Yakiniku with Yakitori Marinade

[sxng9]

Yakiniku means grilled meat (in Japanese). No, I am not Japanese, but like most American men out there, I enjoy grilling and eating grilled meat, whether that's on a charcoal grill, wood grill, wood pellet grill or even a simple electric grill (which in this case, I'm using an electric grill). Sometimes when I hang out with my siblings, sometimes we enjoy just sitting at a table & grilling meat (that's cut into much smaller bite-sized chunks). There's no rules about what marinade to use when grilling meat, but I'm sharing what I use when I make grilled chicken (or pork or beef) at home.

Ingredients:

• Black Pepper
• Himalayan Sea Salt (or whatever salt you like) - you can leave out the salt, if you need to reduce your sodium intake
• 1/2 tsp of Soy Sauce
• 4-8 tsp of Shaoxing Cooking Wine (or sake) - adjustments vary on how much meat you're cooking
• Yakitori marinade (you can make yours from scratch or leave this out)
• any cut of grill-friendly meat (pork, chicken, beef, etc...) - I used chicken thighs for mines and since I had 5 leftover raw chicken wings sitting in the freezer, I included some wings (which may prove to be difficult to grill)

Also, there's really no set amount of salt, pepper, etc... to use. It depends on your liking and the amount of sodium you need to reduce for your health. Additionally, if you do need to reduce fat, then dispose of the chicken skin and perhaps substituting chicken thighs for chicken breasts.

Preparation Instructions:

1. Gather all of the ingredients
2. In my case above, since I'm using chicken thighs, I cut out the bone and leave the skin in.
3. After removing the bone, do a quick rinse of the chicken under the kitchen faucet. No need to do a full clean, since it's not required to wash store-bought meat. The purpose of me doing a quick rinse, is just to remove anything that might be left on the meat during the removal of the bone, which requires me to use a knife to cut into it.
4. Place the chicken pieces in a large bowl and rub some of the Shaoxing Cooking Wine on the chicken. Please note that you are not drenching the chicken meat in the Shaoxing Cooking Wine. You are simply just rubbing that into the chicken meat. The purpose of the Shaoxing Wine is to add a bit of flavor to the meat by tenderizing it. When you tenderize meat, you allow flavors to penetrate into the meat and add more flavor depth. Don't worry if you don't hit every single square inch of the meat, since when you marinade it with the yakitori marinade, it should cover the remaining.
5. Anyways, after rubbing the Shaoxing Cooking Wine on the meat, let it sit for about 15-30 minutes. The beauty of a real yakitori marinade (if you are using one - either store bought like I did or making your own), is that you don't need to let the meat sit for extended periods of time. With a real yakitori marinade alone, you can just cook the chicken immediately right after.
6. After 15-30 minutes, mix the rest of the ingredients into the chicken meat. You can certainly leave out the salt, pepper and soy sauce (if you're using the store-bought yakitori marinade like I did). Then let the meat marinade for about 1 hour (or up to overnight).

Cooking Instructions:

1. Whip out your grill. In this particular case, I'm feeling lazy today to do any after cooking cleanups, so I'm using a simple electric grill. Spray some cooking spray on top of the grill to help reduce the amount of meat that will stick to the grill upon cooking.
2. Turn on the grill and wait until it's ready. Then add the meat.
3. Grill to your satisfaction and occasionally, turning over the meat in between cooking/grilling.
4. After you're done grilling, enjoy your meal over laughing at niggers on Chimpout.com.

 

[SamboRambo]

That looks delicious!