Why should we go hunt for bargains when we’ve already got all we really need (fried chicken) right here?

Japan has wholeheartedly embraced Christmas and Halloween, but the American custom of celebrating Thanksgiving in November isn’t really a thing here. You’d think that the lack of Thanksgiving, and its associated four-day weekend, would also mean there’s no Black Friday in Japan, and yet so-named sales and promotional events have become increasingly common in recent years.

The trend started with online retailers, but it’s since spread to some brick-and-mortar shops and even convenience stores. What’s more, since Japan doesn’t have a common perception of Black Friday referring to the day after the locally non-existent Thanksgiving, Black Friday is treated much more like a season of bargains that stretches across half a month or so rather than a specific discount date.

But without the mental trigger of “Thanksgiving is done so we’d better get started on the Christmas shopping,” Japanese shoppers don’t go as hog wild on their Black Friday purchases as their counterparts in the U.S. do. As a matter of fact, our crack reporter Mr. Sato was recently musing about how even though he’s been seeing Black Friday ads, he’s not really sure what the significance of the season is supposed to be. So he looked deep into his heart, trying to find the true meaning of Black Friday, and after ruminating on the topic from several different angles…he realized that “Friday” sounds just like “fry day,” and so he decided to make some Black Friday/Fry Day fried chicken.

To do so, he turned to Japanese recipe website Cookpad, where he came across a recipe posted by Japan Food Service, the food services company that manages the site. The ingredient list is short: all you’ll need is chicken, a karaage (Japanese-style fried chicken) breading and seasoning pack, cooking oil, and bamboo charcoal powder.

Bamboo charcoal powder can be a little tricky to find, even in Japan, as not every supermarket carries it. Mr. Sato was lucky enough to find some at the grocery store closest to his home, but if yours doesn’t have it, you can purchase the same brand as Mr. Sato used online here. For the breading, he went with Karaagezukuri, a seasoning and breading pack from maker Nihon Shokken that’s pretty easy to find, but can also be purchased through Amazon Japan here.

After cutting the chicken into bite-sized pieces, Mr. Sato placed them in a plastic bag and poured in the packet of seasoned soy sauce that had come with his Karaagezukuri. He then left it to marinate for a while and turned his attention to the bamboo charcoal powder.

Bamboo charcoal is the go-to ingredient for turning foods black in Japan, as opposed to using artificial food colorings. To make the Black Friday/Fry Day Chicken, we need to prepare a bamboo charcoal sauce, which we can do by dissolving the powder in water, adding in water little by little and stirring gently to keep it from getting mushy. According to the Japan Food Service recipe, you should use 25 milliliters (0.85 ounces) of water for every teaspoon of bamboo charcoal powder, but Mr. Sato skipped measuring the amounts and just sort of eyeballed the ratio instead.

Once he was finished preparing the bamboo charcoal sauce, he went back to the chicken and poured the pieces into a bowl. Then he tore open the pack of powdered batter from the Karaagezukuri pack and sprinkled it evenly over the meat.

Now it was time to do the actual cooking. After heating up cooking oil, he carefully added the pieces of chicken to the pan and fried them up. Checking to see if they were done, he stuck each piece with a toothpick, and if it came out clean, he transferred the morsels to a rack to cool off on.

At the risk of being accused of tooting his own horn, Mr. Sato has to say that he was extremely pleased with how well he’d managed to fry the chicken. However, while the batch looked good enough to eat, it didn’t yet look the part of a Black Friday/Fry Day meal, and so using a pair of long cooking chopsticks, Mr. Sato picked up the fried chicken pieces, one by one, and dunked them in the bamboo charcoal sauce.

Remember how we said Mr. Sato didn’t bother sticking to the exact ratio of water to bamboo charcoal powder listed in the recipe? This turned out to be a mistake, as his sauce ended up a little on the thick side. It wasn’t unusable, but coating the chicken thoroughly and evenly was trickier than it would have been if he’d used a little more water, like he was supposed to.

Still, when he was done dunking, the chicken was impressively dark in color.

Quite the transformation, huh? The Black Friday/Fry Day Chicken came out so dark that it was hard to visually perceive shadows on its surface, making for some surreal visuals when Mr. Sato pickled up a piece and went in for a closer look.

As shocking as Black Friday/Fry Day Chicken might look, though, it doesn’t have a frightening flavor. Bamboo charcoal has next to no effect on the taste of the food it’s added to, so while your eyes will immediately see a difference, to your taste buds it’ll seem like standard karaage, which is in no way a complaint, seeing as how tasty Japanese-style fried chicken is.

Aside from making sure to actually measure the amount of water and bamboo charcoal powder you use when making the black sauce, Mr. Sato does have one other point of caution, which is that eating the Black Friday/Fry Day Chicken will temporarily color your teeth. You won’t get permanent stains, but some color will probably be there until you give your teeth a proper brushing. So sort of like recipes that are heavy on garlic, this is a dish that’s best enjoyed by everyone you’re sharing the table with, and on occasions where no one has other social engagements lined up for later in the day. Keep those points in mind, though, and you’ll have an eye-catching dish that’s sure to have people curious to try it, and one you can easily whip up in time for Thanksgiving or the actual Black Friday.

Reference: Cookpad
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