Want to show off your culinary skills to your dinner guests? Look no further than this classic Japanese dish with juicy chicken coated in a sweet and salty glaze

Want to show off your culinary skills to your dinner guests? Look no further than this classic Japanese dish with juicy chicken coated in a sweet and salty glaze. 

Yakitori negima is a popular dish served in many Japanese restaurants, as well as at Rouhi, but now you can recreate this crowd-pleaser at home. The star of the show is the tare sauce, made with soy sauce, mirin and sake. This deliciously sweet and salty glaze gives the chicken a caramelised coating that will leave everyone with a big smile on their face. In this recipe, we added some ginger and spring onions to the sauce for more flavour and depth and we’re also using chicken thighs – as these will stay nice and juicy when cut into smaller pieces.  

Recipe serves: 4  

Preparation time: 30 min  

Materials:  

1 cutting board 

2 pans  

1 chef’s knife  

1 kitchen brush  

8 metal skewers 

Long lighter or torch 

Meat thermometer 

Ingredients:   

For the skewers: 

650 g chicken thighs   

2 leeks 

For the tare:  

3 spring onions  

30 g ginger (peeled)  

150 ml sake  

25 ml mirin  

80 g sugar  

190 ml soy sauce  

Preparations: 
 

For the tare: 

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. 
2. Finely chop the spring onions and ginger.  
3. Roast the spring onions and ginger in the oven until they are golden brown. 
4. Heat the sake and mirin in a frying pan then use a torch or a long lighter to flambe the sauce until the flames go out.  
5. Add sugar, spring onions and ginger to the pan to caramelise.  
6. Add soy sauce and simmer for 15 min.  
7. Let it cool down, then strain through a fine sieve.  
8. Put the sauce back on a low heat and let it reduce by half. By doing this you are going to enhance the umami flavour and make it easier to glaze later.  

For the skewers:  

1. Slice of the white part of the leeks and blanch them in boiling water until tender.  
2. Cool them in cold water.  
3. When totally cool slice them length-wise and loosen the layers. 
4. Place your chicken on a cutting board and flatten with a pan to an even thickness.  
5. Slice into 3 cm wide pieces.  
6. Assemble your chicken and leeks onto your skewers with an even amount of each.  
7. Place your skewers on a baking tray and cook in the oven for 15-20mins.  
8. When almost finished cooking, glaze the chicken with tare and put back into the oven until the chicken looks sticky and shiny.  The chicken should be cooked through, you can use a meat thermometer to check – the right temperature for cooked chicken pieces is 165°F (74°C).