Home-style ── Machi-chuka (Japanese-Chinese diner food)
Yurinchi
Yurinchi — fried chicken topped with chopped scallion in a sweet soy-vinegar sauce
Fried chicken thigh topped with chopped long onion and a sweet soy-vinegar sauce. In China the name refers to cooking a whole chicken by ladling oil over it, which differs greatly from the Japanese form, and a study points out that the dish is barely found even in China.
Lineage
What it's made of
Chicken thigh is fried plain or in a starch coating, topped with chopped long onion, and dressed with a sweet soy-vinegar sauce. The crisp coating, the scent of onion, the tang of vinegar, and the sweet-salty soy sauce combine, and it stays easy to eat even when cool. At neighborhood Chinese restaurants and izakaya it appears as an ordinary side dish.
How it's made
The basic form is seasoned chicken thigh fried and dressed with the onion sauce while still hot. In China, 'youlin' refers to cooking large pieces, such as a whole chicken, by ladling hot oil over them repeatedly. The Japanese form is cut-up meat that is fried and sauced, so although the names nearly match, the cooking differs.
Why it took this shape
A paper in the journal Kokusai-Joho notes that yurinchi is common in Japan, yet in China, its supposed home, it is barely seen on restaurant menus or in home-cooking books. Asking Cantonese chefs reportedly drew only vague answers, such as that it might be Taiwanese. It reads as a form settled in Japan, where a Japanese idea of sauced fried chicken met the Chinese name 'youlin'. Its restaurant or place of origin is said to be unknown.
Before you go
- Yokohama ChinatownSaid to be one of the largest Chinatowns in Japan, with more than 150 Chinese restaurants and food shops. Offerings range widely from street snacks to formal course meals.
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Foods to look for in summerA guide to foods often seen in Japan around summer — eel on the Day of the Ox, hiyashi chuka, somen, shaved ice, edamame with beer, and hamo — with rough pointers for finding them.
Dishes in the same style
- Annin-dofuA dessert descended from Chinese medicinal cooking that uses apricot kernels. In Japan it is often made with milk and almond essence, and the Hong Kong style of fruit and jelly floating in syrup took hold at Chinese restaurants and in school lunches.
- BambanjiSteamed chicken pulled into shreds and dressed with a sauce rich in ground sesame, served cold. It is based on a Sichuan dish, and in Japan a milder, sweeter sesame sauce with cucumber and other vegetables became the norm.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Related lineage
- Ebi MayoBattered, fried shrimp are tossed in a sweet mayonnaise-based sauce — said to have begun when a Cantonese chef, unsatisfied with a mayonnaise-dressed shrimp dish he'd eaten in the United States, remade it his own way.
- BambanjiSteamed chicken pulled into shreds and dressed with a sauce rich in ground sesame, served cold. It is based on a Sichuan dish, and in Japan a milder, sweeter sesame sauce with cucumber and other vegetables became the norm.