*Celebrity Chef Alton Brown has gone viral for giving a brief history lesson about the origin of Korean fried chicken.
During a recent “Battle Tailgate” episode of Netflix’s “Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend,” Brown showed some love to our culinary African American ancestors as challenger chef Esther Choi and iron chef Marcus Samuelsson battled it out in the kitchen.
Co-host Kristen Kish, who’s Korean, was thrilled that Choi was going to serve the judges stuffed fried chicken wings.
“Looks like they’re going to fry those stuffed wings,” Brown says in a viral clip of the moment.
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Asian fried chicken is the best chicken in world.
You know why, they got the recipe from the #Freedmen!
We are taking back EVERYTHING that was taken from us! pic.twitter.com/GZcEp2CQGS
— Nyhiem (Lord Abba) Freedmen ???????? ☪️7️⃣ (@RealNyhiem) June 21, 2022
“Ugh! Korean fried chicken is by far the best fried chicken on the face of the earth,” Kish said before Brown served up a quick backstory.
“And do you know why?” he asked Kish. “Because it was taught to Korean cooks by African American GIs after the World War.”
“If I had a mic I would drop it right now,” Kish responded. “Great fact.”
Watch the moment via the Twitter clip above.
In related news, Brown and the beloved “Iron Chef” show are no longer staples of the Food Network. Netflix acquired the competition series after it wasn’t renewed at Food Network — where the show aired for 13 seasons. When Brown heard the streaming giant was rebooting the series, he decided to part ways with the Food Network.
“Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend” premiered this week on Netflix with Brown as the host. Speaking to Variety in a new interview, Brown explained why he left the Food Network after 21 years.
“That took a little bit of convincing on a lot of different people’s parts. But I knew that the show was going to be happening, and I was sick with jealousy over the idea that I was at the wrong network at the wrong time,” Brown tells Variety. “One day, my agent finally called me up after I had nagged him almost daily, and that was it. It was done. There was never a second thought for me. It meant removing myself from one network, but that was not a hard decision. Timing just worked out that I was able to extricate myself from that.”
When asked what is the biggest difference created by the Netflix streaming model, Brown explained. “The No. 1 difference is that there’s not a commercial break every four minutes, and that changes the storytelling a great deal. It allows for more nuanced storytelling, so that’s a huge game changer. I think it’s going to open up a big dimension of of the of what the real value of the series is. The second one is that because it’s streaming, people can binge the whole thing and that allows us story arcs that are longer than just one episode. From a storytelling standpoint, it’s just radically different.”
