Asian Archives - Spice Up Your Life

Korean chicken is a spicy, delicious dish, perfect for stuffing into fresh bao and topped with cilantro and sesame seeds.

A lot of people took time during their quarantine to learn to make fresh bread. I don’t know how many Pinterest posts I saw where people proudly showed off their sourdough starters.

Rather than tackle that particular challenge, I decided to try my hand at some Asian dishes instead.

As a lifelong Kansan, I haven’t had a lot exposure to different cultures’ cuisines, so I decided to see if I could create some of those flavors myself. It was fun to explore some areas of the grocery store I don’t normally even visit.

Last week, I shared my experience with making steamed buns, bao, for the first time, and I promised to tell you how to make the chicken recipe I made to go with it. (If you missed that one, check out my website at spiceupkitchen.net to find it.)

Ironically, while I spent all kinds of time making my bao from scratch, I simplified the recipe for the chicken quite a bit, so even if you don’t have time to make steamed buns, I highly recommend trying this recipe out and serving it alongside some rice or maybe even over some Asian noodles.

This comes from the blog “Kitchen Sanctuary” by Nicky Corbishley. You can find the original post at https://www.kitchensanctuary.com/korean-chicken-bao/. I switched out a few ingredients—opting to use popcorn chicken instead of breading my own and substituting miso and sambal oelek for gochujang paste, which wasn’t available at my local grocery store. I also added extra garlic.

Korean Chicken

Korean chicken is a spicy, delicious dish, perfect for stuffing into fresh bao and topped with cilantro and sesame seeds.

Course Main Course

Cuisine Korean

Keyword Asian, chicken, garlic, ginger, honey, Korean, miso paste, sambal oelek, spicy

Ingredients

25 ounces frozen popcorn chicken
1 tablespoon miso paste
1 tablespoon sambal oelek
2 tablespoons honey
4 tablespoons brown sugar
4 tablespoons soy sauce
4 to 6 cloves garlic minced
1 tablespoon canola or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 teaspoons ginger
fresh cilantro for serving
white and/or black sesame seeds for serving

Instructions

Fry or bake the popcorn chicken according to package instructions. While the chicken cooks add the miso, sambal oelek, honey, brown sugar, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, canola oil and sesame oil in a saucepan, and stir to combine. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for about five minutes, until it thickens.
Add the chicken and sauce to a bowl and stir to coat the chicken. Serve the chicken inside bao or over rice or Asian pasta. Top with cilantro and sesame seeds.

This had a great kick to it, spice wise. If you’re not into spicy stuff, you might tone down the sambal oelek a bit and opt for a bit more miso instead, but I highly recommend giving this a try. It has more of a slow, sweet burn to it rather than one that smacks you in the face.

We ate ours in bao, obviously, and the puffed, simple bread was the perfect vehicle for the Korean chicken.

I don’t think I’ll be making bao all of the time, thanks to how time consuming it is, but this chicken will definitely go in the regular rotation.

If I’m going to completely master Asian cooking, I have quite a few more dishes—and countries—to explore. It might have been easier to stick with sourdough.

This piece first appeared in print on Oct. 7, 2021.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Bao are steamed buns, originally from China, that are perfect to stuff with any of your favorite fillings.

There are so many specialty kitchen items that I refuse to buy.

It’s not that I don’t see the convenience factor in owning a cherry pitter or a banana slicer for the few times a year I need them, but I just don’t have the room to store them.

That was how I felt about owning a bamboo steamer. Sure, there were recipes I would love to try that required one, but I just couldn’t justify owning (and storing) one.

But then I tried bao.

Bao (pronounced “bow,” as in rhymes with “cow) are Chinese steamed buns. According to the “A Dumpling Thing” blog, they’ve been around for centuries, and while many people call them bao buns, the word bao translates to “bun” already (much like the word “ramen” means “noodles”), so you can just say bao.

Traditionally, bao is served with pork dishes, but today, there are tons of fillings put into these soft, light buns that are folded in half, kind of like a taco, ready for pretty much anything to go inside.

I will warn you that the bao process is time consuming—just like making any fresh bread—but it’s really fun to see them emerge from your steamer, knowing you accomplished something new.

This week’s recipe is going to come at you in a two-parter. This week, I’m going to tell you how I made bao. Next week, I’ll give you a great recipe for the filling I used.

The original recipe for both parts (if you don’t want to wait), can be found on the blog “Kitchen Sanctuary” by Nicky Corbishley. You can find her post at https://www.kitchensanctuary.com/korean-chicken-bao. I clarified some of the directions below, based on what worked for me.

Bao (Steamed Buns)

Bao are steamed buns, originally from China, that are perfect to stuff with any of your favorite fillings.

Course Main Course

Cuisine Chinese

Keyword Asian, bamboo steamer, bao, Korean, steamed buns

Ingredients

3 3/4 cups flour plus more for kneading
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons instant yeast
3 tablespoons milk
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons warm water
3 tablespoons butter melted
1 tablespoon olive oil

Instructions

Combine the flour, sugar, salt and yeast in a mixing bowl.
In another small bowl, add the milk, water and butter, stirring until everything is well combined.
Stir the liquids into the flour mixture until the dough starts to come together, then turn the dough out onto a floured countertop and knead for about 10 minutes. (Or use a stand mixer with a dough hook.)
Spray a bowl with cooking spray and place the dough in it, covering with plastic wrap or a damp towel, letting it rise for about 90 minutes or until the dough doubles in size.
Once it is doubled, dump it out onto a floured countertop again, knead it briefly, and split it into 20 even balls.
Cut some parchment paper into rectangles—about 2.5 by 3.5 inches—one for each ball, and roll the balls out into an oval shape about the same dimensions as the piece of parchment.
Once the dough is rolled out, brush each oval with the olive oil.
Place a chopstick or bamboo skewer in the middle of each oval (this will leave a little bit of an empty spot in the dough when you slide it out) and fold it over.
Leaving the dough on the parchment, position them into the trays of a bamboo steamer, covering each section with plastic wrap or a damp towel, and letting them rise for an hour.
To steam the buns, boil a few inches of water in a skillet that is large enough to fit your bamboo steamer. You want just enough water that it will come up on the sides of the steamer but not actually touch the buns in the bottom section.
Once the water is boiling, place the steamer basket in the pan and steam the buns for 10 minutes.
Carefully remove the steamer basket and serve the bao immediately with your favorite fillings.

These were delicious fresh. They’re a very neutral-tasting bread, so they don’t compete with whatever filling you decide to put inside. They’re also a great texture—light and fluffy. Honestly, you just have to try them to really understand them.

For reheating, I’d recommend wrapping them in a damp paper towel and warming them in the microwave. Otherwise, they get kind of tough.

And now that I own a bamboo steamer (that I luckily found at our local second-hand shop), I can make bao whenever I have the time and patience to do so.

I still don’t know where I’m going to store the thing, but I figure that’s a problem for another time. Right now, I have some steamed buns to eat.

This piece first appeared in print on Sept. 30, 2021.