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Spicy stir-fried chicken with vegetables

Dakgalbi 닭갈비

Dakgalbi is a delicious, spicy grilled chicken dish that’s a popular choice for friends who are getting together to go out to eat. In Korea it’s communal dish that’s cooked and shared among a small, intimate group of people, so it naturally stimulates conversation and a good time. It’s impossible to eat dakgalbi in silence!

When you go to a restaurant with your friends and family and order dakgalbi, they’ll bring out a large pan filled with the dakgalbi ingredients as well as some side dishes. While the pan cooks on the tabletop, you and your friends can munch on side dishes and talk, and maybe order some drinks, too. The dakgalbi will cook nicely and the waitress will tell you: “Now you can eat!”

When you’re almost completely finished, you can ask the waitress: “We’d like some stir-fried rice please.” She’ll bring out some rice, mix it with the leavings in the pan, and quickly fry up some spicy, stir fried rice. She might divide the rice into portions and serve it to everyone at the table, or she might just leave it in the pan and let everyone dig in. For many people I know, this is their favorite part!

Don’t have a dakgalbi restaurant near you? Now you can make it at home! Invite your family and friends over, and prepare all the ingredients.

“Are you guys ready to eat dakgalbi?” you can ask.

“Yes, yes!”

Bring out the pan filled with vegetables, chicken, rice cake, and the sauce, and cook it at the table. Your house will be full of an irresistible, delicious aroma, laughter, and conversation, I guarantee!

This is an updated version of my earlier recipe, posted in 2013. This version is simplified by skipping gochujang and mirim, but I add some milk for the chicken to marinate. After I posted my old recipe in 2013, I learned adding some milk to chicken removes the not only the smell but also make it tender.

Ingredients

Serves 2 to 3

For chicken and marinade:

  • 1 pound deboned chicken thigh (or drumsticks), cut into small bite sized pieces
  • 2 tablespoons milk
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

For the seasoning sauce:

Veggies and rice cakes:

  • 4 ounces sliced rice cake (1 cup), soaked in cold water at least 10 minutes
  • 8 ounces cabbage, cored and cut into bite sized pieces
  • 4 ounces (½ of large onion), sliced
  • 1 small carrot (about ⅓ cup), peeled and sliced
  • 1 or 2 green chili peppers, sliced
  • ¾ cup peeled sweet potato, sliced into ¼ inch thick bite size pieces.
  • 12 perilla leaves (or basil leaves), cut or ton a few times
  • ½ cup water
  • 1 bowl of rice (optional)
  • ¼ cup chopped fermented kimchi (optional)

Directions

Marinate chicken:

  1. Combine the chicken, milk, soy sauce, and ground black pepper in a bowl and mix all together with a spoon.
  2. Cover and set aside.marinated chicken

Make seasoning sauce:

  1. Combine the minced garlic, ginger, soy sauce, water, gochu-garu (Korean hot pepper flakes), rice syrup, and ground black pepper in a bowl. Mix well with a spoon and set aside.

Cook and serve:

  1. Spread the cabbage on the bottom of a large, heavy, and shallow pan or skillet.
  2. Add onion, carrot, green chili pepper, sweet potato, rice cake, and perilla leaves in that order.
  3. Add the chicken in the center. Pour the seasoning sauce over the chicken and spread it with a wooden spoon. Add 1/2 cup water.Korean spicy stir-fried chicken and vegetables
  4. Cover and cook for 3 to 4 minutes over medium high heat until it starts boiling. Turn down the heat to medium. Open and stir with wooden spoon so that the pan doesn’t burn and the ingredients and sauce mix evenly. Cover and cook another 13 to 15 minutes over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the chicken and sweet potato are cooked thoroughly.Korean spicy stir-fried chicken and vegetables
  5. Keep the heat low during the meal. Cook, stir, eat, and talk. The pieces will be hot, so be careful! Turn off the heat when the chicken and potato are totally cooked.
  6. Give a bowl to each diner. They can each take some out of the pan into their bowl, and eat. When it’s almost totally finished, make some fried rice by adding some rice and chopped kimchi to what’s left on the grill.  Stir with a wooden spoon over medium heat for a few minutes. Serve in separate bowls, or give everyone a spoon and let them eat from the pan together.stir-fried rice (bokkeumbap)

Posted on Friday, November 15th, 2013 at 11:20 am. Last updated on August 10, 2021.
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66 Comments:

  1. erin_md Galveston, TX joined 9/21 & has 1 comment
    Posted September 26th, 2021 at 10:23 am | or create a profile.

    Hi there, Maangchi!!!
    I’ve been loving your recipes…and you’re so cute…but I have a dilemma!
    I really would like to try this recipe, but I’m having difficulty finding gochu-garu! would I be able to use gochu-jang, instead??

  2. Julie_35 Brittany, France joined 8/20 & has 5 comments
    Posted October 21st, 2020 at 7:06 am | or create a profile.

    Made it today, as you say it is delicious and i feel very awake :) . thanks much


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  3. bk2012515 Singapore joined 6/20 & has 2 comments
    Posted June 30th, 2020 at 2:26 am | or create a profile.

    Hi Maangchi
    Thank you for the lovely recipe.
    Can we use cilantro as a substitute for the perilla leaves? Thanks

  4. jsp73 joined 3/15 & has 32 comments
    Posted November 11th, 2019 at 6:23 pm | or create a profile.

    Haha! Awesome! This turned out just like I remembered it in Korea (except I made mine spicier – with the hotter gochujang). I really disliked the food “trends” in Korea. 닭갈비 was big in Gyeonggi-do… so many 닭갈비 restaurants… then they mostly disappeared. The same was true with “Red Samgyupsal” (PLEASE post a recipe for that!) and Buldak (Hong Cho buldak – I made your recipe, but there was no comparison). They all disappeared. Anyhow, my massive 14 inch cast iron skillet worked just fine. I even doubled the recipe so my wife could have leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Deeee-licious! Thank you!


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  5. evelynrose Montana, USA joined 2/18 & has 3 comments
    Posted March 28th, 2019 at 11:18 pm | or create a profile.

    Hi Maangchi! I love your videos and I even watch them when I’m doing intermittent fasting for my diet. I really want to make dakgalbi and I’m wondering if I have to soak my frozen rice cakes in hot water first before adding to the pan with vegetables and chicken. Or do I just thaw the frozen rice cakes in the refrigerator and add to the pan?

    Thanks for making such awesome videos! ❤️

  6. shaiksyahirah joined 6/15 & has 4 comments
    Posted November 16th, 2018 at 9:44 am | or create a profile.

    How many pax does this serve?

  7. Cornelius B. Ecuador joined 12/17 & has 42 comments
    Posted June 14th, 2018 at 1:54 pm | or create a profile.

    Made Dakgalbi for the second time today. This time I had garaetteok and perilla leaves available, only left out the sweet potato, as combined with rice it contains carbohydrates more than enough.

    Substituted the green chillies with green bell pepper, as the local chillies are hotter than the korean ones, and with the gochujang it´s spicy enough for me.

    For marinating the chicken (breast this time), I added a little salt, minced garlic, some white wine, and a couple of drops of sesame oil to the soy sauce, then pan fried it before adding to the veggies: the result was very tasty, I can only recommend this.

  8. tpdullum Northwest Washington State joined 8/12 & has 7 comments
    Posted May 8th, 2018 at 4:55 pm | or create a profile.

    Just a note – video show 1 teaspoon of kosher salt in the sauce but the printed recipe leaves that out. The salt is needed.

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