{"id":140,"date":"2010-04-07T16:19:29","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T20:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/recipephany.com\/?p=140"},"modified":"2023-08-14T14:09:59","modified_gmt":"2023-08-14T18:09:59","slug":"olympic-seoul-chicken-or-how-my-mom-met-frank-perdue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/recipephany.com\/?p=140","title":{"rendered":"Olympic Seoul Chicken, or How My Mom Met Frank Perdue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olympic Seoul Chicken, a dish popular all over the Internet, began with a contest.<\/p>\n

After all, winning cooking contests runs in our family. My brother created a prize-winning peanut butter and provolone sandwich (see the PS in the last post<\/a>). Decades later I too started dabbling in cooking contests. I even entered one of my mom\u2019s heirloom recipes with only a minor substitution and it came in third<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My mom could have been ticked off that I used her recipe. But instead, it stirred up her competitive juices. If her daughter could do well with her recipes, why couldn\u2019t she?<\/p>\n

Her target: the 1988 Delmarva Chicken Cooking Contest. Her concept: an adaptation of a favorite Asian dish with the name \u201cSaigon\u201d in it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI added lots of garlic because garlic was getting popular for its health benefits,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She sparked it with a hot pepper kick, then smoothed it with honey. The sauce got thicker, more pungent. Bone-in chicken thighs, an overlooked choice at the time, made it tender, juicy, and nearly immune to overcooking. She removed the skin so the meat would soak up the marinade, flavoring every bite, and saving us all those fatty calories.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Muriel Brody and the King \u00e0 la Chicken, Frank Perdue<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But there was even more to her recipephany. \u201cIt was the year of the Seoul Olympics,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I changed \u2018Saigon\u2019 to \u2018Seoul\u2019 and called it ‘Olympic Seoul Chicken,’ a play on \u2018soul chicken.\u2019\u201d My mom, the marketer.<\/p>\n

She made finalist. At the cook-off in Delaware, one judge thought her entry so authentic, he asked if she\u2019d been to Korea. \u201cKoreans love garlic,\u201d he said. A husband of another finalist predicted she\u2019d win for the name alone.<\/p>\n

Delectable and memorable\u2014who could beat it? She won first prize. Frank Perdue, the King \u00e0 la chicken himself, warmly congratulated her. (According to my dad, his congratulations were maybe a little too warm.)<\/p>\n

Featured in cookbooks and on thousands of websites, this faux Korean dish could be the most popular \u201cSeoul\u201d recipe on the Internet. Famous chef and author\u00a0David Lebovitz<\/a> praised it on his blog and speculated on its origins. He now links to this post to let everyone know the true story.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quick, easy, healthy, and economical. Just make sure you have lots of garlic in the house.<\/p>\n

Muriel Brody\u2019s First-Prize Winning Olympic Seoul Chicken<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

I like to double the sauce so it soaks into the rice. The garlic, though, I leave about the same. Feel free to substitute fresh ginger, as suggested by Leah Greenwald below.<\/p>\n