Crunchy Chicken Kara-age Buns with Spicy Mayo and Cucumber Pickle

Ok, this is some proper junk food – fried chicken in a bun. Still think Japanese food is all about purity? Get to know Japan, even just a little, and you will soon realise that they like to fry chicken just like the rest of us.

Makes 12 buns

Ingredients

• 3 chicken thighs, skinless and boneless,
• potato starch, for coating
• 1 litre rapeseed oil, for deep-frying

For the chicken kara-mara marinade

• 1 tablespoon curry power
• 1 tablespoon cornflour
• 1 tablespoon plain flour
• 1½ teaspoons fine salt
• 1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
• 1 tablespoon garlic purée
• 1 tablespoon ginger purée

For the buns

• 325g bread flour
• 15g milk powder
• 2g baking powder
• ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
• 30g caster sugar
• 20g fresh yeast
• 190ml lukewarm water
• 35g lard, melted until liquid, or light olive oil

For the spicy mayo

• 200g Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise
• 80g sriracha sauce
• juice of 1 lime

To serve

• iceberg lettuce
• green chillies, sliced
• cucumber pickles, optional

Method

First make the chicken kara-mara marinade by mixing all the ingredients together. Cut each chicken thigh into 4 and rub well with the marinade. Leave for 24 hours, or at the very least, give it a couple of hours.

To make the buns, mix 50ml of warm water with the yeast. Allow the yeast to soften for 3–4 minutes, then whisk in another 140ml of warm water.

Meanwhile, combine the flour, milk powder, baking powder, salt and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and use clean dry hands to mix well. With the dough hook attached, set the mixer on a medium speed. Slowly pour the yeast and warm water mixture into the dry mix and mix to combine fully. Ramp up the speed a little and slowly pour in the lard (or light olive oil, which will still give you a pretty good result).

If the mix looks a little too wet – like, if you pick it up and it’s just pure goo – then mix in a little more flour; if it’s too dry then drizzle in some more water. Once it’s looking as it should, slow the mixer back down to a medium speed and let it keep on mixing for 20 minutes.

Lightly grease a stainless steel bowl and tip your well-worked dough in, cover with clingfilm and sit the bowl in a nice warm place to double in size, AKA – grow or rise. Once your dough has doubled, knock it back, or, to put it simply, give it a punch and knock the air out of it. Work it back into a ball, then stretch it out into a long, snake-like shape (more python than green tree snake).

Now, you need to divide the snake up into 30g chunks; use a knife that is crappy and not really loved anymore. Work fast, or the dough will start to rise yet again and we don’t want that just yet.

Next, we are going to roll these chunks into balls. Press the palm of your hand down, firmly, onto one of the chunks, and move it around anticlockwise allowing it to form a ball as you work it. Put the balls onto a deep tray lined with baking parchment.

Once you have finished rolling, you can either freeze your balls until you need them or carry on with the final stages of the process. If you have chosen to freeze them and want to carry on, then simply defrost and crack on with the next instruction. (This recipe makes 20 buns, so you can freeze 8 to use later anyway.)

Position the buns in a warm place, lightly covered with clingfilm, making sure the film isn’t touching the buns (putting them in a lipped, deep tray is best). Once the buns have doubled in size and look light and fluffy, they are ready to be steamed once you’ve assembled all the other components.

Make the mayo by mixing the ingredients together well. Set aside.

Heat the oil in your fryer to 180°C/350°F. Wipe the majority of the marinade from the chicken then coat well in the potato starch. Rub it in really well, adding more potato starch as required. When you think you’ve given it enough, massage it again; there will be a few damp spots and we want to make sure each and every part of the chicken is rubbed with plenty of starch.

Carefully drop the chicken pieces into the hot oil and deep-fry for 4–5 minutes – the thickness of your chicken thighs will determine if it’s more or less. Remove and drain well on a perforated tray or wire rack placed over a baking tray. Fry in batches if necessary.

While the chicken is draining, steam the buns for 10 minutes.

I always torch the exterior of my buns with a blowtorch (little wonder there’s no hair left on ’em!). This makes them taste toasty and firms them up a little bit – optional but preferable.

Cut your buns through the middle, add a big squirt of the spicy mayo, some iceberg lettuce and sliced green chillies, top with a crunchy chunk of chicken kara-age, then give another squirt of the spicy mayo. Top it off with some more chillies if you’re hungover and need your ass kicked for being so stoopid! I serve pickled cucumbers on the side as they make a good palate cleanser (and I have a pickle fetish). Shove them in the bun, whatever you fancy, they just fit well.