage, I recommend using potato starch. While all starches consist of amylose and amylopectin molecules, the ratio of each and the size of the starch granules varies depending on what plant it comes from. Potato starch has a slightly higher concentration of amylopectin than corn starch, but the real difference is in the size of its granules. Potato starch averages 36 microns, while cornstarch granules are around 14 microns. Using potato starch to coat Karaage gives it its light and crispy texture. Cornstarch will work in a pinch, but the coating will be more dense and crunchy. Lemon - I like to serve Shio Karaage with a wedge of lemon to squeeze on each piece as you eat it (squeezing it on everything will make them soggy). The acidity balances out the richness of the chicken while the fresh aroma of the zest works beautifully with the garlic and pepper.

How to Make Shio Karaage

To make the Shio Karaage Marinade, grate the ginger into a medium bowl and add the sake, salt, and black pepper. Stir the mixture together until the salt is fully dissolved. To prepare the chicken, trim off any flaps of excess fat or tough connective tissue and then follow the natural partitions in the meat to cut the chicken into strips that are about one and a half inches in width. Now you want to cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces about the same size as a golf ball. Since some areas of chicken will be thinner than others, you’ll need to cut the strips at different intervals to end up with pieces of the same weight. This is important because the chicken will be balled up before deep frying it, and smaller pieces will cook a lot faster than bigger pieces. Transfer the chicken pieces into the bowl with the marinade and stir to coat each piece evenly. Cover the bowl and let the meat marinate for at least one hour. Ideally, you want to leave the chicken to marinate overnight. To fry up the Karaage, add one to two inches of oil to a heavy pot with high sides such as a Dutch oven. Of course, two inches of oil would be better, but I know how expensive frying oil is these days. Preheat the oil to 340°F (170°C), and while you’re waiting for that, line a wire rack with several layers of paper towels. When the oil is up to temperature, add the potato starch to a small bowl and roll each piece of chicken in the starch to give it an even coating. Next, use your fingers to shape the chicken into a ball with the skin on the outside, and carefully lower each piece into the oil. Continue coating the chicken and adding them until the pan is mostly full (don’t overcrowd it). I recommend adding the chicken from one side to the other, so you know what order you’ve added them. Unlike chicken seasoned with soy sauce, this Karaage won’t turn golden brown, so the color is not a good way to judge when it’s done. The chicken should take about five minutes to cook through, and you’ll want to flip them periodically once the coating sets to ensure they cook through evenly. The easiest way to tell when the chicken is done is to remove a piece and test the internal temperature with an instant-read thermometer (it should read 160°F or 71°C), but you can also cut it in half to make sure the juices are no longer pink. Transfer the chicken to the prepared rack to drain as they cook. Serve the Shio Karaage immediately with a few wedges of lemon for squeezing, accompanied by a bowl of steamed rice, Japanese Potato Salad, or Japanese Shredded Cabbage.