Wow: how to get 13 different yakitori cuts from one chicken
We regularly eat chicken thighs, chicken breast, chicken wings and chicken legs. But have you ever (consciously) eaten chicken neck, gizzard or tail? In this video, a Japanese yakitori chef shows how many different parts you can get from a chicken.
Do you only thread a few cubes of chicken breast onto a skewer when you make yakitori? What a waste! – if we’re to believe Japanese yakitori chef Atsushi Kono (and we’re happy to). He threads everything from tail to neck and even the knees onto a stick.
How? He shows this in a video on Eater to two American butchers. When the yakitori chef cuts off the chicken knee and says that it’s a popular cut, the butchers respond: ‘We don’t even ask customers if they want to keep the knee, they never want to.’ But what does it taste like? ‘It’s like eating a chickenwing’, one of the butchers concludes while tasting it.
Overrated
Using all these different parts of the chicken is nothing new in yakitori restaurants. Chef Matt Abergel of Yardbird in Hong Kong already wrote an entire book about it. And with this video from Eater, you can now make all those different types of yakitori yourself. If we’re to believe Abergel, it’s well worth it: ‘Chicken breast is, in my opinion, the most overrated part of the chicken. It can be delicious and of course we use it too, but I find it the least exciting. The neck is the most underrated part; it has a lot of flavor.’
Watch the video of the yakitori chef with the two butchers below:
