‘It just unleashed the inner me’: how fried chicken became the focus of first cookbook by Susan Jung since ending her 25 years as the Post’s food editor

“Somebody said I must have starved to death in a former life,” says Susan Jung in her signature deadpan. We’re sat at her vast wooden dining table after a long lunch of fiery som tam (Thai papaya salad), fluffy steamed rice and three generous plates of fried chicken, chased up with oozing Camembert, a loaded fruit platter and a casual tasting of her favourite Japanese potato snacks (Hula’s Maui chips, sour cream flavour), but she is still very much concerned that I did not have enough to eat. “Do you want any biscuits or anything?” she asks. I politely decline, and settle for a black coffee instead. It’s a natural instinct for Jung – a former pastry chef and the South China Morning Post’s long-time food editor – to feed people, and to ensure that her pantry is always full, just in case. “What if people go home hungry? I had one responsibility, and it was to feed them,” she explains. After all, food and feeding is her calling card. For 25 years, Jung’s patient and matter-of-fact voice was a constant at the Post, where she would share weekly recipes ranging from complex French desserts – gluten-free cherry blossom macarons, for example – to comforting Chinese dishes, including wontons in a soothing soup. Hong Kong dim sum restaurant D.H.K shuts just as it earns a Michelin star During this time, her fried chicken recipes – and there were many – garnered plenty of fans; so much so that one of the Post’s editors commented that she should write a book about fried chicken. “I always liked fried chicken, but I was trying to pull myself back from doing too many fried chicken recipes [for the Post],” she recalls. “Until [a colleague] made that comment. And it just unleashed the inner me.” On April 13, 2023, just over a year since she bid farewell to the newspaper, Jung released Kung Pao & Beyond: Fried Chicken Recipes from East and Southeast Asia. It’s a true ode to the genre, with dozens of recipes grouped together by chicken parts (wings, boneless dark/white meat, and “non-wing chicken with bones”), and featuring tried and tested techniques – such as using different ratios of flours and spices to achieve varying levels of crunch and flavour. For our lunch, among the recipes she selected was the rather glorious chicken poppers with instant noodle coating – in this case, the deeply burnished, crunchy exterior was made with the distinctive spicy tang of Nongshim Shin Ramyun, an iconic South Korean instant noodle. It makes you want to knock back an ice cold beer at the same time. You could say that food and cooking – and even fried chicken – defined Jung’s life long before she even knew they would. Growing up in Monterey Park, California, she was raised on her mother’s and grandmother’s cooking. Her father was also a good cook, and did excellent stir-fries, she says. “When we went to my grandmother’s house every Saturday night and Sunday lunch, he was the one who helped her out,” says Jung. “She would feed at least 20 people, and it would be this couple of huge tables of just a lot of food. I was roped in pretty young [to help].” Fried chicken with spaghetti, coincidentally, was one of “five non-Chinese dishes” in her grandmother’s wide-reaching repertoire, and one of her favourite meals. Even though young Susan was not allowed into her own mother’s kitchen, for fear of her burning herself, at her grandmother’s, “there I was, making fried chicken”. Her mother did end up teaching her daughter how to cook, albeit in a more intuitive way. At home, there weren’t many opportunities to get her hands dirty in the kitchen, but that changed when she left for university. “When I moved to my own flat, that’s when I started to cook,” she recalls. My dishes were horrendous at first. And then I learned: more soy sauce than rice wine, more rice wine than salt Susan Jung on her earliest solo cooking attempts at university “I would call my mom and say, ‘How do you make this?’, because you want to recreate things you ate as a kid. And that, for me, was Chinese food. “I’d ask, ‘How long do you cook the fish’, and she’d say, ‘Well, for every inch of thickness, it’s 10 minutes.’ So then I’d ask, ‘How do you know when the chicken is cooked?’ And she’d say, ‘Well, if you can shake the drumstick and it’s loose in the joint, then it’s cooked’,” says Jung. “She would say, ‘You know, just add soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, salt and sesame oil.’ And I’d ask, ‘How much?’ and she’d say, ‘You know, just enough’. That’s just how Chinese people cook. “My dishes were horrendous at first. And then I learned: more soy sauce than rice wine, more rice wine than salt.” Thanks readers, it’s been fun: Susan Jung on 25 years as food and drinks editor It was also through her mother that she learned how to bake. “She was my first baking teacher, because I always asked her: ‘Please, can we bake?’ and we would do so on rainy days,” says Jung. “She taught me how to put the butter and sugar in and cream it until it’s light and the colour changes, or how to add eggs one at a time and alternate with the flour. I’m really grateful for that.” These early experiences later influenced Jung to opt for a career as a pastry chef, after graduating in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley. From there, she went on to work at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, Grand Hyatt New York and The Peninsula New York (where the only saving grace of the staff canteen meals was the sheet pan-fried chicken, Jung says). In the 1990s, she moved to Hong Kong, where her last post as a pastry chef was at the (now closed) restaurant American Pie. The story of how she became a food writer at the Post is well documented, extraordinary for its Sliding Doors moment, when her then boyfriend met her future editor, Hedley Thomas, at a party. He offered her a role as an office assistant, saying that she was “overqualified […] but [she’d] have the opportunity to write”. “I never regretted taking that risk,” Jung wrote in 2022 in her last column for the paper. Within six months, she was given the role of food and drink editor and took over on the day of Hong Kong’s handover, July 1, 1997. Looking back at the trajectory of her life, Jung is both pensive and pragmatic. Asked if the routine of cooking has seen her through any difficult moments, she says, “No, because I’ve always cooked. There’s never been a time when I’ve not cooked. Whether I’m happy or sad, it doesn’t matter. I still cook.” Earlier this year, while visiting her recently widowed mother back in California, she discovered how gratifying it was to cook for her. “It was kind of like giving back,” she says. What surprised her was how, after all these years, she was able to teach her mother something: how to make the perfect steak. As she recounts the experience – of her mother asking inquisitively about the amount of salt she used and the timing on her sear – I’m reminded of mother and daughter having similar conversations when a curious young Susan was eager to learn the secrets of her mother’s cooking. It’s obvious what Jung’s favourite recipe is in her book, and not only because it appears so prominently. “It’s my mom’s fried chicken, just because it’s the first thing I loved to cook,” says Jung. Her mother’s chicken wings were what Jung and her brothers would always request on their birthdays, and “on the rare occasions she asked us what we wanted for dinner”. “She fries it, then coats it in a soy sauce and rice wine coating. And then, instead of frying it a second time, she would bake it. And we just loved eating it.” She pauses, and smiles. “I’m getting hungry again.” Recipe: Chicken poppers with instant noodle coating Serves: 4–6 as a snack Ingredients 450g (1lb) boneless chicken thighs coarse salt crystals, as necessary 2–4 packets of instant noodles, depending on size about 60g (2oz) potato, sweet potato or tapioca flour 2 or 3 eggs 750ml (3¼ cups) cooking oil I came up with the idea for this dish after listening to two friends talk about instant noodles – a subject that is dear to my stomach. Peter reminisced about eating instant noodles, sprinkled with the seasoning mix, straight out of the packet, without cooking them first. Carol said that she hadn’t ever tasted one of my favourite instant noodles, Nongshim Shin Ramyun. I wondered how instant noodles would work as a coating for fried chicken, and fortunately had a packet of Nongshim Shin Ramyun in my cupboard. (An important tip if you want to buy these: seek out the ones made in South Korea, because they taste so much better than those made elsewhere.) It was one of the easiest fried chicken dishes I’ve made, and the noodles fried up spicy and crunchy. You can vary the flavour by using other types of instant noodles, but make sure the seasoning packet is a dry mix, not a paste. Also, use only the seasoning powder, not any oil or dehydrated vegetables that may come in the packet. This fried chicken goes very well with soju (a Korean distilled alcoholic drink) or beer. Method 1. Butterfly the chicken thighs, cut them into 2.5cm (1in) chunks and put them in a bowl. Weigh the chicken, then multiply the amount by 0.005 – this is the amount of salt you need. Sprinkle the salt over the chicken, mix well, then set aside for at least 10 minutes. 2. Put the noodles with the contents of the dry seasoning pack in a food processor. Process until the noodles are about the size of rice grains. 3. Put the potato, sweet potato or tapioca flour in a shallow dish. Whisk the eggs in another shallow dish and put the instant noodles in a third dish. Dredge the chicken thighs in the flour and shake off the excess, then dip in the egg. Dredge in the instant noodles, pressing firmly so they adhere. Lay the chicken on a cooling rack placed over a tray. 4. Pour the cooking oil into a pan, preferably a medium wok, set over a medium heat. Fry the chicken in two batches at 160 degrees Celsius (320 degrees Fahrenheit). Fry the pieces for four minutes, then put them on the rack placed over the tray – there’s no need to fry again.