The Crispy, Crunchy, Complicated History of Fried Chicken in Asia
Melissa da CostaFrom a Tang Dynasty cooking technique to the streets of Seoul, here's how Asia made fried chicken its own.
When most people think of fried chicken, they think of the American South. And they're not wrong; Southern fried chicken, developed and perfected by enslaved Africans and their descendants, is one of the great culinary contributions in history. But the story of fried chicken in Asia is older, richer, and more intertwined than most people realise.
Asia didn't simply adopt Western fried chicken. It transformed it, reinvented it, and in several cases developed its own parallel traditions entirely.
The result is a family of dishes β Japanese karaage, Korean chimaek, Taiwanese popcorn chicken, Cantonese crispy chicken β each with its own history, its own technique, and its own cultural meaning. And the story of how they came to be is genuinely fascinating.
A common ancestor in China
To understand Asian fried chicken, it helps to start not with chicken at all, but with a Chinese cooking technique influential enough that it crossed the sea to Japan and left its name behind.
The method β deep-frying small pieces of food coated in starch β is generally traced to China, where it was applied to ingredients like tofu, producing crispy fried beancurd for vegetarian meals. The technique is said to have reached Japan in stages: first during the Nara period through envoys to Tang China, and more formally during the Edo period (1600β1868) as part of fucha cuisine, a style of Chinese Buddhist temple cooking brought over by Chinese monks.
The name reflects that lineage. Kara (ε) can mean Tang Dynasty or China, and age (ζγ) means fried β karaage, loosely "Tang frying" or "Chinese frying." (The frying method came first; as later sections show, the chicken dish most people picture today is a much more recent and distinctly Japanese creation.)
Japan: How karaage became a national obsession
For most of Japanese culinary history, meat eating was heavily restricted. Buddhism, introduced in the 6th century, discouraged the consumption of land animals, and for long stretches β particularly from the 7th to the 19th century β eating beef, pork, and chicken was either prohibited or deeply stigmatised. The Japanese diet was largely pescatarian by tradition and by law.
This changed with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which encouraged Western dietary habits as part of Japan's modernisation. Meat eating became not just permitted but fashionable, and chicken gradually entered the mainstream diet. Karaage was adapted to chicken somewhere in this period of culinary opening; the earliest clear records of it on restaurant menus date to the 1930s.
The real explosion came after World War II. As Japan rebuilt from severe food shortages, chicken β relatively inexpensive and easy to keep β became an important protein source, and karaage spread from restaurant menus into home kitchens across the country. Oita Prefecture, and the town of Nakatsu in particular, became especially associated with the dish and remains proud of that heritage today.
What makes karaage distinctive is what the Japanese did with it. Rather than the thick seasoned batter of Western fried chicken, karaage starts by marinating the chicken β usually thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces β in soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and sake, then coating it in potato starch or a flour-starch blend before frying. The result is a light, shatteringly crispy exterior giving way to intensely flavoured, juicy meat, classically finished with a squeeze of lemon. It's a technique tuned entirely to Japanese tastes.
Today karaage is everywhere in Japan β at izakayas, convenience stores, school lunches, and home kitchens alike. The Japan Karaage Association even holds an annual Karaage Grand Prix, where winning restaurants have seen their sales as much as triple after taking an award. It is, in every meaningful sense, a national dish.
Korea: When American soldiers changed everything
Korean fried chicken has a very different origin story. Before the 1950s, chicken in Korea was primarily boiled, stewed, or grilled; deep-frying was not a significant part of the culinary tradition. What changed this was the Korean War, when American troops stationed in South Korea introduced the method of deep-frying chicken to local populations. One widely told account β though difficult to verify β has soldiers frying chicken in place of turkey for holiday meals and sharing the technique with Korean cooks along the way.
However it arrived, the method caught on, but it spread slowly at first because cooking oil was expensive. It was not until the 1970s, when oil prices fell significantly, that fried chicken became accessible for most households and small businesses, and small chicken restaurants began appearing across the country. In the following decades the dish industrialised, with major chains such as Kyochon and BBQ Chicken developing their own techniques and sauces. The most significant Korean innovation was double-frying: cooking the chicken once, then frying it again at a higher temperature for a coating of extraordinary crispiness β thinner and crunchier than its American counterpart, often described as glass-like. This period also produced the flavours that now define the dish globally: yangnyeom (μλ ), the sweet and spicy gochujang-based sauce, and the soy-garlic glaze.
The pairing of fried chicken with cold beer β chimaek (μΉλ§₯), from chikin (fried chicken) and maekju (beer) β grew popular through the 1970s and 1980s, when many chicken restaurants doubled as informal drinking spots. But it exploded into a national phenomenon during the 2002 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan. As the national team made an unexpected run to the semi-finals, millions gathered to watch together, and fried chicken and beer became the food of those communal celebrations. The tradition stuck. Today South Korea has tens of thousands of chicken restaurants, and Korean fried chicken has become a global phenomenon β driven in no small part by its appearances in Korean dramas and films watched around the world.
Taiwan: A family, a night market, and a happy accident
Taiwanese fried chicken β ιΉ½ι ₯ι, pronounced yΓ‘n sΕ« jΔ«, literally "salt crispy chicken" and sometimes called popcorn chicken in the West β has one of the most charming origin stories in this history. In 1979, a newly married couple surnamed Yeh were running a food stall at the An-ping night market in Tainan. Inspired by the American-style fried chicken that KFC had made popular in Taiwan, they set out to make their own version β but the large bone-in pieces were awkward to eat standing at a night market stall.
Their solution was to use mostly boneless meat, cut into bite-sized pieces, marinated in soy sauce and spices and coated in sweet potato starch before frying. This produced a lighter, puffier coating with a distinctive airy crispiness that sweet potato starch creates and cornstarch cannot. They seasoned the finished chicken with pepper salt and chilli powder and served it on thin bamboo skewers, so customers could eat without greasing their fingers.
They called it ιΉ½ι ₯ι, and it was an instant success, spreading from Tainan across the island to become one of Taiwan's most iconic street foods β found today at night markets, bubble tea shops, and casual restaurants everywhere. What sets it apart is exactly what makes it Taiwanese: the sweet potato starch coating, the white pepper and five-spice seasoning, and the fresh Thai basil leaves fried alongside the chicken, an aromatic touch that gives the dish a flavour entirely its own.
Cantonese crispy chicken: The outlier
Any honest account of Asian fried chicken must include Cantonese crispy fried chicken (ηΈει), and must acknowledge that it is genuinely unlike everything else in this story. Where karaage is marinated and starch-coated, Korean fried chicken double-fried and sauced, and Taiwanese popcorn chicken bite-sized and street-food practical, Cantonese crispy chicken begins with a whole bird and a process that is almost entirely different in technique.
The chicken is first poached in a bath of aromatics and spices, then coated in a syrup of vinegar and sugar β the sugar content of which is critical to the final result β and left to dry, sometimes overnight. Only then is it deep-fried, producing a skin of extraordinary thinness and crunch, almost lacquer-like, while the meat beneath stays soft and tender.
Rooted in the Cantonese tradition of southern China and Hong Kong, the technique reflects a different set of priorities: not a juicy, heavily flavoured interior or a sauced richness, but the pure textural contrast between an impossibly crispy skin and delicate, gently seasoned meat. It is a fixture of Cantonese roast meat restaurants and a staple of celebratory meals across the Cantonese diaspora.
What connects all of these β and what doesn't
It would be tempting to draw a single clean line through all of these stories, but the truth is more interesting than that.
Karaage carries a Chinese-influenced technique in its very name. Cantonese crispy chicken emerged from its own culinary tradition. Korean fried chicken is, frankly and specifically, a descendant of American Southern fried chicken β brought to the peninsula by soldiers and transformed over half a century into something new. And Taiwanese popcorn chicken was born in 1979 when a young couple tried to recreate KFC and stumbled onto something better.
These are not variations on a single theme. They are different stories that happen to involve the same ingredient, each shaped by specific historical moments β the Meiji Restoration, the Korean War, the arrival of American fast food in East Asia β and by the ingenuity of cooks who took what they had and made it into something worth remembering.
What they share is something simpler: the universal pleasure of biting through something crispy into something tender. The techniques differ, the seasonings differ, the cultural meanings differ. But that pleasure, it turns out, is the same everywhere.
Try it at home β the key ingredients
If the history has you wanting to cook, here's what each version needs:
Japanese Karaage: Chicken thighs Β· soy sauce Β· ginger Β· garlic Β· sake or mirin Β· potato starch
Korean Fried Chicken: Chicken pieces Β· double-fry technique Β· gochujang Β· soy sauce Β· garlic Β· honey or sugar for the yangnyeom sauce
Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken: Boneless chicken Β· sweet potato starch (not cornstarch β it's not the same) Β· white pepper Β· five spice Β· fresh holy basil
Cantonese Crispy Chicken: Whole chicken Β· aromatic poaching broth Β· maltose or vinegar glaze Β· patience β this one takes time
Many of the ingredients you need for every single one of these can be found in our physical stores, or at helloasia.co.za