Yakiniku: The Japanese Cooking Method

The Japanese Cooking Method: Yakiniku

Primarily known for its fish-based culinary specialties, Japanese cuisine offers many other dishes. It is the ideal alternative if you want to eat a Japanese meal while enjoying delicious meat.

Do you know about Yakiniku?

The word Yakiniku (焼肉) comes from yaku (grill, 焼) and niku (meat, 肉). Therefore, it can be literally translated as "grilled meat". It is a Japanese method of cooking vegetables and meats, inspired by Korean barbecues. This globally known technique involves cooking over charcoal, gas, or a hot plate. 

What makes Yakiniku exceptional?

• The quality

The main ingredient of this dish is marinated beef. In Japan, there is a tradition of raising cattle to obtain exceptional quality beef.

However, it is also possible to find other types of meat such as chicken or offal. Yakiniku is also generally composed of vegetables such as carrots, mushrooms, onions, peppers, etc. The presence of fish is quite rare in this dish. 

• The conviviality

All restaurants offering this specialty have a grill for each table. This allows the consumers to cook their own meats according to their tastes and expectations. This way of doing things makes the experience particularly convivial. 

The meat is always served raw, in pieces, and most of the time without seasoning or sauce. Each customer has their own pair of tongs to place their pieces of meat on the grill in the middle of the table. When the meat is cooked, the pieces are directly seized with chopsticks to be tasted right away. This is also a hygienic method because in this way, the raw meat is in no danger of contaminating the cooked pieces.

In Japan, you will find a large number of Yakiniku restaurants.

But did you know that you can prepare this typical dish at home?

Follow all our advice. 

List of necessary ingredients (you can adapt it according to your tastes):

• 800 grams of fillet beef cut into thin slices
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 300 grams of mushrooms
• 4 peppers
• 2 cloves of garlic chopped
• 4 spoons tablespoons of cassonade
• 8 spoons tablespoons of soy sauce
• 4 spoons tablespoons of sake
• 1 spoon tablespoon of cornstarch diluted in a small glass of warm water
• 1 filament of sunflower oil

List of materials required for preparation:

• A salad bowl to store the sauce
• Tablespoons
• A chef's knife for the meat
• A knife for vegetables

How to prepare it? 

Cut the meat into small strips about 2 cm in size. Peel and cut the onions into thin rings less than 100 mm. Cut the mushrooms and peppers into pieces. 

For the seasoning, add all the ingredients from the recipe intended for the sauce to a salad bowl.