Of late, Korean pop culture has gained quite a following among many young Filipinos what with Korea-novellas airing on free television, K-pop blaring from mp3 players throughout the archipelago, and kids trying their darndest best to look like the kids from Super Junior, the Wonder Girls, and 2NE1 regardless of the fact that they will never be as pale of skin or slanted of eye as any of their idols.
Korean street-snacks have also been gaining sway in many food courts in the country’s bigger cities. It’s mostly been potato-based treats like the tornado potato (a whole skewered potato that’s been very thinly spiral-sliced and deep-fried till crisp) and the garlic-and-soy potatoes sold in a stall that recently opened at the SM Megamall Food Court. There’s pa jeon (seafood pancakes, kind of like Japanese okonomiyaki, only much thinner), mandu (gyoza-ish steamed/fried meat dumplings), and sweet griddle cakes filled with either red bean or custard.
And now, we have what the folks at SM refer to as a Korean hotdog.
Korean hotdogs are, essentially, an Asiatic spin on corndogs. In this particular case, the ‘dogs (those scarlet-skinned Purefoods Tender Juicies) aren’t dunked in a corn-based batter. Instead, these are dunked in a batter that, based on the texture, has a mix of wheat and glutinous rice flours. The battered ‘dogs are then blanched in boiling oil and are then rolled in panko breadcrumbs and fried a second time to give it a crunchy golden crust.
The end result is a corndog whose crust is similar to the Okinawan snack sata andagi in that it is very crunchy and yields into a soft, chewy, moreish inside. The sausage within, of course, was nothing really to write about as it was a generic ‘dog. But, truth be told, this made quite a satisfying snack on the road home – and, in my personal opinion, honey mustard is the only sauce that goes perfectly with it.
Midge in the Kitchen 