Jjimdak aka Dak Jjim, the Best Braised Chicken Recipe

The best dishes for cozy season are the ones, like Jjimdak, you can make by throwing a bunch of hearty ingredients into a pot then simmering on the stovetop for an hour, which heats up the kitchen in the meantime! Jjimdak 찜닭, also known in its reverse Dak Jjim 닭찜, is a Korean braised chicken dish in a subtly sweet, garlicky, gingery soy based sauce that's soft and tender, it melts into the bowl you serve it in. Shall we?

Jump to:

• What is Jjim Dak?
• Health and Dietary Considerations of Jjim Dak
• Ingredients You Need for Jjim Dak
• What Kind of Chicken for Jjim Dak?
• Instructions for How to Make Dak Jjim
• How to Store Prepped or Leftover Dak Jjim
• FAQ
• Jjim Dak aka Dak Jjim aka Korean Garlic Ginger Soy Braised Chicken Recipe

What is Jjim Dak?

Jjimdak is a dish of bone-in chicken pieces braised in a subtly sweet, garlicky, gingery soy-based sauce, nearly identical to the braising sauce for Galbi Jjim. The low and slow cooking method renders the meat so soft and tender, you can literally shred it apart with a spoon.

The recipe here includes naturally sweet carrots and sweet potatoes, and you can add other vegetables based on availability and your personal taste like regular white potatoes, radish (may favorite!), more onions, and squash.

Here's your Korean language lesson of the week:

When broken down, "jjim" 찜 literally tranlates from Korean to English as "braise" and "dak" 닭 means chicken. Put them together as Jjimdak 찜닭 and you get "braised chicken."

You've seen "jjim" before in Galbi Jjim, which is classic Korean braised shortribs, and my better budget version Galbi Jjim-ish, Korean braised beef stew.

Origins of Jjim Dak

Difference Between Jjim Dak, Dak Jjim, and Dak Dori Tang?

All the dishes—jjimdak, dak jjim, dak dori tang, and even dak bokkeum tang— are types of bone-in braised chicken dishes.

Jjimdak and Dak Jjim are the same dish of savory, soy-braised chicken, just a different order of the words. One reads as "braised chicken" and the other reads in the reverse as "chicken braise."

On the other hand, Dak Dori Tang is a similar, but different dish. Dak Dori Tang is also a braised chicken dish, but spicy with the addition of red pepper powder gochugaru, red pepper paste gochujang, and fresh chile peppers like jalapeños. Dak Dori Tang, this spicy braised chicken, also goes by a different name Dak Bokkeum Tang. You could essentially just stire a few tablespoons of each of those into this recipe and you'd get Dak Dori Tang, too.

Health and Dietary Considerations of Jjim Dak

As printed, this Jjimdak recipe is:

• dairy-free
• gluten-free
• refined sugar-free

Depending on the piece of chicken, one serving of this dish can have anywhere from 51 to 54 grams of protein!

Healthy, Modern Updates to the Jjimdak Recipe

My original version, along with many older recipes, had a starchy coating on the chicken, sometimes regular wheat flour, sometimes cornstarch. The coating wasn't necessarily to make the chicken crisp like fried chicken. It is added to thicken the braising liquid into a "sauce." The braising sauce in older versions also contained refined sugar, and plain white potatoes.

Almost 20 years—and many many many iterations later, some pictured in the instagrams below— the updated recipe has dropped the unnecessary starch coating, uses maple syrup or date sugar and much less of it, substitutes nutrient-dense sweet potatoes for regular potatoes, and adds more vegetables like radishes or mushrooms when in season or in the mood!

I'd like to think that my Dak Jjim is now healthier, though there wasn't anything too terribly unhealthy about the previous recipe. "Healthy" is a subjective term.

Ingredients You Need for Jjim Dak

Jjimdak, like most braised dishes and stews, is essentially two types of ingredients: the chicken and vegetables together, and the braising liquid.

Here are the ingredients you need:

• Chicken, 3-4 pound whole chicken or pieces
• Carrots
• Sweet potatoes
• Onions
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Green onions
• Chicken stock or bone broth
• Tamari or soy sauce
• Sake or Mirim, Korean seasoned rice wine for cooking
• Maple syrup
• Black pepper
• Sesame oil
• Sesame seeds

The beauty of Jjiamdak is that once you get the chicken and base vegetables down, you can add any other vegetable to the dish. Hearty root vegetables like potatoes, Korean or daikon radish, and shiitake mushrooms are personal favorites. But I have made this dish many times even with not-so-obvious for stew vegetables like butternut squash, broccolini, kale, and baby bok choy.

Is There Sugar/Sweetener in Jjim Dak

There is no added refined sugar in this recipe, nor in most other Korean recipes on this site!

In this recipe for Jjimdak, sweetness comes from the carrots and onions in the braising sauce, as well as a few tablespoons of maple syrup. I prefer the lighter sweetness, the only downside is that the texture of the sauce is thinner and less "glossy" than sauces made with a lot of sugar.

If You Prefer a Sweeter Taste

Stir an additional 2 tablespoons of brown sugar into the braising liquid when you first add the vegetables to the pot.

Sugar/Sweetness in Korean Food in General

If you eat or are familiar with Korean food, you know that Korean marinated and braised dishes like Korena barbecues favorites bulgogi and galbi, whether grilled or braised or otherwise, can taste fairly sweet, and sometimes even veer into too sticky sweet. My family has always tended toward much less sweetness in Korean foods, and only add natural sweetness in the form of dried or fresh fruit as much as possible, and sometimes with maple syrup or honey.

What Kind of Chicken for Jjim Dak?

We are using the more affordable whole chicken. You can ask the butcher to cut the chicken up for you into 8 or 10 pieces, an save the backbone to make bone broth later! Or, you can break down the chicken yourself, which is what I always do.

You can also buy 4 pounds of bone-in, skin-on whole chicken legs or thighs.

The bone-in and skin on are important for this dish. The skin protects the meat in the beginning during the intial sear an provides some fat and flavor. The bones will render out some collagen while cooking, which adds body to the braising sauce, since we're not using starch or a lot of sugar.

Pro-tip: Normally, I recommend against buying meat and poultry from Costco** because of the way high-volume production increases the chance of food-borne illness. However, because we cook chicken until completely well-done rather than seared fast and furious on high heat, there is much less risk of food-borne illness. So in the case of chicken, Costco offers an unbeatable price and I say go get that bulk discount!

^{** I am highly in favor of buying almost anything and everything else at Costco!}

Additional Ingredients Notes and Resources

Avocado Oil. Avocado oil is a very neurtal flavored oil with a high smoked point that's generally a little less processed than other refined oils like conventional seed oils. This is the brand I use. You can use any neutral oil with a high smoked point.

Tamari or soy sauce. Tamari is Japanese soy sauce. Regular soy sauce contains wheat, but tamari has little or no wheat. Therefore, tamari can be gluten-free, though not always. If you eat gluten-free, make sure to read labels. I use this organic gluten-free tamari. This brand is also great, though might be a little harder to find in-store.

Mirim. 미림, mirim, is Korean cooking wine, similar to mirin, Japanese cooking wine. Don't use aji-mirin; read the label to make sure there is no added sugar or corn syrup.

Maple Syrup. I use this maple syrup. If you like the deep dark color in a braised chicken dish, use a dark amber grade A maple syrup.

Date Sugar. Aunt Patty's Unrefined Date Sugar available on Amazon, I bought mine at Erewhon Natural Market here in LA, here are some other organic date sugars on Amazon

Chicken stock. I will always recommend that you make your own bone broth, but like the Barefoot Contessa says, store-bought is fine. Read the ingredients list and find one with chicken as the first ingredient, and without added sugar.

Sesame oil. Use toasted, not regular, sesame oil. Toasted sesame oil is dark brown and is used as a finishing oil, not as a cooking oil. This is the Japanese brand that everyone and their mothers' have been using for years. You can usually find organic like this one in natural and higher end grocery stores.

Sesame seeds. Use toasted sesame seeds.

Optional Ingredients

Korean radish, called "mu" or "moo," is a large white radish that has a light green top near the stem. It is similar to Japanese daikon radish, though bigger, sometimes 5-inches in diameter! I have only ever found Korean radish at Asian grocery stores.

Asian pear. Pear is crucial as it not only adds natural sweetness to the sauce, but more importantly, it tenderizes the meat! These are 3- to 4-inch diameter, softball sized round, tan pears. Asian pears are increasingly available at regular grocery stores, and different varieties are called Butterscotch pears, Shingo pears, or specifically Korean pears.

All other produce from the regular grocery store or farmers markets.

Instructions for How to Make Dak Jjim

Jjimdak is fairly straight-forward to make. You literally put everything in a large pot, bring to boil, then simmer for until the meat is so tender it can shred apart with a spoon. The "hardest" part of the recipe is just the amount of non-active time you just let the stew simmer.

Here are the high-level steps to make a gloriously rich, tender Jjimdak:

Braise Chicken and Vegetables

Level Up: Add Glass Noodles

Modern versions of Jjim Dak have added noodles or tteok right into the pot toward the end of cooking. I LOVE the glass noodle version, since dang myun, Korean glass noodles made of sweet potato starch, are one of my all-time favorite ingredients. To do this for this Jjimdak recipe to serve 4-6:

• Soak 4-6 servings, about 8-12 ounces of glass noodles in a bowl of hot water before you start cooking.
• Add the soaked noodles to the near-complete Jjimdak, pushing them down into the braising sauce. If there iisn't enough braising sauce, add more chicken stock about ½ cup at a time.
• Simmer until noodles are cooked through, about 5 minutes.

Make Jjim Dak One-Pot Meal with Tteok

Make Jjiam Dak truly a one-pot meal by adding 2 cups soaked rice cakes, tteok! Soak tteok in a cold water for about 20 minutes. Drain, then toward the end of cooking, when there is about 10 minutes of cooking time left, stir the rice cakes into the braising liuid. Cook until the tteok are tender.

The tteok addition tastes esoecially great in the spicy version of Jjim Dak!

How to Make is Easier: No Need to Brown Chicken

In this modern recipe for Dak Jjim, I've added the step of browning the chicken pieces to add a layer of flavor, and to deepen the color of the final dish.

However, to make this recipe easier, you can skip the browning step and go straight to braising the chicken. Most traditional recipes for Jjim Dak are cooked this way, though they do rely on more or darker soy sauce to add color to the final dish, as well as possibly using dark brown sugar, black bean sauce, or other ingredients to darken the color.

How to Make it EasiEST: Dak Jjim in a Slow Cooker

This recipe is MADE to be made in a slow cooker or crock pot!

Toss the chicken pieces and braising liquid into a minimum 6-quart slow cooker, add enough broth or stock to submerge the chicken, then cook on high for 4 hours or low for 6-8 hours. When there is 1 hour left on the slow cooker, add the cut vegetables and continue cooking until complete.

When ready to serve, remove the chicken and vegetables to a serving platter.

Pro Tips and Techniques

• Cook in advance. If you do have the foresight and time to cook in advance, make the recipe at least 1 day in advance. The flavor will deepen, and any solidified fat will be easier to remove. See detailed notes about Advance Cooking below.
• Use the widest pot you have to give as much room to the chicken and vegetables to spread out into the braising liquid, rather than stacking up on top of each other. This will especially help the vegetables stay intact.
• Simmer, not boil. Because chicken stew is braised, the cooking temperature has to be very low. Except for the initial boil to get the pot up to temperature, maintain the temperature at a very gentle simmer. You simply cannot turn up the heat and boil it to make it faster. The whole point of a braise is to cook on low heat, over a long period of time to breakdown the collagen and fibers to make the meat super tender.
• Remove vegetables when they are tender, which may be earlier than the chicken is ready. If the chicken still needs more cooking time, but the vegetables are already tender, remove the vegetables from the pot with a slotted spoon or tongs and set them aside until the chicken is ready. If you leave the vegetables to cook for too long, they will break down too much.

Can You Cook Dak Jjim in Advance?

Yes! You can and absolutely should cook this Jjimdak in advance! Braises and stews of any kind is actually better if you make it one or two days in advance, which is partially why it's such a great dish for meal prep or for a larger gathering.

Not only are you able to more easily remove rendered fat, but the chicken becomes even more tender after it cools then re-heats.

Cook the recipe as directed, then follow these steps to store in refrigerator for up to three days:

• Remove fully cooked chicken and vegetables from the braising liquid in the pot to a storage container, cover and refrigerate.
• Strain braising liquid through sieve as directed into a tall, narrow storage container. Discard solid bits in sieve. Cover strained braising liquid and refrigerate overnight.
• The following day, all of the rendered fat from the chicken will have risen to the top of the braising liquid and solidified. Using a fork or spoon, carefully lift off the solidified fat and discard in the trash. Do not discard the solid fat down the kitchen sink drain. You can also save this "Korean schmaltz" to use for something else.

To re-heat, place the chicken, vegetables and braising liquid in a pot, bring to a boil, turn down heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Garnish and serve immediately.

How to Store Prepped or Leftover Dak Jjim

Refrigerator. You can keep Jjim Dak in the refrigerator for 3 days. After the rendered fat has been discarded, you can store it in its own braising liquid. I like to use large mason jars with sealing plastic lids.

Freezer. You can freeze Jjim Dak for about 3 months. After the rendered fat has been discarded, you can store Jjim Dak in its own braising liquid, which will keep the meat and vegetables from drying out. The way that works best for how I maintain my freezer is portioning the Jjim Dak directly into freezer-safe quart-sized bags, squeezing out all the air, sealing, and laying flat in the freezer until it freezes. Then I stand the bag or multiple bags up and line them up like thin books on a bookshelf. If you're looking to reduce single-use plastic, these are re-usable ziptop bags.

Ingredient Substitutions and Variations

Here are a few suggested substitutions for some of the slightly harder-to-find ingredients, as well as suggested additions, and variations. I have tried all of these and the family truly does love all of them!

Dried Shiitake Mushrooms for Fresh. If you want to use dried shiitake mushrooms, soak dried shiitake mushrooms in hot water for 30 minutes to 1 hour, while the short ribs are braising.

Pears or Other Fruit. If you can't find Asian or Korean pears, you can use regular pear. If pears are out of season, use 1 cup chopped kiwi, which has similar compounds that can naturally tenderize meat.

No Tamari. Substitute with regular soy sauce.

No Mirim/Mirin. Substitute with sake, Japanese rice wine, in the equivalent amount. If you don't want to use alcohol, you can leave this out completely.

Suggested Additions and Variations

Add 1-2 cups of any of the following vegetables cut into 1-inch pieces along with carrots and daikon:

• white potatoes
• pearl onions instead of sliced regular onions
• butternut squash or kabocha squash.

Make it Spicy by stirring 1-2 tablespoons of gochugaru plus 1-2 tablespoon gochujang, depending on how spicy you can handle, into the braising sauce when you first add the vegetables to the pot. Add more of either or both ingredients to make it even spicier!

Tools and Equipment

• Dutch Oven. This is the large, oval Dutch oven I use for braising.
• Stock Pot: If you want a slightly lighter weight pot, I like this very large stock pot by this cookware company. It has a heavy bottom and easy-to-hold handles. Any large pot that fits the ingredients will do.
• Slow Cooker: I have this 6-quart programmable slow cooker. If you are going to use a slow-cooker, I highly recommend getting/using a slow-cooker that has a timer or auto-shut-off so you can truly "set it, and forget it," which is kind of the point of a slow-cooker, imho.
• Stainless steel tongs
• Strainer
• Large bowls, one that fits within the other. I use both stainless steel and glass mixing bowls.
• Thermometer
• Quart sized mason jars
• Plastic sealing lids for jars. Get rid of those annoying two-piece metal lids that come with mason jars (unless you're doing actual canning) and get wide-mouth lids for the larger jars, and wide-mouth smaller jars
• Plastic storage containers: I keep a decent supply of these plastic quart (32 ounces) containers for any- and everything. The containers are technically "disposable," but they can be used a few times with hand-washing between uses. The best thing, though, is freezer-safe glass. Always make sure the stock is cool before pouring into any type of storage container.
• Large format ice cube trays. If you plan to make and freeze bone borth for the rest of your life, these "souper cube" trays specifically dedicated to broths and soups are great to have.

What to Serve with Dak Jjim

Jjimdak is technically a one-pot meal, so you don't really need anything else to serve and eat with it. However, it wouldn't be a Korean dish if you didn't serve fluffy steamed rice and some kind of kimchi along with it. Ladle big tender, falling-apart pieces of Jjimdak over a bowl of rice that will soak up the juices, and serve with any of these alongside:

• Oi Muchim, Korean Spicy Cucumbers
• Spicy Cucumber Salad with Avocado
• Din Tai Fung Dupe Cucumbers
• Korean Sesame Spinach

FAQ

Where to Try the Best Jjim Dak in a Restaurant

If you're lucky enough to live in Los Angeles or Orange County, you can try Jjim Dak in a restaurant! Most Korean restaurants that serve Jjim Dak are either specialists in Jjim Dak and related braised chicken dishes, or serve Korean home-style comfort foods. I don't usually see Jjim Dak on the menus of Korean barbecue restaurants.

Here is where you can try some really good versions of Jjim Dak in a restaurant:

• Jun Won Dak. Jun Won was an old-school Korean hole-in-the-wall restaurant that served very traditional Korean classic home foods. Though it closed during the pandemic, Jun Won reopened as a Jjim Dak specialist. It even added the word for chicken "dak" to its name! 4254 ½ W 3rd St Los Angeles, CA 90020
• HanEuem. Their dish is actually a spicy version known as Dak Dori Tang, on the menu as "Spicy Chicken and Potato Stew." If you're up for some spice, try it here! 539 S Western Ave Los Angeles, CA 90020
• Jinsol GukBap. GukBap translates to "soup rice," and they're well known for their pork-based dishes, though they have a small, but solid menu of other traditional Korean comfort foods, including a spicy version on Jjim Dak. a few locations, including: 4031 W 3rd St Los Angeles, CA 90020 (213) 365-0097 www.jinsolgukbap.net

More Korean Main Dishes

New Year, Same Old Resolutions

Through the first month of the new year, everyone does exceedingly well with sticking to their New Year's resolutions. We watch what we eat, we go to the gym before or after work five days a week, we keep the alcoholic drinks limited to the weekends, and though we go through serious withdrawal symptoms like headaches and crankiness, we stop smoking and drinking coffee.

We are good.

It's always easy to burst out of the starting gates with a bang, but let's face reality — we're sprinters. The lot of us are not made to last the entire marathon of goodness. After January ends, we start to wheeze a little. The bacon, blue cheese, eggs and avocados aren't bad for me - they're on a Cobb salad. I can cut down the number of my workouts by one this week, which is effective when you work out once a week to begin with. A couple of glasses of wine with dinner every night won't pickle my liver. And once the weekend hits, you wake up with a wicked hangover from smoke (it's second-hand, I swear!) and Ketel/sodas and the only way to cure that is with a double sugar chocolate mochaccino lottabucks.

We make excuses, give in a little each day, until we've completely spiraled ourselves out of the race, right back to where we started — the end of the previous year, fat, tired, wired, and hungover.

Back to Your Roots

After that intro, the logical next paragraph should go into how I am going to do my best to not allow that happen. I should write about how I've made it as far as the second week of February and how I am going to turn myself into a marathoner and really stick to the New Year's resolutions, at least through the end of the shortest month of the year.

Ha. Well, this is LA and it's all about plot twists here in Hollywoodland. I'm not going to write what is expected. I am going to write the opposite and say...Alrighty then! F--k my resolutions! I'm not even going to try to stick my resolutions! I am such a rebel! How do you like me now? Ta-dow. Unh. Yeah.

Ta-dow? Obviously one of my resolutions is to yank myself out of the '90s.

The other, more realistic resolution is to soul search, which is a clever way of saying that I wanted to learn about my heritage by eating at more of those Korean restaurants in Koreatown, and more specifically, by cooking more Korean food at home. I'm going through some strange heritage renaissance, which probably isn't even the right made-up terminology because "re-birth" implies that at some point in my past I was Korean. And though I always have been Korean, I didn't really own being Korean. In fact, I probably tried to sell off my Korean-ness for two dollars in one of the many garage sales we had when we lived in very non-Korean suburbs of either Cincinnati or Detroit.

I want my two dollars.

Anyway.

Eat More Protein

"Dahlk-jjim" is how the name of this home-style braised chicken stew is pronounced in Korean. I make fun of standard Romanization of the Korean language a lot, and I almost fell out of my chair when an old recipe book said "Dark Jim," like, "It's starting to get dark, Jim." I didn't go to Korean school for nothing. Say it like "dahlk-jjim" is written. And the "jj" is a cross between "j" and "ch."

As you can tell, I'm trying to learn French Korean French this year!

Domaine de la Chapelle des Bois is a grower in the Beaujolais region, specifically Fleurie, of France. Beaujolais is generally a good match for Korean foods. Don't ask me why. I haven't gotten that far in my studies yet.

Mochaccino is a very old burgundy/brown color in Revlon's nail polish line. I found it at the bottom of my polish basket, where it's been hidden since 1997, separating into carcinogenic components that will cause alien nail mutations. It was the right color for Chapelle des Bois's Fleurie label though, so I used it. And then I threw it away because I told myself I would purge my closet and drawers of all things that would embarrass me if I were ever to be surprised by the Hoarders team.

{this post originally published January 2006, then republished with "Afterthoughts," updated recipe, new photos, and wine February 2024}