Chicken Wings with ‘Addictive Cabbage’

The beauty of chicken yakitori is that all the meaty parts of the chicken can be used. Chicken wings are both meaty and crispy so normally a sort after commodity, a staple of the yakitori menu. Chicken wings are here served with a cabbage salad often served with yakitori called ‘addictive cabbage’.

For the surplus drumettes in below recipe I recommend marinating in a chili marinate and cook in the oven for 45 minutes at 180 degrees and serve with a pseto dip. This recipe is available in my book on Robata and Yakitori: Robata - Japanese Home Grilling.

Binchotan coal give a pure grilling, it is a penetrating infrared heat reaching above up to 600 degrees C. Its recommended to use schichirin or yakitori grill for binchotan coals as they are designed for this level and f heat. Or alternatively for a DIY version use a standard BBQ, but place an additional BBQ griddle or a couple of foil wrapped bricks at the base of your BBQ to ensure that the high heat from the binchotan coals do not damage your grill. To start the binchotan coals use a self lighting bag of coals, ignite and then add 4 binchotan coals on top. The grill will be ready in 20-25 minutes.

Serves 4 and as part of a Izakaya meal

24 x 3 joint wings

100 grams caster sugar

50 grams sea salt

3 cm piece konbu

100 ml. boiling water

400 ml. cold water

1/2 white cabbage

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon of olive oil

1 teaspoon of chia seeds

4 tablespoon tare sauce

1 tablespoon mirin

1 tablespoon sake

100 ml. cold water

First prepare the wings. Using a cooks knife divide each wing into wing tip, middle wing tip and upper wing piece, also called the drummette. Use the wings for tare sauce, recipe here and set aside the chicken drumettes for the recipe recommended in the above.

For the brine, put the salt and sugar in a mixing bowl with the boiling water and whisk well until dissolved. Top up the bowl with the ice cold water and the konbu. Leave the chicken wings to brine for 4-6 hours in the fridge.

Prepare the ‘addictive cabbage’: cut the cabbage into quarters and remove the stalk. Cut each quarter into 3 wedges and then cut each wedge into a diamond-shaped pieces. Place the cabbage in a mixing bowl, add the sea salt, give it a good mix and set aside for 20 minutes. Mix mirin and sake with 200 ml. cold water and transfer into a food safe spray bottle.

Start the robata grill as instructed in the above. Rinse the cabbage, leave to drain in a colander for 5 minutes, place in a serving bowl and dress in sesame oil, olive oil and chia seeds.

Prepare the skewers allowing 3 wings per portion, threaded on 2 parallel skewers. Place the skewers over the glowing binchotan coals, resting the skewers on the edge of the robata pit (or place them on a griddle topping the grill). After 2 minutes spray with the sake-mirin spray, then turn the skewers and repeat the process at 2-minutes intervals until the chicken is just cooked. Now start brushing the wings with tare sauce, turning the chicken 4 times and re-applying the tare sauce, until they are tender, crisp and sticky. Serve immediately with the ‘addictive cabbage’.