Yakitori Sauce

As basting sauces go, Yakitori belongs with the best of them. Tasty, sweet and imbued with conentrated essence of chicken. During cooking skewers of grilled chicken are dipped into the basting sauce, tare. This means that as time goes by its favor will improve. There are Yakitori restaurants in Japan that claim to have been using the same Tare base for a decade.

The following recipe doesn't require this sort of devotion to the sacred art of Tare making,but still achieves a wonderful result.

Ingredients

• 8 chicken wings
• 150 ml (3/4 cup) sake
• 260 ml (1 1/3 cups) mirin
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 260 ml (1 1/3 cups) shoyu (soy sauce)

Preparation

• Cook the chicken wings until they are browned over about half their surfaces.

• Pour the sake and mirin into a saucepan and bring to the boil.

• Turn down the heat to low and add the sugar, stirring until it has disolved.

• Add the shoyu (soy sauce) and browned chicken wings, bringing it to the boil.

• Cook over a low heat for 30 minutes.

• Strain the sauce through a sieve lined with a kitchen towel, reserving the chicken wings.

• Let the sauce cool to room temperature, before storing in the fridge.

The tare will keep in the fridge for up to a month although with it tasting as good as it does it is unlikely to last that long.

Don't forget those chicken wings, they make an excellent snack washed down with a glass of beer.

Enjoy.