The most popular restaurant in Korea is a chicken restaurant. There are many brands, and it is so famous that it can be seen as Korean brand chicken in many countries around the world. There are almost 100 chicken brands with more than 100 affiliated stores. And the BBQ chicken with the most franchises has over 1700 franchises, BHC 1600, and Kyochon Chicken over 1200. That's a huge amount of chicken houses.
Unlike traditional Korean whole chicken, the whole chicken is fried and served without being cut into pieces, while chicken is cut into pieces and fried before being sold. There is also a difference in the batter. Whole chicken is not coated with flour at all or thinly coated, but chicken is usually coated with a thick batter. As the recipe for whole chicken has been modernized and the types of chicken have diversified, the distinction between the two is becoming more and more vague. When it comes to old chicken, you can think of it as “chicken fried in a whole.” You can distinguish it from chicken by the thin coating.
It was after the Korean War that the existence of fried chicken, now called fried chicken, began to be known in earnest in Korea, where chicken was boiled, boiled, or steamed for a long time. Of course, before that, there were places in Chinese restaurants that dealt with fried chicken dishes such as rajogi and kkanpoonggi, but it was a menu that ordinary people did not know well because it was an expensive entertainment concept compared to jajangmyeon or udon. After liberation, as the USFK was stationed, the fried chicken culture of the southern United States began to enter around each unit, and in the 1960s and 1970s, whole chicken was popular in the market. Normal fried whole chicken and seasoned whole chicken were also created at that time.
Source: Namu Wiki Reference
In addition to deep-fried whole chicken, there is also an electric grilled whole chicken that is famous in the old days. Literally frying, not baking. The whole chicken was called electric grilled whole chicken because it was inserted into a spinning iron bar and cooked with a nichrome hot wire. It is a method of cooking with nichrome heat rays rather than frying whole chicken, so the oil is left ~ bad, and the chicken skin is crispy and light. In the past, it was eaten as a side dish for alcohol, and it tastes even better if you dip it in salt or seasoning.
Old-fashioned fried or grilled whole chicken is usually sold whole or half, and it tastes even better when eaten whole!. Tongdak in the old days can be seen as traditional Korean chicken, but it cannot be called perfect chicken. The recipe is a bit different, and the way it comes out is different from the fried batter. In the old days, before there were as many chicken restaurants and brands as there are now, Koreans loved old fried chicken a lot, and it is one of the childhood memories of many Koreans that their father bought a whole chicken on his way home from work.
