Yakitori (Japanese Grilled Chicken)
Yakitori is Japanese grilled chicken. In this blog post, Yakitori Guy will show us how to break down a whole chicken and the ins and outs of making authentic yakitori!
Servings: 14 skewers
Equipment
- Knife
- Skewers
- Grill
- Bars for Grilling
- Binchotan Charcoal
Ingredients
- Whole Chicken
- Sake In a spray bottle
- Salt
- Lemon
- Tare
Instructions
Breaking Down the Whole Chicken
- Cut off the chicken tail.
- To get the thigh and leg, slice the skin, break the joints from the whole chicken, and pull it out.
- Slice off the butt skin and the belly meat skin (skin in the middle of the breast and rib).
- Pull the skin on top of the breast and “take it off” then slice it away from the chicken.
- Make an incision along the wings, bottom of the breast, and along the middle of the two breasts, then pull it out. Cut the tendons as needed.
- Cut silver skins or membranes along the chicken tenders and pull them out.
- You will have the skeleton of the chicken and you will also remove the cartilage, skin, shoulder meat, and neck meat.
Skewering the Chicken
- Tenders and Thighs: Lay the chicken on your board, roll it a bit from the bottom then push further from the top while poking through the stick in the middle.
- Skin and Wing Flats: Stitch through the skin until everything is skewered.
- Cartilage: From the parts where there is meat, you will essentially skewer them from side to side.
Grilling the Chicken
- Once the charcoal is heated up, lay your skewers on the grill. For smaller parts, it should be done around 1.5-2 minutes per side. For bigger parts, it should be done around 2.5-3 minutes per side.
- Midway through grilling spray some sake and sprinkle some tare in the chicken, smoke will build up, and let it sit in the smoke.
- From there, keep an eye until it reaches an excellent golden brown or caramelized color, but not burned. Otherwise, you can also stick a thermometer and it should be 165F to know if it's cooked.
- For Negima (thigh with scallions) and skin, you can dip in the tare and place it back on the grill for a minute then do it 2-3x more.
- For chicken tenders, wings, and thigh oysters, you can season with salt and lemon before serving. Add wasabi or ume if you want spice.
Video
Notes
- When flare builds up in the grill, move the chicken around to keep it from burning. Add more charcoal or fan it out as needed.
- Get the tare recipe on Yakitori Guy's YouTube channel.
- Get the grill equipment on Yakitori Guy's Amazon page.