Korean Dak Galbi with Spicy Stir-Fried Chicken, Sweet Potato and Rice Cakes

Mix all the marinade ingredients into a paste in a large bowl. Add the chicken pieces and turn to coat thoroughly. Cover and marinate at least 30 minutes, ideally a few hours in the fridge.

Ingredients

• For the marinade (serves 4):
• 800g boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite-size pieces
• 3 tbsp gochujang (Korean chili paste)
• 1 tbsp gochugaru (Korean chili flakes)
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp mirin or rice wine
• 4 cloves garlic, grated
• 1 tbsp grated ginger
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
• For the stir-fry:
• 1 medium sweet potato, thinly sliced
• 1/4 head green cabbage, cut into squares
• 1 onion, sliced
• 200g tteok (cylinder rice cakes), soaked
• Handful perilla or cabbage leaves
• 2 spring onions, cut into batons
• Toasted sesame seeds and shredded mozzarella, to finish

Instructions

1. Mix all the marinade ingredients into a paste in a large bowl. Add the chicken pieces and turn to coat thoroughly. Cover and marinate at least 30 minutes, ideally a few hours in the fridge.
2. Soak the rice cakes in warm water for 10 minutes so they soften and cook evenly.
3. Heat a large heavy skillet or shallow cast-iron pan over medium-high heat. Add the sliced sweet potato first, as it takes the longest, with a splash of oil, and cook 3-4 minutes.
4. Add the marinated chicken with all its paste and stir-fry for 5-6 minutes until it begins to colour and the marinade turns glossy and fragrant.
5. Add the cabbage, onion and drained rice cakes. Toss everything together and stir-fry for another 6-8 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through, the vegetables are tender-crisp and the rice cakes are soft and chewy.
6. Tear in the perilla leaves and add the spring onion batons in the last minute so they keep a little bite.
7. For the classic finish, push everything to one side and add a handful of shredded mozzarella to the other; let it melt, then pull pieces of spicy chicken through the molten cheese.
8. Scatter with toasted sesame seeds and serve straight from the pan with rice and pickles — and, if you like, fried rice made in the same pan with the spicy leftovers.
9. Dak galbi is the great communal stir-fry of Chuncheon, a city east of Seoul where it grew up in the 1960s as a cheap, hearty dish for soldiers and students cooked on big iron griddles at the table. Today whole streets there are lined with dak galbi houses, and the dish has spread across Korea as one of the most sociable things you can eat: a sizzling pan of gochujang-glazed chicken, sweet potato and chewy rice cakes that everyone digs into together, finished with stretchy melted cheese and, at the very end, a round of bokkeumbap — fried rice stirred through the spicy remains in the pan. Spicy, sweet and endlessly shareable, it is Korean comfort food built for a crowd.