The basic sauce for Japanese yakitori grilling, from Hiroko Shimbo’s book ‘The Japanese Kitchen’ page 405. This glossy-sauce for skewered chicken is made by cooking mirin, sake, sugar, and shoyu until it is thick and shiny. In Ms. Shimbo’s version, chicken drumettes are included and simmered to make the tare especially flavorful right from the beginning. Add some orange juice, honey, fruit preserves, spices, or other flavorings and you have your own teriyaki sauce.
Makes: 1 1/2 cups sauce
Prep Time: 45 minutes not including grilling the chicken wings
Broil or grill the chicken wings until they are charred over about half their surfaces.
In a medium pot, bring the sake and mirin to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium, add the sugar, and cook until the sugar is dissolved. Stir to prevent burning. Add the shoyu and chicken wings, and bring the mixture to a boil. Cook over low heat for 30 minutes. At the end of the cooking, the sauce will be thick and glossy.
Strain the sauce through a strainer lined with cotton cloth, removing the chicken wings (and use for snacks). Let the sauce cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for up to as a month. Reheat the tare before using it, and once every week between uses.
During each use, dip your skewered chicken parts into the sauce and let the excess liquid drip back into the pan, adding more flavor to the sauce each time it is used. Some yakitori restaurants in Japan even claim to have been using their sauce for years, adding sake, mirin, and shoyu when needed; that makes for their “secret” deliciousness.
After each use, you can strain (if needed) then refrigerate it for up to a week before you should boil or use it again. If you don’t grill often, freeze the sauce between use.