January 26, 2021

Yakitori

I am going to stay in Asia this week. With Valentine’s Day coming up, this might be a good idea for a cute, romantic, interactive and quite savory dinner. Easy cleanup is a bonus!

Yakitori means “grilled chicken” but restaurants (izakayas) have expanded beyond chicken and are offering vegetables and beef. Of course, the Japanese have turned this into an art form and taken it to a pinnacle of excellence: there are chickens specifically bred for this, the butchering skills of a chef take years and years, the two sauces (shio and tare) have been refined to perfection to create the ideal bite.

I do not have that extensive culinary background; in my quest to bring home a sliver of this goodness, I turned to a book: “Chicken Genius: The Art of Toshi Sakamaki’s Yakitori Cuisine”. I bought a classic yakitori grill, ordered the binchotan charcoal, hunted the supermarket for chicken thighs, chicken gizzards and chicken hearts (don’t leave me now…you can certainly make this with your favorite protein: chicken, thin slices of pork, beef, scallop, calamari or even just vegetables: mushrooms, leeks, zucchini, etc.). You can do this with any of your favorite items as long as you make it neat and relatively small so that it cooks quickly and evenly.

If you don’t want to invest in a yakitori grill ( I just think it’s fun to do it tabletop), you can certainly do it under the broiler!

Serving Size:

Time:

one hour

Difficulty:

Medium

Ingredients

4-5 boneless chicken thighs
10-15 chicken gizzards
10-15 chicken hearts
2 bunches of scallions (cut in 1 1/2 in sections)
4-5 mushrooms (sliced thickly)
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup mirin
1/4 cup sake
1/4 cup water
2 teaspoons sugar
10 skewers (teppogushi)

Directions

In sauce pan, add the mirin, sake, soy sauce, water and sugar and bring to a boil. Simmer until the liquid becomes syrupy (about 30 min). Set aside and cool to room temperature.
Cut the chicken thighs in even 1 in pieces. I try to match them the best I can so that one skewer has the most similar pieces in size and texture. You can make skewers with chicken only, or alternate with scallions or mushrooms
Trim the gizzards and cut in even sized pieces; skewer them
Do the same for the hearts: trim and slice in half
If using a grill, place on the grill and keep brushing them with the tare sauce as they cook.
If using a broiler, place them relatively close to the heating element (set on a rack in a pan) and check on them often, also brushing with the tare sauce.