korean american Archives

Roasted Chicken & Croutons with Fish-Sauce Butter-Sheet Pan Magic

By threejamigos | March 9, 2023 | Comments 0 Comment

I couldn’t help but tweak Eric Kim’s Roasted Chicken with Fish-Sauce Butter title. I added Croutons to the title because… lets be real, the croutons are the star of this dish. It reminds me of Roti Roti, a food truck fixture in the Bay Area. A simple winning formula of chickens roasting on a spit, dripping all that deliciousness onto a bed of potatoes below it. Well, that’s this dish but with bread and your own oven.

First, roast chicken thighs on a sheet pan (the operative words for an easy meal) in a 450-degree oven. This gives you crispy skin chicken and a pool of deliciousness aka SCHMALTZ on the pan. Then toss flakes (yes flakes, more on that later) of bread onto the pan and smoosh it around so it soaks up the chicken fat. Shove it back into the oven, and fifteen minutes later those bread flakes have morphed into golden, crunchy, umami bombs.

It’s Soooo Good

I divide the dish evenly between me and the hubsters, he gets the chicken, I get the croutons, yep, 50-50 all the way.

Let’s talk flakes. You can use any bread you like, sourdough, milk bread, or my favorite, ciabatta. The key is to tear the bread so you get shards or flakes. Cubes don’t cut it for this dish, not enough surface area. Try to tear or split the bread to form flakes for ultimate crispness.

The rest is easy-peasy. Place chicken on a sheet pan, and season with salt and pepper. Go easy with the salt as the fish sauce has salt. Drizzle olive oil on the chicken and flip each piece around to coat each piece. Roast for approximately 25 minutes. I prefer bigger pieces of chicken so the skin crisps without drying out the chicken. Pull the chicken out, there should be a nice puddle of schmaltz in the pan. Add the croutons to the pan and toss the bread in the chicken fat. Slide the pan back into the oven to crisp the croutons and finish the chicken. If the chicken is cooked through before the croutons, pull them out and continue to bake the croutons.

Meanwhile…

While the chicken and croutons are roasting, make the Fish-Sauce Butter. The sauce is genius, easy to make, and delish with just four ingredients, fish sauce (I use 3 Crab Vietnamese Fish Sauce), lemon juice, brown sugar, and BUTTER. Reduce the first 3 ingredients to a syrupy consistency. When the surface of the sauce is covered with bubbles, turn the heat off and add the chunk of COLD butter to the pan and swirl to create an emulsion.

Leave the chicken and croutons in the pan, drizzle some of the sauce on the chicken and croutons, garnish with cilantro and green onions, and bring the pan to the table. So easy. Serve the remaining sauce on the side. If you want to be fancy, transfer chicken and croutons to a serving platter.

Accompaniments? Rice, double carb, is always yummy, or I like serving it with mashed cauliflower. Another winner from Eric Kim. Sheet pan magic happening here.

Roasted Chicken and Croutons with Fish-Sauce Butter

From Eric Kim via NYTCooking, roasted chicken thighs, toasty croutons, and a scrumptious, quick sauce made with Vietnamese Fish Sauce, brown sugar, lemon, and butter. The perfect weekday meal.

Course dinner, Main Course

Cuisine Asian-American

Keyword brown butter, Chicken thighs, croutons, fish sauce, oven-baked

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 35

Servings 2 servings

Ingredients

4 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs (about 2 pounds)
Kosher salt such as Diamond Crystal and black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
¾ pound bread crusts removed, bread torn into bite-size pieces about 4 cups;
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons COLD unsalted butter kept in one piece
Cilantro leaves with tender stems for serving
scallions or chives, chopped garnish for serving

Instructions

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels and season lightly with salt and pepper. (The fish-sauce butter is plenty salty, so don’t overdo the salt here.)
Arrange the chicken skin-side up on a sheet pan and drizzle the oil over the chicken skin, coating it evenly.
Roast until the chicken is light gold and the sheet pan is a pool of hot, rendered chicken fat, SCHMALTZ, about 20-25 minutes.
Take the sheet pan out of the oven, scatter the bread around the chicken. Using tongs toss gently to coat in the chicken fat.
Place the pan back in the oven and roast until the chicken is golden, crispy and sizzling (you’ll hear it), about 15 minutes.
While the chicken roasts, combine the brown sugar, fish sauce and lemon juice in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cook, occasionally swirling the pan or stirring the sauce with a wooden spoon, until it bubbling vigorously and the mixture has reduced by about half, 2 to 3 minutes.
Turn off the heat and add the butter, constantly swirling the pan or stirring with a wooden spoon, until all of the butter has melted and incorporated into the fish sauce mixture. It should be a heavy syrup consistency.
To serve, scatter the cilantro and scallions or chives over the chicken and croutons. Spoon some of the fish-sauce butter over each chicken thigh, reserving some to add to each plate for dipping the chicken and croutons while eating, so yummy.

Notes

Roasting chicken thighs in a hot oven is a hands-off way to achieve two of life’s greatest pleasures: crispy skin and golden schmaltz. And you want that chicken fat because it will crisp hand-torn bread into croutons. A bold but balanced fish-sauce butter that you whip up on the stovetop while the rest of the meal takes care of itself in the oven, takes this over the top. Be sure to start with cold butter; the gradual melting of the fat helps thicken the sauce without breaking it.
After making this dish...go get his cookbook, Korean American, another winner.

Chewy Black Sesame Rice Cake #CakeforTimmy

By threejamigos | January 24, 2023 | Comments 1 comment

I first made Eric Kim’s Chewy Black Sesame Mochi Cake after a “Bake-a-long” with him, a perk for purchasing his book, Korean American. I was on a “mochi-bender”, if a recipe called for sweet or glutinous rice, I made it. His cake is not only made with mochi, it has black sesame seeds. I LOVE sesame seeds in any form, game on.

Bake-A-long

For those of you who #1 Have read this far down, #2 Pretty darn observant…yes, the Bake-A-Long was quite a while ago. While I loved the sesame flavor and texture of the cake, not gonna lie, the cake was pretty sweet. Eric seems to have a pretty high sugar barometer. I made a mental note to file it away in my brain to try again with a smidge less sugar.

52 Reasons To Try It Again

For all the evils of social media (I say this with a half chuckle) the best thing about it has been finding my peeps. Finding folks with similar interests that I would never in a million years have connected with if not for Facebook or Instagram. A virtual community that shares a common interest. Groups like Food52’s Cookbook Club on Facebook (yep, you need to use FB) where folks like you and I can share recipes, reviews, and kitchen adventures.

Each month features a new (or old) cookbook, which, if you are like me, a cookbook addict, probably have or are in the process of getting. It gives me that little shove to open up that cookbook and try it. It’s also a great resource for tips and reviews for many of the recipes.

This month the selected cookbook is Korean American by Eric Kim. Which reminded me that I haven’t made anything from it in a while. Time to tweak that Chewy Black Sesame Rice Cake again.

Oops, I Did It Again. But as Muffins

I decreased the amount of sugar in the recipe and made muffins instead of a cake. Kinda like having my own personal dessert.

Sweet or glutinous rice flour is not to be confused with rice flour. Sweet rice is much stickier than rice flour. They are not interchangeable. Koda Farms sweet rice is known as Mochiko and is pretty easy to find especially at Asian grocery stores.

Black sesame seeds can be found at most grocery stores in the spice section. Asian grocery stores will also carry sesame seeds in larger quantities and not quite as expensive. You

To reduce the sweetness cut sugar by 1/4 to 1/2 cup. I cut it by 1/2 and it was still sweet enough for my taste. You may have to play with a little. The time between making the original recipe (full sugar load) and when I made the muffins with half sugar taxes my memory as to whether the texture was different

The batter is fairly runny and pourable. Very doable as a cake or muffins. Shorten baking time to 20-25 minutes if making muffins.

Looking for something just a little different, gluten-free, and delicious, look no more, it’s right here.

Chewy Black Sesame Rice Cake

A delicious, dense, chewy, sesame flavored cake from Eric Kim

Course Dessert

Cuisine Asian-American

Keyword Black Sesame Seed, cake, chewy, ERic KIm, Mochi

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 1

Equipment

1 9 inch cake pan or
1 12-cup std muffin pan

Ingredients

Cooking spray or butter and flour with plain rice flour

Eggs and Tings'

2 large eggs
1 cup sugar (it's pretty sweet, I use 1/2 cup)
¼ cup honey mild
¾ teaspoon kosher salt

The Wet Stuff

1 cup whole milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter melted
1 tablespoon vanilla extract yes, 1 TABLESPOON
½ teaspoon toasted sesame oil

The Crunch

4 tablespoons toasted black sesame seeds divided equally in half

The Dry Stuff

1 teaspoon baking powder
8 ounces (227g) glutinous rice flour aka mochiko or sweet rice flour NOT plain rice flour

The Finish

Powdered sugar for serving

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Mist an 8-inch round cake pan with cooking spray or buttered and dusted with rice flour.
In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, honey, and salt until fluffy and pale yellow, about 2 minutes. Whisk in the milk, vanilla, melted butter, and sesame oil until combined. Ain't gonna lie, I use my mixer on medium speed.
Using a mortar and pestle (or a coffee/spice grinder), pulverize 2 tablespoons of the black sesame seeds into a rough powder. It should smell very fragrant. Add this sesame powder, along with the remaining 2 tablespoons of whole black sesame seeds, to the bowl with the egg mixture, followed by the baking powder and rice flour. Whisk to combine, then carefully pour the batter into the greased cake pan. This part you can do by hand or machine.
Bake until the top is nicely browned and cracked slightly (this is a good sign), 50 to 60 minutes. You can also insert a chopstick or toothpick into the center of the cake, and if it comes out clean, then it’s done.
For muffins, fill a 12-cup muffin tin that has been buttered to 7/8 full. Bake for approximately 25 minutes.
Cool completely before dusting with the powdered sugar and slicing into wedges to serve. The cake will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.