Bibigo – Korean Style Crunchy Chicken

Bitter: 🟡○○○○

Salty: 🟡🟡🟡○○

Sour/Tangy:🟡🟡○○○

Sweet: 🟡🟡🟡🟡○

Umami: 🟡🟡🟡○○

Heat: 🟡🟡○○○○○○○○

Quick Flavor Notes: Sweet, spicy, chicken

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Crispy chicken with a sweet sticky sauce

Ingredients: CRUNCHY CHICKEN (WHITE CHICKEN MEAT, WATER, BLEACHED ENRICHED FLOUR [WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID, CORNSTARCH, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF EGG WHITES, GARLIC POWDER, LEAVENING [SODIUM ACID PYROPHOSPHATE, SODIUM BICARBONATE, MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE), MALTED BARLEY FLOUR, RICE FLOUR, SALT, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, WHEAT STARCH. FRIED IN VEGETABLE OIL), SAUCE (SUGAR, WATER, HOT PEPPER PASTE [WHEAT FLOUR, RICE SYRUP, WATER, RED PEPPER POWDER, SALT, WHEAT, DEFATTED SOYBEAN POWDER, KOJI {ASPERGILLUS ORYZAEJ, SOY SAUCE (WATER, SOYBEANS, WHEAT, SALT], CORN SYRUP, VEGETABLE OIL, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF GARLIC, RICE VINEGAR, FOOD STARCH, SESAME OIL, SALT, XANTHAN GUM).

This is another frozen Korean product I picked up from Publix during a recent Bibigo BOGO (try to say that five times fast). Being a big fan of Korean Fried Chicken I had to pick it up. Since Bibigo is a Korean brand and I’ve had good experiences with their other products I was excited to try this. As a bonus it even has air fryer instructions which always makes making dinner a breeze.

The box states that this chicken comes with a Sweet & Spicy Sauce which seems to me to indicate that it’s their take on a yangnyeom style sauce. Yangnyeom which literally just means “seasoned” in Korean has come to mean a specific type of sauce for chicken in popular parlance. Yangnyeom chicken first appeared in South Korea in 1982 created by Yun Jonggye as a way of both making chicken more delicious and to soften the extremely crisp crust which some customers complained was scraping the inside of their mouths. His employee Yang Heekwon brought the recipe to the masses, founding Pelicana Chicken, one of the oldest and most popular in South Korea. While Korean Fried Chicken has expanded in terms of available flavors and sauces since those early days the original yangnyeom sauce still remains a favorite. In fact it’s so popular that there are popular snack foods that come in the flavor.

Yangnyeom sauce is a combination of gochujang, a Korean fermented chili paste with a distinct sweet flavor, soy sauce, garlic, vinegar, and an additional sweet element, often rice or barley syrup which gives it a sticky glossy finish. True to form from the other products I’ve tried Bibigo the ingredients are authentic especially for a frozen dinner. Starting with the sauce it contains sugar, hot pepper paste (which is gochujang), soy sauce, garlic, vinegar, and sesame oil. The two biggest concessions to being a mass-produced frozen meal are the use of corn syrup instead of the more authentic rice or barley syrup and the use of thickening agents in corn starch and xanthan gum. Traditionally Korean Fried Chicken is double-fried and has a crust that incorporates both regular flour and a starch such as rice flour, potato starch, or corn starch for extra crispiness. Again Bibigo keeps it close to authentic with a mixture of enriched white flour, corn starch, rice flour, wheat starch, and malted barley flour all seasoned with some garlic powder and bound with egg whites. Leavening agents are also quite common in Korean fried chicken and this makes use of a number of ones used in industrial baking. The breading is also pre-fried onto the chicken before being frozen and though the instructions are for baking or air frying, they should give a result similar to a second fry.

I chose to go for air-frying these as it’s faster and has led to better results for me. The chicken does indeed come out crispy and the sauce warms quickly in a bowl of hot water. While I was tossing it together the aroma of the gochujang and garlic gave me anticipation. The chicken does indeed stary crispy in the sauce as long as you don’t let it sit for a long time. Bibigo’s sauce packet here does lean more towards the sweet than the spicy but it does have a low burn that builds over time. It’s more of a reddish-brown color than the deep intense red I’ve had from freshly made yangnyeom chicken and the depth of flavor obviously can’t compete with high quality freshly made, but for a frozen meal I found it surprisingly delicious. The box does suggest serving it with rice and dumplings which I should have done as the sweetness of the sauce does become overbearing after a while. Having had some amazing yangnyeom Korean fried chicken in Asia in the past it’s often best served with beer or soju, it’s always excellent drinking food, and the authentic stuff tends to have a stronger heat presence than the Bibigo version. Some of that imbalance may be due to the use of corn syrup in the sauce as opposed to rice or barley syrup, both of which are quite a bit less sweet than corn syrup and thus allow the heat to come forward more.

Even without being as good as it is from a restaurant specializing in it, this is still tasty and I will recommend picking it up, especially as it’s considerably less expensive than it is restaurants and quite a bit more convenient to have it in your freezer so that you can have dinner in the time that it takes to air-fry. The next time I try this I will try adding some additional gochujang to the sauce to see that if I can get that balance of flavor to where I like it.