---
title: 'They Spent $10 Million Perfecting This Fried Chicken... and I Stole It.'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=K4qNHkGpUk8'
video_id: 'K4qNHkGpUk8'
date: 2026-06-30
---

# They Spent $10 Million Perfecting This Fried Chicken... and I Stole It.

> Source: [They Spent $10 Million Perfecting This Fried Chicken... and I Stole It.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=K4qNHkGpUk8)

## Summary



## Transcript

Do you hear that crunch?
That crunch is about 14 months of
research and development and about 10
million dollars of investment.
>> the [ __ ] you did to this chicken.
This [ __ ] crazy.
>> Almost impossible to get into. Kyochon
in New York City is not just a place
that makes good fried chicken. They've
built one of my favorite culinary
experiences. The bucket list is their
premier menu format [music] featuring
four signature sauces, Bonchon, and two
courses of the greatest fried chicken
I've ever had. And the kicker,
everything we're about to make is 100%
gluten-free. Today, we're breaking down
the proper way to butcher a whole bird,
why the gluten-free batter is superior,
along with all their signature but dead
simple sauces and glazes. This is the
latest inductee to Stevie's Hall of
Fame.
>> [music]
>> This is the Kyochon bucket list. Now, we
need to start this a day ahead. Any good
fried chicken, no matter where in the
world it's from, it's got to be brined
first. The only way to hold up to the
aggressive frying we're going to need to
do to achieve
>> [music]
>> the perfect fried chicken. To start the
brine, I have a small little pot here,
and I have four cups of water. I'm going
to add two of those cups to the pot. To
that, we're going to add about 3 Tbsp of
kosher salt, roughly like 30 to 35 g and
10 g of sugar. Then some flavor, we're
going to add some garlic, granulated
garlic, about Tbsp, tsp of cayenne, and
a tsp of ground ginger. Whisk it all up,
and then we're going to get that onto
the stove just until it warms up enough
to dissolve the salt and the sugar.
While that dissolves, we're just going
to take the rest of that water and add
it to a big bowl. The reason I split it
cuz we need to cool the water down
before we add chicken to it. So, by only
heating up like half of it, we can pour
it into there, which will cool it down
quick, then we can add a little bit of
ice and get that down to temperature
[music]
nice and quickly. Once you You see all
the salt dissolved. Add it to the water.
[music]
A little ice in there.
That should cool down in no time. Now,
we're going to learn how to butcher this
chicken. Towel down with your biggest
cutting board. And here I have about a
4.5 lb chicken. Organic, pasture-raised,
great. Now, let it sit in the fridge
overnight to dry out. Not cuz we need
the skin to dry for crispiness, but it's
going to allow for cleaner cuts when we
butcher this. Also, much easier to
handle when it's dry. It's not slippery.
It's not leaking everywhere. Many people
butcher chickens many different ways.
How I like to do it is I start with the
legs here, right? legs are kind of open,
you know? She's got no respect. What we
want to do is lean into that. And you
can see this line of fat here. That line
is telling you where you need to cut.
So, what I'm going to do is take that
flap right there. I'm going to slice it
open.
And I'm going to just cut right along
that line. And now
that leg is kind of opened up. And then
we do the same thing over here. Put
pressure on the leg. And so, I [music]
just a nice little cut reveals it.
Barely even have to put any effort into
it. Slice here.
>> [music]
>> Now, we're going to take the legs and
we're going to pop them out of their
sockets.
Now, we can take it right here. This
This little plump piece of meat, that's
called the oyster.
>> [music]
>> So, we can start our knife cut and cut
it around this part right here to
maintain the oyster. We're just going to
kind of cut underneath.
>> [music]
>> Cut around the oyster.
It's a little nugget right there.
>> [music]
>> And then all you got to do is just
follow.
And you got a
thigh and leg.
And then the other side, same thing.
>> [music]
>> Now, sometimes people like to go for the
wing next, but I like to take the breast
off because then the wing kind of acts
as some stability. Trim off the excess
fat over here.
>> [music]
>> And so then there's a breast bone that's
running right down the middle. So, I'm
going to take my knife right to the side
of it and I'm going to sort of press
against the bone
and pull back. [music]
And I can gently go in and start to just
peel [music] back the meat from the
bone.
Once the breast bone cut is there, then
we can go ahead with our knife, cut
around.
And then we've got a nice chicken
breast. Repeat with the other side.
[music]
Really quite simple, right? And so, now
you've got the hardest thing to remove
unless you've got it at this stage,
which we're just going to cut around.
And there you go.
Cut under the armpit,
around.
>> [music]
>> Now, this you're saving for stock.
Ziploc bag ready to go. Throw the
carcass in there. But wait, there's
more. [music] The wing tips, we don't
need the wing tips. So, what I'm going
to do is I'm going to look for them,
right? And I'm going to see where they
like articulate.
>> [music]
>> Pop it out of its socket, remove it, add
it to the stock bag. Then for the wing
and the drumette,
cut in.
And you've got your drumette and your
wing.
>> [music]
>> And then sever the skin and then
dislocate the tip.
And what I find is you almost want to
cut more
into like the the leg than you do want
to kind of cut off the drumette bottom.
So, if you [music] cut the flap like
there and almost lean the wing closer
toward the ground, you're cutting closer
to the wing, almost like at an angle if
you can see. Then we got the leg, the
thigh and the drumstick. [music]
Now again, there is this line of fat
right here. That's telling you where to
cut. If you want, you can kind of feel
it, wiggle, and we should have a cut
through with no issue.
This is going to stay as is. Then for
the thigh, we're going to take the bone
out because who likes eating a bone in
fried chicken unless it's a drumstick.
[music] So again, see the fat line? The
fat lines on meat tell you where to cut.
So we just [clears throat] take our
knife and cut along that bone, open it
up, and what we can do is slice along
the bone,
get underneath it, slide your knife
under it,
and then use the edge of your knife to
almost scrape the meat back. Sharp
knives should just peel that skin back
until you get to the end, and you can
kind of just peel the bone right off.
Now that goes into the stock bag. We can
cut it in half. [music]
And you see that size? That's a perfect
size nugget for me. It's a little bit
bigger than the other one, so I'm going
to do basically thirds.
And repeat the other leg again.
And now for the chicken breast. Now you
see how the chicken is almost like a
triangle? Kind of wider here, tapers
down there. I'm going to take this, I'm
going to cut it where it tapers. Now
that's going to be one piece of chicken.
Now I'm going to take the fat piece, cut
it into [music] thirds.
Now this will go in your freezer or you
can go ahead and make stock with it
right away. Now what I found is that
whole chicken, when it's battered and
fried, will feed about three people.
[music] But say you got a fourth person
and you don't have six people that you
could just double it. You can go ahead
just get some legs, right? Come out
here, just put you up some more legs,
and then just these two pieces you've
added what? Six more pieces of chicken?
Then all we got to do, place that in our
brine.
>> [music]
>> It's going to be so good, you have no
idea. We're just going to cover it.
Place that in the fridge. 12 hours is
good, 24 hours is
And the reason for that is even after
three fries, those chicken breasts are
going to be tender and moist. And it's
only because we allow it to kind of
create time to suck in that salt and
retain it. It's the moisture required to
get [music] this through fry. So now
into the fridge. Probably the hardest
part. Actually, everything we do
tomorrow is quite simple, but technical.
So you have to pay attention. See you
tomorrow. I finally know where my
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link. Now, it's been 24 hours in the
brine. I'm just going to pull it out of
the brine, and we're just going to lay
it out on the towel. Smells amazing.
This now can chill in the fridge until
we're ready to dredge them. Now, before
we get into battering the chicken, one
of the more fun aspects of this meal is
the sauce bar that the fried chicken
bucket list comes with. I ran a food
truck. We had a hot sauce bar. I'm a
huge fan of any type of sauce bar, and
fried chicken is no exception. Four
sauces we're going to quickly run
through that Cometeer serves. The first
one's called Jun Verde. This is actually
very similar to cilantro sauce, the
sauce that we used to serve on the food
truck, and it's of course my favorite of
the sauces. Starts with tomatillos, some
garlic, and jalapeno. First thing we
need to do is preheat a stainless steel
pan on high. Once it's hot, we're going
to add in the tomatillos that have been
peeled and rinsed of their little sticky
film, few cloves of garlic, and a
jalapeno. [music] We're going to let
them toast in the pan that's dry. Just
move them around. Once they start
charring on that first side, give them a
flip.
You know they're working [music] when
they start dancing in the pan, jiggling.
Once they've charred on all sides, we
can start to just throw them into a
blender. Take a knife and just slice the
flesh of the jalapeno in, especially if
you want to kind of limit the heat. To
that we're going to add half a cup of
cilantro, quarter cup of mayonnaise,
tablespoon of lime juice.
>> [music]
>> Pinch of salt.
We're just going to blend until smooth.
Touch [snorts] more mayo. It's a little
loose. Some green onion. Listen a little
bit of honey, I think.
>> [music]
>> I hit it with a pinch of xanthan gum to
thicken it, too.
>> [snorts]
>> That's one down. Next up is the parm
pepper sauce. It's going to start with
half cup of mayo, quarter cup sour
cream, third cup Parmigiano Reggiano,
black pepper, garlic powder, about a
teaspoon, cheek of a lemon, salt. Let's
stir that together.
>> [music]
>> Pepper parm sauce done.
Then there's their ultimate honey
mustard. Half a cup of mayo. I got about
two tablespoons of my favorite spicy
brown mustard. Didn't get whole grain,
but I got old style. Two tablespoons of
that. About two tablespoons of honey,
little rice vinegar, cayenne.
That's three. [music]
Next up the gochujang barbecue sauce. In
a pan, we're going to grate one clove of
garlic.
>> [music]
>> Gochujang, a fermented chili paste.
We're going about a third cup of that.
Quarter cup of ketchup. Now remember I
said everything is gluten free. Tamari
is gluten free soy sauce. So about two
tablespoons of that.
Tablespoon of rice vinegar, a tablespoon
of honey, teaspoon of sesame oil. We're
going to stir that together. Add a touch
of dark soy sauce.
Kind of darken the color a little bit.
Kind of adjusts it from gochujang glaze
to more of a barbecue sauce. On to the
stove, and we're going to turn the heat
on, bring this up to a bubble, and we
just kind of want to caramelize it,
reduce it, allow that garlic to sort of
cook for a minute or two, take it off,
get it into a squirt bottle. And then
number four, go to Chung barbecue sauce.
There are your sauces. Every table,
every bucket of chicken, you get these
four sauces to play around with, which
is a nice touch. Now onto the dry
dredge. The interesting thing about this
recipe is the first time we fry, we
dredge it in low protein gluten-free
flour. Potato starch, rice flour, and
corn starch. Now, obviously a restaurant
wants to serve gluten-free because you
could feed as many people as possible
with no issues. We're going to go in
with one cup of rice flour. But the
added benefit of using these flowers is
actually they absorb less oil. So, what
you get in the end is a product that has
less kind of grease absorbed into it and
a lighter eating fried chicken. I had no
idea this was gluten-free until I went
with a friend who was gluten-free and
the restaurant was like, "Yeah, we got
everything. You can eat whatever you
want here." One cup of rice flour, one
cup of potato starch, half a cup of corn
starch, and they're all roughly
measured. One problem with these flowers
is because of their low protein, they
have a harder time becoming golden
brown. They will get crispy, but they
won't develop a ton of color. And Cooked
uses a a genius trick to get that color
back into the flour, but that happens in
the wet batter. Baking powder, we're
going to go a couple tablespoons, garlic
powder, couple tablespoons of onion
powder, a few [clears throat] big
pinches of salt. Now, we want to whisk
this together.
Now, I've got like a narrow glass like
this. We're going to pull out about one
cup of the starch, add it into here. Set
this off to the side. A half a cup of
cold water, and I'm going to add a half
a cup of vodka. We've used vodka before
in recipes. What it does, or any alcohol
really does, is evaporates faster than
water. Because that alcohol evaporates,
that means the starches get crispier
faster and hold their crisp longer. Now,
here's the trick. We're going to add
turmeric to the flour here. The
turmeric, believe it or not, is going to
give us that color back that we missed.
About
2 Tbsp. We're going to whisk that
together. Then what we can do is start
to slowly work in our liquid. And we're
trying to create a a loose batter.
>> [music]
>> See how it coats a spoon, but it runs?
Sort of what we're looking for. I think
that's ready to go. Now, what we're
going to do, take our chicken,
coat your chicken. Super well coated.
And now, while I'm dredging the rest of
these, I've got a pot of peanut oil.
First temperature we're going for is
anywhere between 275 and 300. And we're
not going to dip them in the batter yet.
We're going straight from this to the
fryer, then we batter, and then we
double fry. This is the technique that
creates, in my opinion, the best fried
chicken. We've overshot the temp a
little bit, so I just turned the heat
off, and the chicken is still cold, so
I'm pretty confident once I add the
chicken, we'll be right where we want to
be. I'm going to start with the bigger
pieces first. We're going to cook these
for about 5 to 6 minutes, and we're
going to take our time and do them in
batches. Corrected back down to 280, so
now I jacked the heat back up, and
that's called regulating the temp. After
about 5 minutes, you should see the
chicken starting to brown around the
edges,
but they will be pretty pale, pretty
unappetizing,
but we're prepared for that. We can take
that first batch out, and we can get
another batch in. This should go down in
about three batches.
>> [music]
>> Once you've gone through and fried all
the batches of chicken, we're going to
get them onto the wire rack, allow them
to chill on the wire rack, drain, and
relax while we prep one quick thing.
After stage one, they should look pale.
Obviously, we're not done yet. This is
now prepped, once it's chilled down a
bit, to be dipped in the batter, which
is then going to then be dropped in the
fryer, and that's when the magic starts
to come alive. For now, we need to make
one more accoutrement, and it's
something I'm almost positive you've
never had or potentially never even
heard of, and that's a scallion salad.
Got a bunch of scallions here. I'm going
to take the tops and the bottoms off,
and I'm going to segment them into
thirds. Then we're going to start to cut
down the middle,
>> [music]
>> so we get two pieces like that, and then
we can line them on top of each other,
and we're going to slice them thin.
It's really a surprising thing that cuts
through the richness of the fried
chicken you're going to eat. Got a bowl
of ice, fill it up [snorts] with water,
and we want to add them and try and get
them to curl up. Now, for the banchan,
you know, that's a harder thing to make.
They've got like a celery that's done
something to it and daikon, which is
hard to find. So, what we're going to do
is we're going to replace the cabbage
with kimchi, the daikon with uh I got
some pickled daikon and carrot from the
store, and the celery with some
cucumber. What we're going to do with
the cucumber, cut it in half, split it,
cut it into relatively big chunks, into
a bowl, salt them, and we're just going
to hit them with a little bit of soy, a
little honey,
a little sesame oil.
Stir that up, and we can let this
marinate, and we can just got like uh
these little bowls here. We're just
going to start to layer in some kimchi.
A nice pile of some daikon. This, the
cucumber, we'll put in its own bowl.
Now, what we want to do, drain the
water,
get it onto a paper towel. You see
what's happened? It's kind of gotten all
beautiful, curly, crunchy. We're going
to dress that right before service.
That's our salad. Now that all the
chicken was out of the dredge, all I did
was add the rest of the liquid I had,
the basically the full cup, and then I
started to spoon some of the extra
dredge in until I've just kind of
maximized the yield, and just kind of
calibrated it back to the same
thickness. So now that's ready to use.
Got a pan on the stove to make our
glaze. Now, the first course is the
bucket of fried chicken, plain Korean
fried chicken. The second course is your
choice of soy or gochujang glaze or
both. Now, I think we maybe have been
sauced out here. I'm going to leave the
recipe for the soy glazed version in the
recipe itself, so you can kind of choose
which one you want. We would make it the
same way as we're going to make the
gochujang, but now we're going to get
the heat back on to the oil up to 325,
and that's going to be round two of
frying. Now, while our oil heats up, we
can just build our gochujang glaze right
in a nonstick pan with couple cloves of
grated garlic, a little bit of grated
ginger, 3 Tbsp
of the gochujang, 3 Tbsp of ketchup,
3 Tbsp of honey, a Tbsp and a half of
tamari, a Tbsp of mirin, and a Tbsp of
vinegar. Turn the heat on. Start mixing
it together. It should be spicy, but
balanced, super flavorful. Right before
we're ready to serve, we'll paint it
onto the chicken.
>> [music]
>> 325 is our target temp, so we're right
around there. We can start to test our
batter. Going to throw one in. What
you'll notice is on this first fry, what
I found is they almost have this reddish
color from the turmeric.
But if all goes right, that second fry,
that color goes away.
Now I feel better about going ahead and
adding the rest.
I know it looks weird, but it resolved
itself during the test. And so I've got
faith. Now, after the second fry in the
restaurant, they hold that chicken after
it's been fried twice. And so now,
whenever somebody orders, all they do is
take that chicken, drop it in the fire
for like 2 minutes max, super duper high
heat, 375. And that's how you serve
great chicken to hundreds of people a
night, maybe a thousand, quick,
efficiently, never an issue. We've got
that salad. All we're going to do, dress
it with some soy sauce, a little rice
vinegar, a little honey, a little sesame
oil, Korean chili flake if you got them.
And you can just toss that up. Our
salad's ready to go. Look, I know it's a
lot of work. We've come so far, but you
can't give up now. This wasn't quick and
easy. This was the best, and this is
what it takes.
So we're approaching the target temp of
375. Gently drop some pieces into the
oil, maintain that 375, and we're going
to give it just 1 to 2 more minutes to
evaporate any residual moisture that's
left over in the batter or the chicken,
and to give us an incredibly crispy and
perfect end result.
And just like I told you, that red just
sort of vanishes. It's weird, I know.
>> [music]
>> You notice how dry it is? And obviously
exceptionally crispy, but the dryness I
want you to pay attention to. It's that
lack of oil absorption. There's no
grease. We can take our gochujang glaze,
and then just paint on the chicken.
If you notice, the breasts, right? I
kept the breasts really big, the thighs,
everything else pretty small because the
breasts can overcook really quick. I
want them to be much bigger than
everything else so that they survive
this cooking process. Now, just going to
start filling this guy up.
This little piece right here, it's a
little piece of the breast that fell
off. Let's see how we did.
We're there. Now we can arrange our
bonchon, our sauces, and there you have
the Coca-Duck bucket list at home.
>> [music]
>> Tender, moist, crispy, juicy, perfect.
You can see the moisture, you can see
it's tender, bite through, then you go
in for a little palate cleanser, you
know, some kimchi.
Try the honey mustard.
And even the breast, right? Cooked all
the way through, still has moisture in
it. Glistening breast meat, hard to find
in fried chicken. Now, I made this
harder than it needs to be. Whether you
want one sauce or four or a bonchon or
four or two types of chicken, maybe
three, or just regular chicken. Recipe's
going to be down in the description.
That's all that I have today. I'll see
you next time. Until then, take care of
yourself. Go [music] feed yourself.