This is Recipe Roundup, episode 106. Earlier this month I finally had the misfortune to become sick with COVID-19. While my symptoms were nothing too alarming, there were days when my energy was extremely low. On those days, the best I could do was rub my two remaining brain cells together to watch Korean Dramas on Netflix and dream about Korean food. 

I’ve talked about gochujang on this show before. It is a sweet red fermented chili paste that is absolutely delicious and has become a staple in my house in the past 6 months. I put it on most of my meals at this point, and anytime I make chicken wings, it is the flavor that I crave. It was through this obsession that I decided to flavor my chicken salad with it. 

For this recipe you’ll need

2 cups of chopped chicken

¼ cup raisins

¼ cup chopped celery

¼ cup chopped onion

¾ – 1 cup of mayonnaise

3 tablespoons of gochujang

1 tablespoon of ginger paste

1 tablespoon of garlic paste

Black pepper and salt to taste

Chopped Cilantro or basil throughout

1. Once you have your ingredients prepped, this is an extremely easy recipe to put together – you just combine everything together in a large bowl. 
2. I personally think that raisins are best when rehydrated slightly. You can submerge them in fresh water for an hour or if you are working with a time limitation, microwave them in water for 30secs to 1 min and then let sit for 5 minutes before draining and mixing in. 
3. I also recommend mixing your dry ingredients – chicken, celery, onion, herbs and raisins – and your wet ingredients – mayo, gochujang, ginger, and garlic – together before you combine them all, simply so the flavor is more consistent throughout the entire salad. After that, mix thoroughly and enjoy the spicy sweet and creamy freshness of this chicken salad. 

Before I close out until next week, I wanted to give an update on over baked chicken wings. In my original segment, I encouraged listeners to use a rack or flip their wings halfway through baking. Since then, I have realized that you actually get the crispiest wings if you simply place the steamed wing, fattiest side up, on a foil lined baking sheet. Then just bake at 425 degrees F for 50 minutes. PERFECT EVERY TIME. You will need to pull them off of the tin foil about 2 minutes after taking them out of the oven – and some pieces might even stick a little – BUT they will be perfectly rendered and absolutely delicious from shallow frying in their own schmaltz.