Spotlight Japan
Simple and Delicious Yakitori
Among Japan's traditional foods, few have found more success overseas then yakitori—tasty meats and veggies charcoal-grilled on delicate bamboo skewers. This is the dish that has helped make "Japanese cuisine" acceptable to many a wary Western palate!
Yakitori—literally, "grilled chicken"— is one of Japan's enduring favorite dishes. Historically, the Japanese menu has long featured various types of grilled wild game birds, but chicken was not among them. Some scholars believe that the yakitori we know today, basted with special sauce called tare, probably appeared after the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
These days it is ranked one of the most popular foods of all ages in Japan. Not only is it inexpensive and simple to prepare, yakitori is healthy and fun to eat. This is a dish for the masses: there are no specific rules for grilling the meat, and there is no special etiquette or protocol involved in eating it, unlike kaiseki ryori (Japan's haute cuisine) or other complicated Japanese dishes. For this reason, yakitori seems to be especially beloved of Japanese workers who might stop by a yakitori stall to unwind after a hard day's work. Yakitori seems even more delicious when accompanied—as it usually is—by sake, beer or shochu (distilled spirits).
Unlike some Japanese foods, yakitori is found in a wide range of eateries, from upscale restaurants to crowded bars to the simplest outdoor vending stands—originally cooked and eaten at wooden roadside stalls, yakitori can still be found in these humblest of surroundings.
Yakitori stands are often set up in front of supermarkets, where shoppers can usually be enticed to buy a ready-made stick or two as a snack, or take home a pack of assorted skewers for a family meal.
The term yakitori doesn't imply only chicken, but it certainly encompasses a wide range of chicken parts, all prepared in bite sizes. Choices include boned chicken thigh (momo), chicken skin (kawa), chicken and long onion (negima), gizzard (sunagimo), heart (hatsu), chicken liver (reba), and finely minced meatballs known as tsukune. Grilled vegetables include Japanese mushrooms, leeks, small green peppers, gingko nuts, parboiled asparagus and shiso (perilla) leaves.
Traditionally, there are two types of yakitori seasoning: salt and a kind of teriyaki sauce called tare, a sweetened soy sauce. Many successful yakitori chefs have their own original—and highly secret—recipe for tare. The best restaurants use the same batch of tare sauce for years, adding to it when needed, while a special combination of flavors evolves as the mixture ages. Condiments like sansho (mountain pepper) and shichimi-togarashi (seven-spice chili pepper) are also must-haves in order to eat yakitori in the proper tradition.
Some yakitori chefs update their selection of condiments and sauces to include more unusual offerings, such as salt produced by traditional methods. Others go upscale by offering customers locally raised chicken, or chicken from privately contracted farmers. There are even differences in the charcoal used: the best yakitori is made using bincho charcoal, hot-burning and known for being smokeless and odorless.
Whatever the variations may be, yakitori remains fundamentally unchanged as it has for over one hundred years: it is the simplest of foods, bite-sized and grilled to a juicy and savory perfection.
