Friday, November 19, 2010

Yakitori



Yakitori comes from Japan and are chicken skewers that are glazed in a sweet soy based sauce. They can be made with protein alone or mixed up with different vegetables. I used Japanese eggplant, red bell pepper and green onions in mine.

I know its the middle of Fall and I am bringing out the barbecue. I forget how cold it is in certain parts of the world right now. If it's too cold to barbecue, add a tablespoon or so of olive oil and stir fry all the ingredients in a large pan over medium high heat, until cooked, about 8 to 10 minutes.

I kept this dish simple and served the skewers with a side of short grain brown rice. YUM!


Makes about 6 skewers

Ingredients
* 1/3 cup Tamari
* 1/3 cup mirin
* 1/4 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
* 1 Tb rice wine ( I used cooking sake )
* 2 Tb fresh ginger, grated
* 1 pound prepared seitan ( I used this recipe )
* 2 red bell peppers
* 2 Japanese eggplants or any other type of slender eggplant
* 1 bunch green onions

Directions
1. Place the tamari, mirin, brown sugar, rice wine and ginger in a medium sized bowl and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Place half of the sauce aside.

2. Add the seitan to the bowl with the remaining other half of the sauce. Stir well to coat the seitan. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to marinate for 4 hours or up to overnight.

3. Remove seitan from marinade and start assembling your skewers. (If using bamboo skewers, allow to soak in water for about an hour). Thread the seitan, bell pepper, eggplant and green onions onto each skewer.

4. Preheat a barbecue grill, coat each skewer with a little olive oil to help prevent it from sticking to the grill. Also do a light coat on each skewer of the left over marinade. Add the skewers to the barbecue and cook, turning occasionally for 10 minutes or until browned slightly and cooked.

5. Place the remaining sauce in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 minutes or until thickened.

6. To serve, place the skewers on a plate along with the sauce.

11 comments:

  1. These are so pretty. The sweet soy sauce marinade sounds really good, and that seitan looks fab!

    I've been known to pull the BBQ out in the cold weather...I grill old school on one of those Weber bbqs too!

    These sound great; thanks for the recipe!

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  2. Wow that looks awesome! I'd be willing to freezer over my grill for some of that lol. Seriously, I've been known to grill during the winter. If the mood strikes, the mood strikes!

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  3. we're doing one last cookout this weekend before it turns cold here. i've never had grilled seitan, it looks great -- and that marinade sounds awesome!

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  4. these look fantastic! ive been thinking about making skewers for a long time but summer came and went without any. no grill in a big city! but these really look fantastic!

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  5. What pretty colors - I love the eggplant and red pepper. The sounds sounds really tasty, too.

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  6. awesome! I've never heard of this, but I am looking for some japanese recipes for my mofo adventures. your posts have all been so beautiful and meticulous... it's wonderful!

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  7. You have some really fantastic vegetarian recipes! These skewers look mouthwatering.

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  8. Love the color arrangement of these skewers.

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  9. Jacklyn, I haven't seen meat skewers that look this good in a long while. I still need to make that seitan, so I'm bookmarking this. Cauldron Boy and I want to start grilling again soon, so...
    Oh, and that eggplant looks perfect by the way-love that!

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