Slow Cooker Asian Glazed Chicken

Something happened at work that I'm still processing. We had a team all-hands — the whole Amazon Fresh engineering org, maybe a hundred people — and the VP gave a presentation about diversity initiatives. Slides about representation metrics, pipeline programs, inclusion goals. Standard corporate diversity content, the kind that makes you feel simultaneously acknowledged and reduced, seen and categorized. One slide showed the percentage of Asian engineers at Amazon (high) alongside the percentage of Asian people in leadership (low), and the VP said something about "ensuring our Asian talent feels empowered to lead," and I felt — what did I feel? Irritated. Not because the data was wrong but because the framing assumed that "Asian" is a monolith, that my experience as a Korean adoptee raised by white parents in Bellevue is the same as the experience of an Indian engineer who grew up in Bangalore or a Chinese-American who grew up in Flushing. We are not the same. The model minority myth doesn't discriminate between us, but we should.

I didn't say any of this. I sat in my chair and nodded and ate my complimentary sandwich and did what I have been trained to do since childhood: be the good Asian, the grateful one, the one who doesn't make waves. The compliance is so deep it's structural — embedded in my personality like a load-bearing wall that I'm afraid to remove because the whole building might come down. I've been compliant my entire life. Compliant daughter, compliant student, compliant employee. The Korean food is the first act of non-compliance, the first time I've reached for something that wasn't handed to me, and it took me twenty-two years to reach for it. That's how deep the compliance goes.

After the all-hands, I went back to my desk and Googled "Korean American adoptee identity" and read for two hours. I found academic papers, personal blogs, a podcast by an adult adoptee who described feeling "culturally homeless" — Korean by birth, American by upbringing, belonging fully to neither. The phrase "culturally homeless" sat in my chest like a stone. That's what I am. That's what I've always been. Not homeless in the physical sense — I have a condo, I have Karen and David's split-level — but homeless in the cultural sense, a person without a native culture, a person who has to build her culture from scratch out of Maangchi videos and H Mart trips and a Zojirushi rice cooker.

I cooked aggressively this week. That's the word — aggressive. I made three different dishes in four days: dakgalbi (spicy chicken stir-fry), gamja jorim (soy-braised potatoes), and a second attempt at tteokbokki that was significantly better than the first. The cooking was a response to the all-hands, to the reading, to the stone in my chest. When I don't know what to feel, I cook. When I don't know what to say, I cook. The kitchen is where my hands can do what my mouth can't: articulate who I am.

The dakgalbi was excellent — chicken and cabbage and sweet potato and rice cakes, all stir-fried in a sauce of gochujang and gochugaru, sweet and spicy and sticky. It's a dish from Chuncheon, a city in South Korea that I've never been to, that my birth mother may or may not have visited, that exists for me only as a dot on a map and a recipe in a cookbook. But the food is real. The chicken is real. The taste is real. And when I eat dakgalbi in my Capitol Hill kitchen, Chuncheon becomes a little more real too, a little less theoretical, a little closer to being a place I come from rather than a place I've only read about.

Saturday in Bellevue was quiet. Karen made her tuna casserole — the one with the cream of mushroom soup and the crushed potato chips on top, the most aggressively American dish in Karen's repertoire, which I love unreservedly because I was raised on it and because it tastes like nine-year-old Stephanie eating dinner at the kitchen table with Karen and David and Kevin and the golden retriever named Max waiting for scraps under the table. That was my childhood. Tuna casserole and a golden retriever. It was a good childhood. It was also an incomplete childhood, and both things are true, and the tuna casserole doesn't need to be diminished for the dakgalbi to matter.

I'm going to find a therapist. The reading I did this week — the academic papers, the adoptee blogs, the "culturally homeless" podcast — made it clear that I'm not going to think my way through this. I need help. Professional help. Someone who understands adoption and identity and the specific kind of grief that comes from not knowing where you come from. I'm not in crisis. I'm just in need. And need is not weakness. Need is the beginning of repair.

This week, sitting with all of that — the grief, the gratitude, the decision to ask for help — I wanted to cook something that felt like a small, honest step toward the part of myself I’m still getting to know. Slow cooker Asian glazed chicken isn’t dakgalbi, and I’m not pretending it is; it’s a gentle, accessible thing made with gochujang, which is just one ingredient from a cuisine that is and isn’t mine yet. That felt right for week twenty-one. Here’s how I made it.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 4 hours (low) | Total Time: 4 hours 15 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs
3 tablespoons gochujang (Korean red chili paste)
3 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
1 teaspoon gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes), or to taste
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons water
2 green onions, thinly sliced, for garnish
1 teaspoon sesame seeds, for garnish
Steamed white rice, for serving

Instructions

Make the glaze. In a medium bowl, whisk together the gochujang, soy sauce, honey, rice vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, and gochugaru until fully combined.
Load the slow cooker. Arrange the chicken thighs in a single layer in the slow cooker. Pour the glaze evenly over the chicken, turning each piece to coat.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on low for 4 hours, or on high for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, until the chicken is cooked through and tender enough to shred easily.
Shred the chicken. Remove the chicken from the slow cooker and shred using two forks. Return the shredded chicken to the slow cooker and stir to coat in the sauce.
Thicken the glaze. In a small bowl, whisk the cornstarch and water together until smooth. Stir the slurry into the slow cooker, then cover and cook on high for an additional 15 to 20 minutes until the sauce thickens and clings to the chicken.
Serve. Spoon the glazed chicken over steamed rice. Garnish with sliced green onions and sesame seeds. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow Cooker Asian Glazed Chicken — The Kitchen as My First Act of Non-Compliance