8 Types Of Fried Chicken Around The World, Explained

If you're in the U.S., you've probably eaten some very common styles of fried chicken, such as Southern-fried chicken (including buttermilk and pickle-juice-brined) or Nashville hot chicken. But there are so many more types of fried chicken available. While some are other regional styles from the U.S., others come from all over the world. If you pick out a country on a world map, chances are that the country's cuisine has at least one form of fried chicken.

While the American South often gets the credit as fried chicken's birthplace, that might not be completely accurate. Apparently, the earliest recorded recipes (and we have to stress "apparently" because the true origins are lost in history) come from 18th-century British cookbooks and records of fried chicken meals served at a home on the Island of Skye, which is part of the Inner Hebrides in Scotland. Yes, one of the world's favorite dishes may have started as a Scottish recipe, although African American seasoning and frying techniques made the dish what it is today. As fried chicken spread around the world, each country put its own spin on the dish, resulting in a marvelously diverse set of recipes. We can't cover them all here, but here are 9 types of fried chicken from around the world, explained.

You may think of popcorn chicken as something that U.S. fast-food companies invented, and that's understandable. Popcorn chicken consists of chunks of chicken thigh meat that are battered, fried, and seasoned, and it's been a popular snack in much of the U.S. since Eugene Gagliardi Jr. pitched it to KFC in the early 1990s. But the dish has its origins in a Taiwanese street snack called yan su ji, in which chunks of chicken thigh meat are seasoned with soy sauce, five-spice powder and other flavorings, coated in tapioca or sweet potato starch, fried, and seasoned again using white pepper and basil.

The dish first appeared in the 1970s in Taipei's night markets, possibly taking some inspiration from Taiwanese versions of U.S. southern-style fried chicken, which were starting to become popular at the time. While it sounds like it's similar to Japanese karaage, the dish is based off these Taiwanese fried chicken recipes instead. Sometimes you'll find places in the U.S. selling yan su ji with versions that combine it with Southern-style fixings, such as placing the chunks on buns with pickles, or other seasonings that reflect the heritage of the person running the restaurant.

Most fried chicken dishes are relatively quick affairs: season, dredge, fry, and eat. Nigerian fried chicken goes a step further because of the type of chicken it uses and because of the dishes the chicken usually accompanies. Instead of finding a tender bird and quickly frying it up, Nigerian fried chicken requires using older birds with tougher meat and boiling them for a substantial amount of time. This toughness allows the chicken to withstand the longer cooking times that Nigerian recipes often call for.

It's not that unusual to have a fried chicken recipe that requires a long marination time; one of the oldest fried chicken recipes from a 1747 cookbook called for soaking the chicken in vinegar and spices for up to four hours. But Nigerian fried chicken starts with boiling, not marinating, the meat for as long as an hour; the time depends on how old and tough the chicken is. The meat isn't boiled in plain water but is instead boiled in curry and other spices, including garlic, thyme, and red pepper. It's only after the chicken soaks up all that flavor that it's fried and then served with a pepper sauce and other dishes such as jollof rice.

Chicken katsu, also called tori katsu and chikinkatsu, is a flat chicken cutlet that's coated in panko and fried. Chicken katsu is a chicken variation of tonkatsu, or fried pork cutlets. Those have their origins in the 1890s and are a Japanese version of a French dish that was served in Japan in the 1860s and beyond. Prior to 1868, a military government (the shogunate) ruled Japan. But in 1868, several samurai overthrew the shogunate and transferred power over the entire country to the Meiji emperor. This was the Meiji Restoration, and it led to the creation of a parliamentary system and the gradual opening of Japan to Western influence.

One of the dishes that made its way to Japan was the French côtelette de veau, which was transliterated as katsuretsu. This was a breaded, bone-in veal cutlet, pan-fried in butter and served with baked vegetables and sauce. It was popular with Westerners but not popular with Japanese people. In 1895, a Tokyo restaurant owner decided to change the meat to boneless pork and coat it in panko, frying it in vegetable oil as if it were tempura, and serving it with cabbage. That version became very popular with Japanese people, and along with a few adjustments (like cutting the cutlet into strips), the rest is history. Chicken katsu and other meat-katsus followed quickly, and chicken katsu even became a favorite part of Hawaii's "local food."

Karaage is a technique in which marinated food is coated in starch and deep-fried. You can use the technique with anything, but nowadays, the name generally refers to chicken. The exact origin of karaage chicken is hazy, but it appears to have its start in Chinese tofu-frying techniques. Depending on which source you go with, this fried-tofu dish was introduced either as far back as 600 A.D., or possibly sometime in the late 1800s after the Meiji Restoration. Either way, this is how karaage got its name; kara- refers to Chinese origins, and -age refers to the frying technique.

Karaage chicken began to appear on menus sometime between the 1930s and 1950s, with the recipe spreading like wildfire after that. The key event that led to karaage becoming so popular was when the owner of an izakaya in Usa City in southwestern Japan opened a take-out karaage stand. Technically anyone can make a form of karaage, but the dish is so well-loved in Japan that there's actually a Japanese Karaage Association that offers training, certification, and the yearly opportunity to find the best karaage at the Karaage Grand Prix.

One thing you'll notice if you look at a Japanese menu is that there's another karaage-like dish called tatsutaage. The starch used to coat karaage chicken is seasoned with ingredients like garlic, but tatsutaage starch is left unseasoned. Karaage is often flavored with soy sauce and ginger, too, while tatsutaage gets its flavor from a soy sauce-mirin marinade.

Korean fried chicken is a direct descendant of American fried chicken; African American soldiers brought the food over to Korea during the Korean War and shared the recipe with locals. Koreans loved the food, but it wasn't until the 1970s when cooking oil came down in price that frying chicken really became mainstream. Fried chicken became so popular that, in the late 1990s after the Asian financial crisis, the country saw a wave of new chicken restaurants open up as newly unemployed workers flocked (sorry) to fried chicken as a potential career. Korean fried chicken made it to the U.S. in the 2000s and is now so popular that even areas with almost no Korean community may have at least one place serving the dish.

Korean fried chicken recipes are unique in that they usually require double-frying. The first round of frying gets everything cooked and relatively crispy, and the second round gives the coating even more of a crunch. The dish is notable for not being as greasy as other fried chicken recipes can be. The flavors used in the coating and sauces can vary, and asking different people for their favorite Korean fried chicken recipe will likely get you a range of different seasoning combinations. A typical flavor combo is soy garlic, and many recipes include a sweet, spicy sauce.

Gai tod is Thailand's take on fried chicken, and like many dishes, this one's origins are sort of lost to time. Techniques for frying chicken have been a part of Thailand's food scene for decades, and they possibly first arrived through trading with different countries that all had their own fried chicken recipes. Nowadays, you'll find fried chicken in both restaurants and at many, many street carts across the country. Flavors tend to include white pepper, coriander seed, and garlic, along with rice flour and sometimes fish sauce.

We do know that fried chicken was a part of Thai cuisine by the middle of the 20th century because, in the 1950s, an attempt to use up some fading shallots produced a dish that became one of the better-known Thai fried-chicken recipes: gai tod Hat Yai. Hat Yai is a city in southern Thailand, just north of the border with Malaysia. The story goes that a couple trying to sell chickens started frying the older ones to avoid food waste. When someone gave them some old shallots, the couple chopped up the shallots, fried them, and added the pieces to their fried chicken. The combination of fried chicken topped with crispy shallots was a hit, and after a few changes that added more seasonings to the chicken, gai tod Hat Yai became an iconic dish.

Chicken 65 is one of those dishes where no one really knows the true origin of the name, and depending on who you ask, that "65" could refer to the chicken's age in days, the number the dish was at on the menu, the number of pieces of chicken in the recipe, the number of hours the chicken needs to sit in the marinade, the number of ingredients in the recipe, or the year it was created. According to food writer Soity Banerjee in an interview with BBC News India, the dish was created at a New Year's party in 1965 at the Buhari Hotel in Chennai. Banerjee said the hotel claimed that the dish was named after the year since the clock was about to tick over into 1965.

Chicken 65 recipes can vary to an extent, but a few things tend to be the same, mainly that there's a yogurt coating, and chili powder or peppers make their way into the recipe at some point. Some recipes marinate the chicken in lemon juice or vinegar plus spices, reserving the yogurt coating for a second round of cooking once the chicken is fried. Others use the yogurt in the initial marinade and not in the final seasoning, and so on. No matter which recipe you use, Chicken 65 is something that can be served in informal (it's a classic street snack) or formal (as it was at the Buhari hotel) settings.

Filipino fried chicken has a couple of distinct differences that set it apart from fried chicken recipes in other cuisines. One is the use of calamansi juice in the marinade. Calamansi is a hybrid citrus fruit that's also sometimes called calamondin. You'll find calamansi or lemon juice in general Filipino fried chicken recipes, as well as in copycat recipes for fried chicken from Max's, one of the two restaurant chains that's become almost synonymous with Filipino fried chicken. The other chain, Jollibee, doesn't really talk about its recipes, of course, but reviews of even that chicken mention tasting a hint of citrus, and some copycats include calamansi juice as well.

Another difference is that the recipe may or may not include batter or a starch to coat the chicken. This is another hallmark of Max's chicken, in which the chicken is soaked in a marinade but not coated with starch, batter, or breading. Maximo Gimenez and Ruby Trota invented the recipe after World War II, when they would cook for American troops in the Philippines. However, some generic recipes will include breading or a starch, and Jollibee's chicken has a Southern-inspired coating.

If you make a copycat Max's recipe, you'll notice that the cooking technique is different, too. Some recipes call for steaming or boiling, and then double-frying; others steam and then fry once or skip straight to double-frying. (While Jollibee apparently doesn't double-fry, some copycat recipes recommend it anyway.)