Name: Korean Chicken Salad (Dak Nangchae)
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 40 min
Ingredients: 2 chicken breasts (boneless & skinless); 1 Asian cucumber or English cucumber (seeded and thinly sliced); 1/2 tsp salt; 1/2 medium white onion (thinly sliced); 1 onion or leak (cut into chunks); 5 garlic cloves; 2 ginger slices; 2 bay leaves; 2 tbsp rice wine; 1/2 tsp Korean red ginseng powder (optional); 2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds; 2 tsp Korean mustard (yeongeoja); 1 tbsp soy sauce; 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice; 1 tbsp rice vinegar; 1 tbsp honey; 1 tbsp water; pinch salt

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This Korean chicken salad is made with shredded poached chicken breast, cucumber, onion, and dressed with tangy sesame mustard dressing.

Korean Chicken Salad made with shredded chicken, cucumber, and sesame mustard dressing

Hello y’all! Welcome to my new Beyond Kimchee site.
First of all I apologize for not posting recipes for a while. Sometimes life throws you with things that are crazy and chaotic. But in the middle of all the craziness, I managed to create my new blog with its own domain name. Oh, bless my diligence… 🙂

If you have been a subscriber with my blogger blog, please, add this site to your subscription again either via E-mail or RSS. Because I don’t want to looooose you… I still have lots of work to fill many pages and re-edit older posts that I transferred. But I decided that I should work things out as I am blogging along. It will take some time. So, please, be patient with me.

Okay, I will stop self-promoting my blog now.

I chose simple Korean Chicken Salad (dak nangchae) with cucumber in a tangy sesame mustard dressing as my very first recipe for my new blog. This recipe is great for many reasons.

#1: You like chicken.
#2: It is very Korean.
#3: Delicioso!
#4: Heart healthy, figure friendly, gluten free, and stress free, I think…
#5: Because Holly (me) recommends it — most important!

The secret of bringing this recipe to be the top notch is in poaching your chicken without yielding any gamy poultry smell. I will show you how you can achieve that. So come along and watch carefully, Okay?

How to Make Korean Chicken Salad

Poach chicken breasts with onion, ginger, garlic and bay leaves over low heat for 30 minutes. There is one ingredient I want to add in this step though.

This is totally optional ingredient. It is Korean red ginseng powder. This gets rid of those gamy poultry smell like no other, and adds wonderful Korean flavor into your chicken.
You can buy this in major Korean grocery stores, or fly to Korea to buy it at Incheon airport (w/ duty free). A little expensive ($50!!!) but makes wonderful health supplement tea (mixed with honey) to boost your immune system.

Shred your chicken into small pieces, cool and let them chill in the fridge until ready to serve.

Cucumber is chicken’s eternal friend in Korean salads. Remove seeds and slice thinly.

Sprinkle 1/2 tsp salt and toss. Let them sit for 10-15 minutes.

So the salt sucks the life out of them and season them at the same time. Give them a good rinse.

Squeeze them to show how much you love them. This step will reduce the water in the cucumber so your salad won’t get watery.

Grab an onion who is lingering alone in your kitchen counter and slice it thinly.

Time to make the dressing.
This is a Korean mustard. It is grounded mustard seeds without any added sugar or vinegar, spicy like horseradish but not the same.

You will also want to crush some toasted sesame seeds. Just a little crushing action… Your nose will sense the “very sesamified” fragrance.

Mix all the dressing ingredients in a small bowl.

And put all the good stuff together.

Toss altogether very well with your #1 kitchen gadget, your hand! That’s all. Simple, isn’t it?

Lovely salad with a slight zing! Stuff into Croissant to make a sandwich if you wish. That might be your next Asian chicken salad sandwich on the go.

But for me, I just like to eat the way it is with my handy dandy chopsticks. Enjoy!