We’ve talked before about trends in cooking and the culinary world. Certain food items and ingredients will “trend” just like various inexplicable things will trend in pop culture. If anyone can offer an explanation why reality T.V. exists I am all ears. The fuck is wrong with people? One of the trending items in food (top food trends for 2016!!!) is Korean food and our mystery ingredient today, gochujang. Obviously the food truck thing is another “trend” with food and you can’t swing a fermented fish without hitting a food truck that has Korean food on the menu. The godfather of this trend was Roy Choi.

Roy is the founder of Kogi Trucks, a fleet of food trucks here in the L.A. area that specialize in Korean fusion food. He was the originator of the Korean style taco that is being duplicated shamelessly across the country. Roy has since established a couple of “brick and mortar” restaurants and there was also a fixed truck inside of LAX that has subsequently closed because nobody could quite figure out why they should get food from a truck that was parked inside an airline terminal. Stupid fucks don’t know what they are missing. Roy dabbled around with a cross between Korean food, street food and college cuisine. He experiments with Top Ramen and rice bowls and he’s basically fearless in the food world. If you ever get the chance visit a Kogi truck, they travel all over the greater L.A. Area.

While attending an event at LACMA (LA County Museum of Arts) one day I discovered that I needed sustenance and I wasn’t going to pay 25 dollars for a cheese platter at the LACMA restaurant so I visited a food truck. There are a small fleet of trucks stationed around LACMA that offer a variety of foods. L.A. has a massive food truck scene, there is a grilled cheese truck, the Lobstah truck that sells lobster rolls with real Maine lobster flown in daily, a Belgian waffle truck, a currywurst truck, a pho truck, basically if there is a cuisine there will be a food truck for it. I tried a truck, not a Kogi truck, that did Korean style street food. This truck had Korean chicken wings. They. Were. Fucking. Incredible. I asked the chef, yes even food truck cooks like to be called chef, what was the spicy secret ingredient that gave the wings their heat and just a little bit of funk. He told me “gochujang.” I’ve been hooked through the bag since that day.

Gochujang is a Korean condiment made from red chili peppers, fermented soy beans and glutinous rice. Slightly thicker than ketchup and spicier/funkier than sriracha, this bad ass ingredient can be used in many types of dishes. Before you start saying “But yeah right, I don’t have any Korean stores where I live in Canada, Missouri, Connecticut, Australia!” Just stop, regroup and go to motherfucking AMAZON! Holy shit, Amazon, is there anything you can’t do? You can use gochujang in a myriad of dishes, remember these bad motherfuckers? It can be used in marinades, as a replacement for ketchup, or as a spicy sauce for your grilled shrimp, mix it with some mayo and you have a Korean aioli, pretty much anything that you want to give a kick and a little bit of funk to. I have also used the same recipe listed below to make a batch of baby back ribs. Oh shit were those good.

I know, I know you’re getting hungry and you want me to shut the fuck up and get to the recipe.

Shutting the fuck up now.

Korean style spicy chicken wings.

1/2 to 3/4 cup of gochujang

2 tablespoons of dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons of soy sauce

2 tablespoons of rice vinegar

2 teaspoons of sesame oil

1 teaspoon of grated or minced ginger

1/3 cup of diced green onions

5 cloves of garlic minced.

3 pounds of chicken wings cut into “drumettes” and “flats” with the tips removed

1 teaspoon of toasted sesame seeds

1 disposable aluminum pan. Seriously. Get the lasagne pan size not the big ass turkey cooking size.

Combine the gochujang, brown sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, ginger, green onions and garlic and mix together in a bowl.

I think we need to talk about cutting up chicken for a minute. For somebody who has been cooking for as many years as I have, kitchen wounds, scars and burns are inevitable. I’ve burned the shit out of myself so many times that it barely registers any more. There is a reason why I have always had an aloe vera plant growing on my balcony. As for the cuts and scars, the hands down leader in the clubhouse for cuts is the result of cutting up chicken. It’s usually when I buy a whole chicken and I’m cutting it into pieces that causes it. There is a real technique to cutting chicken and the wrong technique will make you fucking bleed. For the wings, I bought whole wings, the kind with the two joints and the basically useless tip. A good trick to cutting up the wings is bend the chicken backwards at each joint, you’re basically going to hyperextend each chicken joint. These motherfucking chickens are dead man, stop being so damn squeamish. Once you’ve bent the joint backwards, use a VERY sharp knife and sever at the joint, do this for the top half or “drumette” and the middle part or “flat”. If you want to save the tips you can use them to make chicken stock some day, I just toss them out.

If you want to go all drumettes, you absolutely can I just happen to like the flat part also. That little bit of chicken between the two bones is the juicy shit right there.

If you notice in the marinade photo there is an all-too-familiar 1 gallon zip top freezer bag that we are going to use for marinating overnight.

Put the chicken in the freezer bag, add in the marinade, shake it up, close the zip top and refrigerate that bastard overnight. You are free to drink now.

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The final item that was on the recipe list is the disposable aluminum pan. To save you a lot of scrubbing agony and the possible loss of a baking dish I am going to pretty much insist that you use one. The pork chop recipe that I linked to earlier had a similar composition and when those pork chops were done… well, let’s just say I have one less baking dish in my cupboard now. The reason why I mentioned the medium size pan is because we are going to finish the wings under the broiler for a minute or two to give them a glaze and get them browned, this is also when the wings get to develop their stickiness.

Oh yeah, the noodle dish in the featured image. My brother makes this dish by basically creating his own witches brew of a teriyaki sauce. This involves a couple of bottles of soy sauce, some ginger, some pineapple juice, brown sugar and some garlic and whatever the fuck, then he reduces it all down for a good hour or two. Feel free to buy a bottle of pre-made teriyaki sauce if you don’t make your own. The noodles are “straight cut” flat rice noodles available in your ethnic food section at the grocery store, soak the noodles in water to rehydrate them, toss in the teriyaki sauce, some fresh ginger, minced garlic and diced green onion, he also adds some frozen peas to the mixture and then cook in a sauce pan until the peas are cooked through and everything is working together. I didn’t give a formal recipe because I didn’t make it but if you are interested in the homemade teriyaki sauce, drop me a comment and I’ll get it for you.

Remove the marinating wings from the refrigerator and let them get near to room  temperature. Preheat the oven to 350. Dump the contents of the freezer bag into your disposable pan and put in the oven for 20 minutes. Turn the oven temp up to 450 and cook for another 20 minutes. Meanwhile don’t forget to toast your sesame seeds for garnishing. When the chicken has cooked, remove the pan carefully from the oven. Use two pot holders if necessary, remember them kitchen burns I talked about earlier? One of the nastiest burns I ever got involved removing a turkey from the oven that was cooking in one of the big ass turkey pans. These things are flimsier than they look and when the pan started to sag in the middle my first instinct was to pull my hands apart to keep the pan from sagging and my right hand hit the inside oven wall with maximum contact. So, yeah that was pretty fucked.

Anyway, turn your oven temp up to broil after you’ve removed the pan from the oven and we will finish the wings under the broiler for just a minute or two. We want to give these a good bronzing but we don’t want to burn them. Always stay close to the oven when you are broiling.

Remove the chicken from under the broiler and sprinkle your freshly toasted sesame seeds over the top, this is done for flavor as well as for appearance. Holy fucking shit! I’m learning to plate! Would you look at that.

So referring back to the main image, use some tongs to get yourself some wings from the pan, add your noodle dish to the plate, grab a few beers, Koreans love beer and crack open that bottle of Soju. We’re gonna throw the fuck down!.

Despite the fact that I’ve never had any Korean in me (I would be an absolute liar if I tried to say the opposite of that statement) I love the cuisine dearly. Kalbi ribs, kimchi, Korean barbecue? Fucking love it. The Koreans love the heat and they love the funk and I’m a big fan of both. Not to mention that I find their women irresistible although most Korean men would say I’m insane to get involved with them.

This is a nice introductory recipe to get you involved with Korean food. Do take my advice and use the same recipe for baby backs. Cook the ribs covered in a 300 oven for about 2 1/2 hours, uncover, increase the heat to 450 and cook for about 45 minutes more. So very fucking good.

As the Koreans say: 빌어 먹을 파티를 할 수 있습니다

Or “Let’s fucking party!”

Geonbae!