Recipe: Homemade Yakitori! Japanese chicken skewers. Tasty, goes with beer and a perfect dish when you have company!

Number of steps:  6, 7 steps
Time taken: 20 - 30 min
Approx. 50 - 80 kcal per skewer

About This Dish:
When you go to a casual drinking dining (a.k.a. Izakaya) in Japan, one of the dishes people usually order is yakitori. Chicken on skewers. Easy to eat, goes great with beer and sake and tasty. Although there are a bunch of other skewers (such as chicken meatballs, liver, skin, cartilage, vegetables, fish) people order, chicken on skewers is the most common. Usually it is char-boiled but given the fact that we are home, this recipe calls for the regular pan you usually cook your regular dishes with. 

When you are at a restaurant, you usually pick if you want the sauce version or if you want the salted version. Most of the skewers are usually eaten with the sauce but once again, it's all your preference ;) This dish turned out great! My izakaya lover boyfriend even said "It tastes better than izakaya!" My friends who were over for dinner also loved it! 


What You Need:
(For 2 - 3 servings)

• 1 - 1.5 lb of chicken (I used 1.3 lb of chicken breast here)
• (Optional) Green onion 
  

Sauce

• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 3 tbsp Japanese sake
• 2 tbsp mirin
• 1 tbsp water
• 1 tsp Hon-dashi powder (If you don't have it, I don't think it'll make too much of a difference)
• 1 piece of garlic grated (Around 2 - 4 cm if you are using tubed grated garlic)

Add Later

• 1.5 - 2 tbsp sugar (Depending on how sweet you like it, I usually put 1.5)

1. Cut the chicken into little bite sized pieces. Probably around 2-3 cm big. You can also cut up green onions to the same size if you decide to put it on the skewer with the chicken. 

4. Put a lid on the pan and cook the chicken/veggies through on MEDIUM heat for 3 minutes. After that, put the heat off and let it stand for approximately 5 minutes.

7. If you haven't put them on skewers, put them on the sticks after and serve!

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2. If you have a pan big enough to grill the skewers, go ahead an stick the raw meat and vegetables on the skewers. If not, skip this step. We can put the meat and veggies on skewers after (which is what I did).

5. Take out the chicken. Wipe of any excess oil on the pan. On MEDIUM heat, pour in the mixture of soy/sake/etc from earlier. Once it starts bubbling, add the sugar and mix.

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3. Put some oil on the pan and grill the chicken and meat on a HIGH heat. We want the meat and veggies to be crispy on the outside. Meanwhile, mix the soy sauce, sake, mirin, water, dashi powder and garlic into a bowl.

6. If you put the chicken and veggies on skewers, just put them into the sauce. If you don't have them on skewers, do the same and add the chicken and veggies into the sauce. Leave on LOW to MEDIUM heat until the sauce disappears.

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