This Tender, Flavorful Korean Chicken Salad Helps Me Stay True to Myself

I first dipped my toes into food media only a few years ago but gosh, was it a space riddled with hard-and-fast absolutes. Green bell peppers are nasty! Salt is spicy. And if you thought cooking — nay, boiling — chicken breast would result in anything worth eating, you were advised to stay out of the kitchen.

While I was naive enough to blindly accept most of these “truths,” I couldn’t get past the hatred for a humble cut of protein. I had years of core food memories centered around delectable soups, salads, and sides prepared by family members and other Korean home cooks made with the notorious boiled chicken breast. And the dish that never failed to stun was dak naengchae.

Although this chicken salad may look simple, it’s packed with nifty culinary takeaways. Boiling the chicken in a pot chock-full of aromatics infuses the meat with flavor and makes sure that it’s extra tender. The dak, or chicken, gets another layer of flavor with a zippy sauce made with honey and Korean hot spicy yellow mustard.

And then there are the onions. There comes a time when a young Korean American cook learns the magic of onions shocked in ice water, often with a splash of vinegar. In her dak naengchae recipe, Gloria Lee of @gleetzbapsang uses the trick, crediting her knowledge of the technique to a Korean church lady she grew up with. I can’t remember exactly when or where I learned the onion trick. Was it explained to me over a Korean barbecue dinner? Perhaps it was something I had overheard from my grandma and mom as they were busy with food prep, while I did homework at the kitchen table. Regardless, this salad sealed the deal. You, too, will be amazed by the onion’s complexity — how crisp and sweet it is without the tear-jerking bite.

The chicken with dressing and the onions are non-negotiables in this recipe, but after that it’s a choose-your-own-adventure dish. I add slivers of the ripest mangoes to my dak naengchae, which my mom and dad loved and branded as “very Justine” the first time I served it at a family dinner. What can I say? I like to find sweet moments in cooking and naengchae is flexible enough that you can use whatever melange of colorful ingredients you’re craving or have on hand.

Beyond the fact dak naengchae is a beloved dish for me, it represents the cooks, stories, and meals that have and continue to inform who I am. That I get to write this love letter outside of the confines of a heritage month or under the guise of culinary exoticism feels like a step towards progress. There’s a bundle of lofty goals I want to accomplish as a person now in the trenches of American food media. But at the heart of everything is my desire to pay it forward — oh, and to be an advocate for the much-maligned boiled chicken breast.