Start by cutting your chicken in bit-size pieces. Roughly 1 inch each.

Grab a pan and pour in the soy sauce, mirin (or wine), a tiny drop of sesame oil and add the sugar, ginger, garlic and cayenne. You can also add some finely minced chili pepper to the sauce and simply omit the cayenne. Whatever rocks your boat. Give everything a good stir and bring to a boil. Simmer over low heat for about 15 minutes. I even spike it with some orange zest at times, love the flavor it gives. Stir occasionally!

Go for medium sized skewers and don’t bother putting them in water, it won’t prevent them from burning. Now thread chicken pieces onto skewer.

 Think about stirring your yakitori sauce every now and then. The sauce will bubble when it’s stirred, this is perfectly normal.

Keep going on until you have precisely the amount you wanted. I went for 3 of them.

The sauce will be done by now. Stir until all the bubbles are gone and divide the sauce over 2 different bowls. It will appear fairly thin, but that’s normal—once it has cooled off it will turn into a thick yet still liquid syrup. I usually apply the raw chicken marinade while it’s still a little more liquid—this will prevent the yakitori from easily burning during grilling.

Use one of the sauce bowls to marinade the raw chicken with and save the other one to baste the yakitori with after it’s cooked. You don’t want to mix those two up! I applied the marinade to one side.

Lightly oil a grill-plate or use the grill in your oven. Place the yakitori on the grill with the marinaded side down and lightly baste the other side. Cook the chicken for about 5 minutes (until well done) while flipping them over every now and then and occasionally basting them.

Before serving them, baste them lightly with the ‘fresh’ cup of yakitori sauce that will have thickened by now, this will make them look slightly darker. You can sprinkle them with sesame seeds to make them look even prettier. These are so good with fried vegetable rice and satay sauce!

See how easy it is?