Friday Friend Recipe #87 -- Korean Chicken

 

 

 

 

 

Friday Friend Recipe #87: Korean Chicken

Making my way thru my Friday Friend Cookbook, one recipe at a time.

What is the Friday Friend cookbook: I have about 50 of my closest friends and family on an e-mail forum which I called the Friday Friends (from all over the county). At first, most of them didn't know each other, (they knew me) but over the past 15 years, we've answered and shared silly--and serious---questions, exchanged Secret Santa Christmas gifts, had a dieting contest in which we paid a $1 a week and that money went to a scholarship fund for a Friday Friends son's memorial scholarship, and we went on a great vacation for my 52 birthday.

 

AND, we contributed recipes for a cookbook.

 

I was looking at the cookbook the other night and I said, "I should make every recipe in here for my blog."
The Handyman--who knows me better than I know myself (this happened to be a question on the Friday Friend forum once---does your spouse/partner know you better than you know yourself?)--said,  "you'll never, EVER do that."
WELL---maybe I'll show him!  Maybe I will.

 

Which brings me to this... recipe #87

 

My Mom's

Korean Chicken

 

 

 

 

It might looked burnt.  But it's not burnt.  It's just highly crispy.

(I was trusting the Handyman with the grill/recipe.)

It tastes great tho.  It's a great marinade that my mom used the whole time we were growing up.

That's what this recipe is---just a marinade.

When I was little my mom and the neighbor would share the marinade.

This was in the 1960's/70's before we knew much about food borne illness, etc.

My mom would make the marinade and the chicken would have to sit for 24 hours in it.  So, she'd call the neighbor Joyce in the morning and say "I'm making Korean Chicken tonight if you want to come get the marinade when I'm done.  "  And after supper, Joyce would come get the big Tupperware container of marinade and take it home and use it. 

Vica-Versa when Joyce made it.

It's a wonder we're still alive.  I mean with that and the old coffee can full of bacon grease at my grandma's house! 

 

 

Korean Chicken

4 lbs chicken cut up into pieces

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup ketchup

1/4 cup sugar

2 T. oil

1/4 t. pepper

1 t. hot sauce (like Tabasco)

Dash--garlic salt, onion salt and accent

Combine all the marinade ingredients and add the chicken. Marinate for at least 4 hours, or even overnight. Bake, uncovered at 325 for 1 1/2 hours

 

 

My mom usually baked the chicken in the oven and it would look like this:

(there was no skin on this. AND there is white rice there, you just can't see it on the white plate)

 

 

 

I made and blogged about this recipe in Sept. 2008.

See that post here.

 

The funny thing is--I said I was going to make every recipe in the FF cookbook way back then:

It's only a marinade really, but when I was young it was always the "dish", the "dinner" (or supper, depending on where you're from) and we all came running when my mom was making it.... just smelling it cooking now brings back all kinds of great memories.

And it's the simplist thing in the world.
For some reason, we never had the marinade on any other type of meat. Chicken was it. It was "Korean Chicken", never chicken with the Korean (which I'm sure it isn't) marinade.
To be honest, I haven't made this in years, but I plan on making every recipe in the "Friday Friend" cookbook, and my mom sent this one in and when I saw it, it brought me back to my childhood... which was oh so long ago.
This dish is pretty much a 'comfort food' for me. We always had it with steaming hot white rice and fresh peas, which is what you see me doing here.

 

TOO FUNNY!  I gave up on the white rice and peas I guess.

Here is a photo of me and the Handyman and my mom and dad---not at a Korean restaurant, but a Chinese restaurant about 10 years ago.

It's my favorite Chinese restaurant in the whole world -- it still has the big red velvet booths, as it did when I was a kid.



That will be my mom's story for this time.

Sharing marinade for chicken!

This will be her 12th appearance in the Friday Friend Countdown, you can see all twelve of her recipes here.

 

 

I had a backyard bbq in Sept and invited a few friends over.

It was a Friday Friend Cookbook menu.

Sausage Stars

Korean Chicken

Broccoli Salad

and other non-FF cookbook stuff like fruit and asparagus.

I LOVE that they are willing to be my Guinea Pigs!

Thanks friends!!

 

I make them eat out in the middle of the yard.

I just like to.

 

 

 

And that is number 87!