Yakitori
Chicken and spring onion on sticks, glazed until sticky, eaten standing up under a railway bridge with cold beer. Your grill pan will do a perfectly honourable job of standing in for the charcoal.
- Total time
- 16 min
- Serves
- 2
- Effort
- Easy
What you need
Written for 2 — nudge the counter and the numbers follow.
0 of 8 in the basket.
How you make it
Simmer the soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar in a small pan for 6 minutes until reduced to a light syrup that coats the back of a spoon.
Thread the chicken and spring onion alternately onto the soaked skewers, packing the pieces snugly together.
Heat a griddle pan or grill to high, oil it lightly, and cook the skewers for 4 minutes, turning every minute so all four sides colour.
Start brushing with the glaze and cook for a further 4 to 5 minutes, turning and brushing repeatedly to build up sticky layers.
Check the chicken reaches 75C at the centre of the thickest piece with clear juices before serving; keep a little unused glaze back for the table so nothing raw touches the finished skewers.
Serve immediately with a wedge of lemon and plenty of cracked pepper.
Read all that and thought “absolutely not”?
Completely fair. Yakitori is sitting in the Japanese kitchen right now, it costs nothing, and it will never arrive.
Order it insteadMore from the Japanese kitchen
Quiet, precise, and secretly the coziest food there is.