Yakitori (Grilled Chicken Skewers)

Yakitori is grilled chicken on a skewer — the great izakaya and festival-stall food, cooked over charcoal and finished either with a sweet soy glaze (tare) or just salt (shio). It’s simple, smoky, and nose-to-tail: a real yakitori shop uses nearly every part of the bird. → photo 1

The choice between tare and shio is the whole personality of a skewer, and knowing which cut wants which is half the fun.

Ingredients

• Skewers (mix and match)
• Chicken thigh, cut in chunks — momo
• Thigh with scallion between — negima

Chicken meatballs — tsukune

• Also classic: skin (kawa), tail (bonjiri), liver, gizzard, wing
• Tare glaze
• 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/2 cup mirin, 2 Tbsp sake, 2 Tbsp sugar — simmered to a light syrup
• Or shio

Just salt

• Bamboo skewers, soaked; shichimi togarashi to finish

Directions

Key ingredients

Soy Sauce

Mirin

1. Make the tare:
2. Simmer the soy, mirin, sake and sugar until slightly syrupy so it clings. (Shops keep a communal tare pot going for years, dipping skewers into it.)
3. Skewer evenly:
4. Thread bite-size, even pieces so they cook at the same rate. For negima, alternate thigh and scallion.
5. Grill hot — charcoal if you can:
6. Binchotan charcoal is the ideal (intense, clean, almost smokeless heat) but it’s not required — a hot grill or even a broiler works. Cook, turning, until nearly done.
7. Glaze LATE, or salt:
8. For tare skewers, dip or brush in the glaze only in the last couple of minutes and turn often — the sugar burns fast if you add it early. For shio, salt before grilling and finish with a squeeze of lemon. Rich, fatty cuts (skin, tail) love tare; clean cuts (breast, some offal) are often better shio. Dust with shichimi.

Notes

Where this came from Standard method.

History — old skewer, new chicken Skewer-grilling is Edo-old, but everyday CHICKEN yakitori is largely post-war. In the Edo period ‘bird’ on a skewer was often sparrow, quail, or chicken offal — real chicken meat was expensive. It was the post-war broiler-chicken boom (roughly the 1960s) that made cheap chicken abundant and turned yakitori into the ubiquitous izakaya food it is now.

‘Yakitori’ doesn’t always mean chicken In a few places — Muroran in Hokkaido, Higashimatsuyama, parts of Kyushu — ‘yakitori’ traditionally means grilled PORK, not chicken. A local quirk worth knowing.

Tare vs shio Not just seasoning — it’s a philosophy. Tare (sweet soy glaze) suits fatty cuts; shio (salt) lets a clean cut and the charcoal speak. Good shops serve each cut the way that flatters it.

Sourcing Thigh is the forgiving starter cut. Binchotan is worth trying once if you can find it, but a chimney of good lump charcoal gets you most of the way.