Recipe Swap: Yakitori

I love the Blogger's Choice them in the Taste of Home Cooking Recipe Swaps. It is when you are given another blog, and you can cook any recipe in that blog.

This time I was given the blog Oishii and I can't tell you how excited I was! I knew right away that I had to make an Asian dish as the authors lived in Japan for a few years.

As I started to browse, I was checking off so many recipes that I decided to make 2 specifically for this swap. This first recipe is Yakitori, and I recognized it as something I have ordered in Japanese restaurants. The second recipe I chose was for Vegetable Lo Mein (see below post).

I was surprised at the simple ingredient list for the marinade - just 3 things in the marinade. But wow, the flavor these 3 simple things gave the chicken was incredible. Jon and I ate every last piece of chicken - delicious!!! And because of the sugar in the marinade, it caramelized while on the grill, making it sticky sweet. We loved this!

Here is the recipe. The original recipe calls for chicken thighs, but we used chicken breasts.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup mirin (Japanese sweet cooking wine)
• 1-2 TBS. brown sugar
• 5 green onions (thick green onions work best)
• 6-8 bamboo skewers

Directions

• Combine the soy sauce, mirin and brown sugar. Pour over the chicken either in a shallow dish or ziploc bag. Marinate in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or overnight. (I marinated the chicken for 8 hours)
• Soak bamboo skewers in water for 30-60 minutes before cooking.
• Slice the thick part of the green onions into 1-inch long pieces, reserving the thinner green part for another use. Set aside.
• Heat grill to high
• Assemble the yakitori. Take the chicken pieces out of the marinade and put on the skewers, along with the green onion pieces. Grill for 5-6 minutes on each side, or until chicken is browned and cooked through.