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On this episode, of Good Chef, Bad Kitchen, chef Leah Cohen of New York City's Pig & Khao shows us how to make her Thai fried chicken. Using only the tools and space available in a tiny NYC apartment, chef Leah tries to make the recipe she uses in a world class kitchen come to life. Press play to see if this delicious recipe comes together!

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Pig & Khao: http://pigandkhao.com/
Kitchen: https://instagram.com/alyssainthecity/

https://refinery29.com/en-us/tips-for-cooking-thai-fried-chicken-pig-and-khao-recipe

Leah Cohen's Thai Fried Chicken

Ingredients for the marinated chicken:
3 lbs chicken thighs, bone in skin on
4 to 5 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tbsp whole coriander seeds
1 tbsp whole white peppercorn
1/8 cup cilantro root, chopped
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp salt
1 pinch msg

For the batter:
3 cups rice flour, separated
1 tsp salt
1 tsp mushroom powder
1 cup limestone water (can sub 1 cup seltzer and 2 tsp baking soda)

For the fry:
Canola oil
3 large pandan leaves, patted dry
Crispy shallots and Thai sweet chili sauce, for garnish

Instructions

For the chicken:
1. To marinate the chicken, start by slightly scoring the chicken so the marinade can get into the meat.
2. In a mortar and pestle, pound together the garlic, coriander seed, white pepper, and cilantro root with a pinch of salt until you get a paste.
3. Mix in the remaining ingredients (fish sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, and msg). Then rub the marinade into the chicken and let sit 6 hours, or overnight, in your refrigerator.
For the batter: 1. Once the chicken is done marinating, get your coating together. In a large bowl, pour in one cup of the rice flour, salt, mushroom powder, and baking powder, if using.
2. Whisk in the limestone water or seltzer, until the batter is the consistency between a pancake and crepe batter.
3. Pour out the remaining two cups of rice flour in a pan. Coat your chicken in the wet batter, then coat in dry flour. Let sit uncovered for 30 minutes.

Final steps:
1. Heat up your oil to 300 degrees F. You want to make sure there is enough oil in the pot to cover the chicken, but not too much oil where it will overflow the pot after placing the chicken in.
2. Once the oil is heated to 300 degrees F, knot the pandan leaves together and carefully place them in the oil to flavor it.
3. Fry the chicken until cooked, approximately 6 to 8 minutes, and carefully remove the chicken from the fryer, using tongs. If you need to turn the chicken, turn the chicken away from you, not towards you, to reduce the risk of splattering.
4. Turn up the heat to 350 degrees F, and fry until crispy, 2 to 3 minutes.
5. Remove from oil and drain on a paper towel. Garnish with crispy shallots and serve with sweet chili sauce.

ABOUT SERIES
On Good Chef, Bad Kitchen, professional chefs take on the ultimate challenge: Cooking in a bare, millennial kitchen. These pros try making a world class meal with little to no resources.
Transcript
00:12okay this is like my first apartment in the city hi I'm Leah Cohen and today we
00:20are making a Thai fried chicken but before we get started please subscribe
00:24below normally you can find me a pig and cow in the Lower East Side but today I'm
00:28in someone's kitchen in the East Village wait whose kitchen is this hey it's
00:34Alyssa three things to know before you try to cook in here one I never cook I
00:38pretty much survive on takeout two I don't have many pots and pans because I
00:43just don't need them and then three I don't really have any serious cutlery
00:48or measuring cups or even bowls good luck okay my reaction when I first saw this
00:55kitchen was okay this isn't that bad this is a good prep space once I started
01:00going through the cupboards that was when I really felt thrown off damn she got
01:05nothing in here there's a lot of shoes so I'm gonna start by covering this tabletop
01:11with plastic wrap um I need to open this this is literally the hardest part of
01:21this recipe okay we got our cutting board I could see a knife though this is the
01:30only knife that I have to work with I am gonna take a butter knife and clean the
01:35cilantro root scoring the chicken this is gonna be fun obviously if you have a
01:41sharp knife this is probably easier in an ideal world the incisions will just be
01:46enough to break the flesh and then I got to figure out a mortar and pestle
01:58that's gonna break okay just a couple of cloves try to break it up pepper coriander seeds this is
02:14actually not the worst thing ever trying to convince myself that it's not salt pound away
02:22I want to break the actual cup okay figure that would happen first attempt
02:32with a mortar and pestle was an absolute fail I broke the mortar sorry I'll get you
02:37a new one we're starting over again with a ziploc bag and we're gonna use the
02:43bottle of oyster sauce so this is not the consistency of the pace that I would like
02:48but it's good enough we're just gonna add the rest of the ingredients which is
02:51oyster sauce fish sauce we're just eyeballing everything which is fine some
02:56sugar and MSG then we are going to just add our chicken and then massage it all
03:04up in there let this marinate for a couple of hours but it's better overnight
03:08all right so it's been about six hours the chickens been marinating now we're
03:12ready to make the batter so we have the rice flour baking soda and then we're gonna
03:19use just a pinch of the mushroom powder and then a little bit of salt I'm gonna
03:25grab a fork from my tool bin I love how I'm calling it a tool bin it's literally a
03:33mug with silverware all right so we're using a seltzer water instead of regular
03:39water also just to make the batter lighter okay so you're looking kind of for
03:45thinner than a pancake batter a little bit thicker than a crepe batter we're gonna
03:50pour some flour onto the sheet pan I'm using rice flour here because that's
03:54what's traditional in the Thai fried chicken also it gives it and like a
03:58crispier coating you want the coating to stick to the chicken so you're gonna
04:02let it sit for I don't know maybe like 30 minutes so it seems like this stove
04:07doesn't have a pilot light I have a lighter which hopefully I don't burn any of my
04:13fingers or my hair that was actually pretty seamless this is a pandan leaf
04:17for those of you who are not familiar with it you want to make sure that you
04:21pat it dry because that is really dangerous if you just add the wet pandan
04:25leaf that can cause fire we're heating the oil up to 300 degrees I don't have a
04:30thermometer on me so I'm gonna test it by taking some of the flour like maybe one
04:36of these like bigger pieces and then just like putting it in the pot once it hit
04:40the oil it started to bubble right away so I think we're good I'm gonna drop in
04:43the pandan leaf and then very gingerly add the chicken to the pot I'm going to
04:52use some forks to turn the chicken around because we don't have any tongue I'm a
04:57professional and I'm still a little bit scared about getting the chicken out of
05:00this pot of oil if you can't get it out and it kind of like drops then the oil
05:04could potentially splatter in your face which you don't want to mess up the
05:07moneymaker wish me luck
05:18okay yay I didn't burn my face we want to make sure that the actual fried chicken
05:24cooks all the way throughout so that's why we do it at a low temperature at
05:28first and then we crank up the heat to 350 because we want the outside to get
05:32really nice and crispy oh okay we did it I'm not gonna lie I felt really defeated
05:40initially just because there was not much for me to work with but I powered
05:45through it and I made some delicious fried chicken so I feel relieved I have a
05:50message for Alyssa girl you need a chef's knife that is our finished product the
05:55Thai fried chicken done in a random apartment in the East Village thank you
06:00so much for watching to watch more videos click here to subscribe click here
06:04I'm gonna eat my fried chicken and get on out of here
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