Chicken and Waffles, Japanese Style

Chicken and Waffles, Japanese Style

We’ve never made chicken and waffles, but it seemed too easy to go traditional, so we did a variation. Reading through some of the previous threads it seemed like there was some room for variation, but I decided that if the dish was to be chicken and waffles, I needed to use chicken on the bone, fried, and actual waffles (pancakes with divots), but aside from that, I was pretty much free to modify in whatever way I chose.

Fortunately, as we were starting to assemble ingredients, my friend Chef Patrick stopped by en route to a concert and supervised the initial steps.

First, we cooked chicken legs and thighs with ginger, soy, a little bit of sugar and sake – I mounted chicken pieces on some leek from the garden to add flavor and keep the meat from stewing (and getting too soft). This 350 degree/45 minute pre-cook was necessary because the fry step was going to be fast and there was no way I’d get the bird meat fully cooked in that amount of time. So, I decided to make a virtue of necessity and used a fairly potent mixture – the sake flavor in particular penetrated the meat and gave it a wonderful note.


Chicken, resting on leek platform, in ginger, soy, sugar, sake mixture

While the chicken was cooking, The Wife made a dough of flour, milk, sugar, baking powder, butter, egg…and rice. From this mixture, she started the waffles.

I shredded some daikon, regular red radish and some golden beets, mixed it with a little maple syrup and let it sit. I felt the visual of the chicken and waffle platter needed some enhancement, and the flavors needed a vegetal dimension; thus, the Japanese-style slaw.

Lydia, my Brooklynite daughter, had the good idea to make a sauce of maple syrup and wasabi which worked perfectly to knit together the rice waffles and the chicken, which absorbed a lot of the herbaceous sake flavors. I squirted in a finger lime, which gave the sauce significant pop and a slightly bitter counterpoint to the sweet syrup with little bubbles of citrus surprise.


Finger lime squirted into maple-wasabi sauce

When the chicken was cooked just about all the way through, I took the pieces out of the oven and let them cool – residual heat cooked it the rest of the way. Then I dipped each piece in a tempura batter of rice flour, beer and salt and fried each piece fast, just enough to lace up the dough and create a crispy exterior.


Tempura chicken with rice waffle in maple-wasabi sauce with sweet radish salad

It worked very well, and it was nice having the radish to balance the carb-protein combo. We used the remaining sake mixture from cooking the chicken to steam some bok choy, which was also really tasty.

The tempura coating on the chicken was there strictly for crunch and thematic continuity, though it did add some flavor without a bit of heaviness.

We had a friend over who was aghast at the idea of eating chicken and waffles, and who swore he would not eat the maple syrup-wasabi sauce. He is not the kind of guy to say he likes something he doesn’t, and he likes almost nothing in the world; even he liked dinner. The sauce, too.

I’m intrigued by taking this basic combo – a waffle platform (which could be rice, or corn-meal, or noodle) mounted by a fried chicken, connected by a sauce – and running ethnic variations on it. I think the deep structure of this dish offers a lot of opportunities for surface elaboration. Right now, we’re thinking of a corn meal waffle with fried chicken in a mole, or a noodle waffle with fried chicken under parmesan and tomato sauce, or an injera waffle with fried chicken and a berbere sauce. There are a lot of possibilities. I’m game and so is Lydia, so Monday night we’re thinking we might explore how this dish might be reflected through the prism of another culinary tradition…probably Mexican.

I'm still wanting to try falafel waffles, but I'm not sure a fried chicken complements that well (I'm thinking a harissa syrup and a tahina ice cream scoop).

JoelF wrote:I'm still wanting to try falafel waffles, but I'm not sure a fried chicken complements that well (I'm thinking a harissa syrup and a tahina ice cream scoop).

I think both the chicken and the waffle are so neutral, that as long as you create some kind of "connection" between them (gravy, sauce, mole), the flavors will be complementary.

Falafel waffles seem like they'd be really good. One consistent gripe I have about falafel balls is that they're usually not as crisp as I'd like. Running the batter through a waffle iron would ensure greater crispness throughout.

Harissa syrup? Love it.