Eat them the moment they come off the grill.
When you sit down at the counter at Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo, the chef will present you with a perfect piece of nigirizushi, along with a command: “Please, eat this immediately.” You must enjoy the sushi at the height of its deliciousness, he insists—when the rice is still warm, the wasabi is still pungent, and the fish is still cool. Five minutes after it’s been made, it will have already lost its essence.My earliest yakitori experiences were on Omoide Yokocho near Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station.
There is a short window when yakitori is at its best, emanating an invisible cloud of deliciousness. It’s partly a product of the the wisps of smoke from the grill, where the chicken juices and tare vaporize over the superhot binchotan charcoal as they drip from the skewer. The volatile flavor compounds that come from the chicken add their own character to this delectable cloud too. At—my izakaya in San Francisco—I take the matter of yakitori immediacy very seriously.
At the yakitori spot on Omoide Yokocho, I ordered the tsukune first. Of all the dozens of grilled chicken preparations on a yakitori-ya’s menu, tsukune might be the most telling of the restaurant’s skill and point of view—every restaurant has its own style. Some chefs cook tsukune from a raw state in one go, while others poach them in oil or steam them before grilling.
It’s important to incorporate enough fat into the ground meat mixture . Chicken breast meat is far too lean, yielding tsukune that are dry and dense. But skin-on chicken legs have the perfect ratio of meat to fat to produce a tender, juicy bite. Ask your butcher to bone out and grind the thighs and drumsticks with the skin on. You could also