Grill & BBQ Atlas · Starter
Yakitori
- Intermediate
- 60 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
Leads with char used as punctuation, a sweet edge rounding the corners, lifted green at the very end.
Ingredients
- 600g chicken thighs, cut in even 3cm pieces; the full izakaya spread adds skin (kawa), meatballs (tsukune), and liver for the brave
- Negi: thick scallion or baby leek segments, skewered between the meat
- The tare: 100ml soy + 100ml mirin + 50ml sake + 2 tbsp sugar + chicken trimmings, simmered 20 min to a glossy lacquer, kept and re-fed forever
- Or the purist's other road: shio, just good salt
- Bamboo skewers soaked 30 min; a narrow charcoal bed (binchotan is the dream) so the skewer ends hang off the heat
Equipment
Grill
The skills inside
The words inside
Sake Fundamentals: The Polishing Ladder
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · soy · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Thread meat and negi snugly: gaps dry out, crowding steams; the skewer should look like a tidy train.
- Grill over hot coals, turning every 45–60 seconds: yakitori is constant motion, small adjustments, no walking away.
- Tare skewers: dip into the sauce and RETURN to the grill; repeat twice more: layered dips lacquer; a single late dunk merely wets.
- Finish with a final gloss of tare or a pinch of salt; sansho pepper on the fatty ones. Serve immediately, two skewers at a time, with something cold.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Pinot Noir or Gamay
- Also Right
- Chenin Blanc
- From the Taps
- Bière de garde
- Zero-Proof
- Verbena iced tea
Chicken is wine’s most agreeable partner. Match the SAUCE, not the bird: cream to oak, tomato to Sangiovese’s acid, herbs to Loire whites.
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