Air Fryer Karaage (Japanese Fried Chicken)

Karaage is a crispy, garlicky, gingery type of Japanese fried chicken and is often served with a dollop of kewpie mayo and a lemon wedge. It is a common appetizer at izakayas (bars) in Japan, but can be found in all Japanese restaurants in North America. After all, who doesn’t like fried chicken?

Did you know that karaage is actually very easy to make? You can even make it in an air fryer and avoid the messiness of deep frying and waste less oil.

Karaage is actually one of the first dishes I learned how to make when I started learning how to cook Japanese food. I decided to make a healthier version of it by using the air fryer.

I’ve also made a spicy mayo sauce to go with the karaage. You can choose to make it with lime juice or yuzu extract. My personal favorite is making it with yuzu extract since it gives it a unique taste.

Ingredients

Karaage

• Chicken Thigh, boneless, skinless
• Ginger – Adds a kick
• Garlic – Adds umami
• Soy sauce – Japanese style soy sauce is a good choice for this recipe, as it tends to be traditionally brewed rather than made through a chemical process. Look for “traditionally brewed” on your soy sauce bottle. If there is any hydrolyzed protein in the ingredient statement, then it was made through chemical hydrolysis. The flavour of traditionally brewed soy sauce beats chemically-made soy sauce in my opinion.
• Sake – I used cooking sake here, which tends to have lower alcohol and higher salt content than drinking sake. It’s also cheaper.
• Black pepper
• Salt
• Baking powder – This is the key ingredient that makes it possible to have crispy air fried karaage!
• Potato Starch – I found that the best crispiness came from using potato starch instead of cornstarch. It also doesn’t taste as starchy.
• Oil Spray – You’ll need a spray can with neutral-flavoured oil in it

Spicy Mayo Sauce

• Kewpie mayo – A Japanese mayo. It tastes significantly different from North American mayo.
• Lemon/ lime / yuzu extract – Lime tastes better than lemon in this sauce. If you can find it at your local Asian supermarket, try yuzu extract or yuzu juice instead. Yuzu tastes like a cross between a mandarin orange and a lemon.
• Sriracha
• Black pepper
• Salt
• Garlic Powder – Adds umami and a toasted flavour

How to make Air Fryer Karaage

Air Frying Karaage

In a medium-sized bowl, stir minced ginger, minced garlic, soy sauce, and sake together. Mix the chicken thigh pieces in with the marinade. Let it sit in the refrigerator to marinate for at least 30 minutes.

Mix the black pepper, salt, baking powder, and potato starch in a small bowl.

Grease the air fryer basket with oil spray or brush the bottom of the basket with oil.

Coat each piece of chicken in the powder and shake off any excess before putting in the air fryer basket.

Make sure the pieces of chicken are spaced apart so that the heat can circulate around the chicken during air frying.

Spray the pieces of chicken with oil spray to coat all of the starch on the chicken.

Air fry the chicken at 350 ºF for 3 minutes. Flip the pieces of chicken and spray generously with oil spray again. Air fry the chicken at 400 ºF for 5 minutes until golden brown and crispy. Place the air-fried chicken on a paper towel-lined plate to remove excess oil.

Spicy Mayo Sauce

While you are frying the chicken, you can make the spicy mayo. In a small bowl, mix kewpie mayo, lemon / lime/ yuzu extract, sriracha, black pepper, salt and garlic powder.

The Science Behind this Recipe

The high pH of baking powder causes proteins to break down. Then, these proteins are loosened up more and can more easily participate in browning reactions on the surface of a piece of chicken. In addition, the sodium in the baking powder extracts moisture from the surface, which helps to create a crispy exterior.

When the starchy exterior of a coated piece of chicken is heated up in the air fryer, the starch molecules are cooked and go through a process called gelatinization very quickly. In lots of water and heat, when starch molecules gelatinize, they form a gel network. In this case, there is not a lot of water. A bit of water is only from the chicken thigh.

At the same time, the water evaporates quickly, leaving a hollow network of starch molecules that we perceive as crispy. The bubbling action from the baking powder also helps to create this crunchy network.

All of this happens to help create an irresistible crispy texture.