Spicy Chicken Stir-FryDakgalbi

Dakgalbi is a dish from Chuncheon, a city about an hour from Seoul that Korean people specifically travel to eat it at its source. The restaurants there typically have large built-in griddles at every table — you watch the chicken and vegetables cook in front of you, the gochujang sauce caramelizing at the edges. It's the kind of food that's better for the experience of making it communally than for the dish itself, though the dish itself is very good.

I made a home version for a group of friends one evening in Seoul — a Brazilian friend named Rodrigo, a German named Markus, and an Australian named James. The instruction to use your widest pan is not optional. I used a small skillet first and the result was steamed chicken in sauce rather than chicken with a sear. The second attempt in a wide, flat cast iron pan over high heat — letting the marinated chicken sit without stirring for three full minutes — produced the caramelized, slightly charred edges that give dakgalbi its character.

The gochujang-to-gochugaru ratio is intentional. Three tablespoons of gochujang gives the sauce its thick, sticky body. One tablespoon of gochugaru gives it heat and color. The combination produces a sauce that's complex and hot without being numbing — the sweetness from the sugar keeps it from tipping into overwhelming territory.

Markus asked why the sweet potato was optional. I told him in the original version it's always included — the slight sweetness of cooked sweet potato against the spicy sauce is part of the dish. It went in. All three of them ate far more than they'd intended to.