Korean Fried Chicken at the Comforts of our Home

If you recall not too long ago, I did share that I wanted to try this new McCormick product, and about a week after that, I had the four variants at home ready for me to use. I have always been a fan of McCormick; their Buffalo Wings mix was something my brother and I go for, so even if we haven't tried this, we already knew we would like it.


This fried chicken mix is easy to use - just empty out the packet #1 into a bowl and add 1/4 cup of water and mix. Don't add any more than 1/4 cup of water because it would be a little runny, but if you would like a thick batter, then add a little less than 1/4 cup of water.

A day before I tried using this, I learned how to properly do the "Double Deep Fry" technique - and since this is Korean Fried Chicken, might as well try it for this time, right?


Dip chicken in batter and fry for about 5 minutes until it is light brown in color, just like the picture above. Fried chicken has always been a tricky thing for me, so I just set the fire on low and covered the pot while cooking it - so the steam trapped inside will also help cook the chicken pieces. After 5 minutes, just set aside the chicken to rest.


Re-fry the chicken pieces until it is golden brown. Crispy fried chicken, I tell you!

The batter can be used for 1/2 kilo of chicken. If you want it to be crispier, I suggest you dust the chicken with a mix of cornstarch and rice flour before dipping it into the batter.

It is really best that you do two batches of chicken, so you can fry the second batch while the first batch of chicken is resting - no need to turn off the fire and re-heat the oil once the chicken has rested. 

Now that the chicken is cooked, on to Step Number 2 - coating the chicken with the sauce. The pack said, "Place the chicken in a container, pour the sauce and shake it to distribute the sauce," but since this is a new product and I am a little apprehensive that the family might not like it, I just served the sauce alongside the chicken.

The family has already tried three of the four flavors:


Soy Garlic. Honestly, I loved this more than BonChon Chicken. It's not overly sweet, and I do hope McCormick can come up with a bigger pack for the sauce because the glaze outside of the chicken just wasn't enough. :)


Kimchi. I admit I was a bit apprehensive about this at first because I am not a fan of kimchi, but a year ago, I got to taste Kimchi flavored popcorn and loved it, so this was the next flavor we tried. If I loved the Soy Garlic flavor, I loved this even more. It has this pucker-up taste - yes, a little tangy - but it has a kick of saltiness, too, making it an instant favorite. It just went well with the chicken!


Bulgogi. Another good flavor, but it is quite similar to the Soy Garlic one, so I wasn't so impressed with this.

The Spicy flavor I think is Soy Garlic, so we might try it next time. Of the three I tasted, it is very obvious that I loved the Kimchi one. It is also the cheapest one at just 36 pesos (Bulgogi was over 40 pesos), so I guess I'd stock up on that one.

I am loving how the food industry is evolving - back then, fried chicken simply meant marinading chicken pieces in calamansi juice mixed with soy sauce, then the breading mix came out (some with gravy mix, too), and now this. Gourmet eating at the comforts of our own home... with all the rice you can eat, too! :)

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My First Meal in Iloilo

RounDish Restaurant
2nd floor - Urban Inn
La Paz, Iloilo City
21 November 2010

Visiting a new place makes me happy. When K asked me one destination I would like to visit for this holiday, the only place in my mind was Iloilo, and I was so happy he considered it and made it part of our trip. It would be my first time there and I was extremely happy.

When my camera met an accident, I didn't cry just yet for I could still use it. However, during our flight to Iloilo, an article on Smile Magazine (Cebu Pacific's in flight magazine) caught my attention and made me take a picture of it just so I won't forget. With the magazine on my lap and my camera tilting downwards, it let go of a lot of sand - which by that time had dried up. For a minute it made me optimistic - that my camera would be much better because I was able to shake off sand, but sadly, the remaining sand caused my camera lens to get stuck and that was it: my camera just died.

It crushed me. There I was, about to set foot on a new location with a busted camera.


And as if the heavens sympathized with me, it was raining when we landed on Iloilo. I heard it has been raining since afternoon and getting a ride was difficult because parts of the area were flooded, causing major traffic jam. It took a while before K and I secured a taxi, but traveling to our destination made him upset and worried - what if the taxi ran out of gas while we were stuck in traffic... what if the driver decided he wouldn't take us to our destination... what if the inn canceled our booking and we had to find another place to stay at. For the first time during this holiday, I started feeling gloomy and hopeless.

We made it safe to Urban Inn in La Paz, Iloilo. Of all the affordable inns / hotels we listed, this place seemed to be the best choice and we were thankful that the staff of the inn were so friendly and accommodating. It was past 7pm when we arrived, and with weary hearts and tired spirits, we decided to settle for a moment, collect thoughts and think of what to do next.

We do have a lot of questions, but the one at the top of our list was, "Where to eat dinner?" I clearly didn't think about that while planning for this, and asking an online buddy based in Iloilo, she couldn't name a restaurant in La Paz and suggested we go to SM or to Smallville. K and I didn't have the energy to travel anymore, so we decided we would just walk around and see what we can eat to get through the night.




We surely were so focused on a different thing that we didn't notice there was actually a restaurant a few steps away from our room (we were at the third floor). It was a quick answered prayer, and we didn't think for one moment - we quickly got in and checked the menu.

RounDish Restaurant is a Korean Restaurant, but some items on their menu are somewhat Filipino, with a Korean twist. We had:


Chicken Katsu. Fried boneless chicken with Teriyaki Sauce. K's choice. I am sensing a little pattern on his choice of food - if he won't go for curry, he'd go for something like this. Anyway, we were a bit surprised when we were served this, the menu said "with Teriyaki Sauce," but it was served with coleslaw. We asked the staff about it and they quickly gave us a little bowl of teriyaki sauce apologizing that they just forgot to serve it. Okay.

It tasted like any other lightly breaded chicken meat, but I have to say the mayonnaise they served us tasted better than the one we use at home.




Korean Pork Ribs. Tender pork ribs with sweet soy sauce. They have two sizes for this dish, and I obviously took the smaller serving. This came with a cup of rice (yey), and I loved that the meat was really tender, yet it still held its shape. The sauce was a bit on the sweet side, but it's the kind of sweetness that wasn't really overpowering. Am not sure if I was being hungry, emotional, tired or maybe all... but I was able to eat all of it. Delish!


Sweet Beef Bulgogi. It was around 8:30pm when we had this dinner, so we were the only customers that time. Halfway through our dinner, two Korean men entered and one of them came to our table and asked us about our meal. We mentioned that this was our first meal in Iloilo and after that short exchange of messages, we were surprised when we were served this. The Korean man we were talking to was actually the owner of the restaurant, and he was just happy that our very first dining experience in Iloilo was at his restaurant. This was his welcome gift to us, wishing us to have a memorable stay in Iloilo. How sweet was that?

Anyway, this dish had a mix of sweetness and spice. It was seasoned well, and the beef had a great taste to it. Sadly, we weren't able to finish it because both of us were already stuffed.

All of these pictures were taken using my cell phone's camera. For a cell phone camera, I was thankful my phone allowed me to take okay pictures. We will be staying in Iloilo for four days (including this one). With three more days and lots of places listed on our itinerary, I was then faced with a big dilemma. My camera just died, my cell phone's running on its own memory. I decided to keep image sizes to be VGA (640x480) so that it won't eat a lot of space, but before calling it a night, I sent my siblings a message - for them to send me my cellphone's USB cord and if possible, sending me sister's cell phone's memory card just so I can still capture images of Iloilo even with my cell phone's camera. Thank goodness I brought my netbook and that the inn had a WiFi connection. My holiday's still not busted after all.

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Foodie 365 | Week 37

I wasn't able to post this yesterday because Internet suddenly became slow, so might as well share this now in case it rains later again. Here are the foods for Week 37:


253. Baked Polvoron by Shamrock

I got home from my vacation weeks ago, but we still haven't opened any of the food packs we brought home, and because I had this "need" to blog about the Shamrock products, I decided to open this for our snacks today.

254. Siomai with Mixed Veggies

Eating at least one kind of vegetable everyday is slowly becoming a habit for me, and I am starting to love this kind of foodie routine.

255. Laing con Kangkong

The night before, brother went home from a team building with some packs of the Ulalaaam ready to eat food. I still haven't tasted the Laing flavored one, so for today's lunch, I decided to open the pack to save me from cooking. I noticed that one pack didn't have that much food inside, and thankful to the bunch of Kangkong I had in the fridge, I was able to double its volume. Very simple lunch, but I liked it.

256. Super Papa Pizza by Papa John's

Today is mom's birthday, and since there's a new food place in the mall, we went to celebrate mom's birthday there. To save money and to taste more food, we decided to go for the small sized pizza. Aside from this one, we also ordered the Grilled Chicken Pizza. Both pizza tasted so good, we will surely be back to eat there.

257. Rosquillos by Shamrock

Another pack of Shamrock food opened.


258. Beef Nilaga

In one very old episode of the Biggest Loser Australia, one of the trainors (I think it was Shannan) said that protein has to be about 100 grams only. I am not sure if he meant weighing the protein before cooking it or weighing it before eating it, so I took out the food scale to weigh my beef. At first I thought 100 grams wouldn't be enough, but as I put beef on the scale I come to realize that 100 grams is actually more than enough to make one feel full. Actually, the beef on my plate weighed only 70 grams, just in case what Shannan meant was "100 grams uncooked protein." :)

259. Bibimbap

I bought zucchini last week hoping to cook a frittata, but I forgot to include a pack of sweet ham, so I just cooked Bibimbap for today's lunch. Good thing the family liked it. :)

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