Stumbling across unexpected street festivals was my favorite part about the year and a half I spent living in Japan. Almost without exception, every festival I unwittingly arrived at would have a yakitori stall, staffed by someone with their sleeves rolled up, shouting greetings at passersby, taking orders, and rotating dozens of skewers in rapid succession with surgical precision. Every aspect of these stalls felt tailor-made to draw me in: the jovial person behind the grill with the festival headband keeping the sweat out of their eyes, the sizzle of chicken fat dripping onto coals, but most of all, the amazing aromas emanating from that grill.
If you’re picturing me as a Looney Tunes character, floating through the air, being pulled by the nose by the enticing smell of chicken and caramelized tare-scented smoke, that’s not terribly far from the truth. What I remember most about the yakitori stalls, apart from the gravitational pull of the smell, is the intense heat I could always feel radiating from the grills I approached. At nighttime festivals, the glow from the coals is almost blinding, but the heat is what’s most intense—it’s no wonder the skewers are done cooking in a matter of just a few minutes.
I’ve eaten and cooked a lot of grilled food in my life, but traditional, expertly made yakitori is its own class of cuisine, especially when it’s prepared over a robata or konro grill, with binchotan made from ubame oak, harvested from the mountain forests of Kishu. Binchotan is widely considered by chefs to be the best charcoal in the world, prized for being exceptionally long-burning, odorless, and smokeless. Recently, I’ve tested yakitori grilled on a Weber with hardwood lump charcoal side by side with skewers cooked on a konro with true binchotan charcoal, and unfortunately for those of us looking to stay on a budget, the higher-priced option really does make a difference. This is not at all to say that I’m abandoning my trusty Weber or that it does a bad job grilling chicken—I would never—but the purely chicken flavor you get from grilling over binchotan is unmatched.
The difference in flavor comes mainly from the charcoal. Grill three simply seasoned chicken breasts over briquettes, hardwood lump charcoal, and binchotan, and you’ll be able to taste the difference right away. Briquettes often contain filler and accelerants, which can impart unpleasant flavors—notes of gas station, with a hint of nail polish. High-quality hardwood lump charcoal gives the chicken smoky, slightly woody flavors—flavors many people associate with good grilled chicken, and rightly so. But binchotan imparts virtually no additional flavor or aroma, which elevates the chicken in a way I’ve never really experienced with other cooking methods. The chicken tastes more chickeny—even the charred parts taste clean with almost no bitterness.
If you’re looking to really improve your skewer game this summer, it’s time to invest in a konro grill, some good quality binchotan, skewers, and the best chicken you can find. Keep reading for all the advice you need to get started.
Konro is sort of a catchall term for “grill” in Japanese, though you might also hear the word shichirin, particularly for smaller tabletop grills. Shopping on American sites, you’ll likely see “konro” used almost universally, regardless of the type or size of grill.
The smaller tabletop grills are fun for communal meals that you cook as you eat. These grills are typically handmade from clay, and painted, so they’re as beautiful as they are useful. If you’re cooking for one or two people, you don’t need a big setup. A small tabletop konro will do the trick and use less charcoal during every cook session. I like this round tabletop konro from Korin—it’s great for up to four people and comes with a grill grate and a wooden base to help protect your table. The shape and size offers flexibility in terms of what you can grill on it, from yakitori skewers to larger cuts of fish or meat. But if you’re just cooking skewered meats and veggies, this rectangular grill from MTC Kitchen might be the way to go. Rest the skewer ends on the outer edges of the grill so that your proteins and veggies are suspended directly over the coals, eliminating the need for a grate.
If you’re regularly grilling for a bigger party, consider investing in a large konro made from diatomaceous earth. The diatomite offers superior insulation, which helps the already long-burning binchotan last even longer. I was surprised to find that even after a long grill session, the grill itself doesn’t get terribly hot—I was able to rest my hand on the side of it after an hour of grilling while the charcoal was still glowing hot (don’t do this, though). The grill stayed the same temperature two hours after we removed the charcoal—that’s some serious heat retention. Storing this type of grill can be tricky, because they can’t get wet—the porous diatomite retains water incredibly well, which will lead to cracking the next time you cook with the grill. But if you have a garage storage space, this grill does a superb job of reflecting the heat back onto the food, increasing the overall efficiency of the charcoal.
Charcoal Konro Grill with Net
Binchotan is prized for being exceptionally long-burning, smokeless, and odorless. According to Tadashi Ono, author of The Japanese Grill, “the oak is fired in an earthen kiln for about a week, producing charcoal so hard it clinks like glass when struck together.” The fig-shaped kilns are made by hand from stone and clay, and the firing process rids the wood of any impurities, which is why the final charcoal is odorless. The very finest binchotan burns at incredible temperatures, up to 1,800°F, according to Ono.
When shopping for binchotan, start with a reputable source for Japanese cooking supplies, like Korin or MTC Kitchen. Kishu, in Wakayama Japan, is the birthplace of binchotan and the home of the very best binchotan you can buy. The makers there have been producing the sought-after charcoal the same way, by hand, for generations.
Hara Masaaki, the subject of A Treasured Creation, a documentary produced for NHK, shows just how arduous the process is. He considers himself a steward of the oak forest surrounding his coal pit and kiln, helping the forest grow through a process called selective cutting, which he says “helps manage the sunshine. We cut trees so that sunlight comes through evenly.” He does this by hand, with a small axe he keeps strapped to his back as he hikes through the mountains. Hara Masaaki explains that there aren’t many charcoal makers left in Kishu—the work is arduous and demands constant attention. The charcoal produced in Kishu has a long burn time, typically four to five hours, which is great for restaurants working through a long dinner service. Home grillers can extinguish the coal and reuse it again and again, until it burns away completely.
Other regions in Japan produce similar charcoal using the same process. Kei Kawamoto-Kales of Korin calls Kamitosa Binwari the silver medal charcoal in Japan. It doesn’t have quite the same staying power as the charcoal from Kishu, but it comes very close. If you’re just wanting to try grilling with binchotan for the first time and don’t want to go all in on a 23- or 33-pound bag of Kamitosa or Kishu charcoal, Korin offers five-pound bags of Kamitosa.
Kamitosa White Binchotan - Binwari
Sumi charcoal won’t give you the same smokeless experience that you’d get with Kamitosa or Kishu charcoal, but it is great to use as a starter fuel to get the more premium ones going. This is a briquette-style charcoal but doesn’t have any added chemicals—it lights faster than binchotan and has a burn life of about three hours.
Lighting binchotan can be a bit tricky because it takes considerably longer to ignite than most other charcoal. There are a few options for lighting binchotan, including using a chimney starter, but I’ve found that this isn’t the most efficient way to get it going. The easiest way to get binchotan lit is by starting with a less expensive charcoal, like Sumi, in a chimney starter. Once ignited, lay it down as a base in your grill, then add your binchotan—after about 30 minutes, your coal logs should be glowing hot.
Another option is to get a cast-iron coal starter, fill it with binchotan logs so the logs are standing vertically, and set it over a portable butane burner for about 20 to 30 minutes until they’re fully lit.
Unless you’re grilling for five or more hours, you may want to extinguish your binchotan and save it to grill another day. One way to do this is to cut off the air supply to the charcoal. Traditionally, this is done in a hikeshi tsubo—a special airtight, fireproof container used to snuff out flaming coals. These are difficult to come by in the States, so Kawamoto-Kales recommends using “an old donabe with the holes plugged. Many Japanese people do this at home.” Any airtight, fireproof container will do the trick with this method.
The much more dramatic method is to submerge the coals in water in a fireproof container—I used a steel stockpot. Just make sure the charcoal is completely dry before you try to reuse it; otherwise the coal will crack and shatter as it heats.
When you’re ready to reuse the charcoal, just light it using your preferred method.
Since the binchotan takes a long time to fully ignite, it’s best done with a cooking partner who can watch over the coals while you start prepping the skewers for your yakitori party. Negima (chicken and scallion) is a classic that graces most yakitori restaurant and izakaya menus, but I’ve always been partial to butabara (pork belly) and bacon-wrapped asparagus skewers. If you’re looking for non-skewered options, know that salt-grilled fish also benefits from the binchotan treatment.
As juices drip from the food onto the blazing hot coals, wisps of smoke rise, adding layers of complex flavor to each skewer. Rather than smoke from the charcoal, the food seasons and smokes itself as it cooks. Now, every time I feel the intense blaze of binchotan glowing in my konro and smell the chicken fat sizzling on the coals, I can almost hear the voice of a yakitori vendor calling to me from across the festival: “お客様、焼き鳥はどうですか?!” (“Hey, sir! How about some yakitori?!”)
Don’t mind if I do.
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