The Japanese Grill: From Classic Yakitori to Steak, Seafood, and Vegetables [Paperback]

As the owner of several grilling and BBQ cookbooks (yes there's a difference!) I rate this one among the best out there. I've tried several recipes from 'The Japanese Grill' and each one of them has added welcomed variety and flavor to my repertoire of faithful standbys. There is a commitment here in that you will need to to rustle up certain key ingredients from a local or online Asian market (fortunately I live close to several) but the results are well worth it.

I highly recommend the recipe for skirt steak with red miso marinade. I've made it it twice already both times to rave reviews. I also recommend the recipe for yuzu kosho shrimp which was quick and easy to make and delivered shrimp with intense flavor. The recipes are straightforward and consist of simple and healthy ingredients. Overall, Salat and Chef Ono have brought a lot to my table (literally) with their recent series of simple and adventurous Japanese cookbooks (I also own their 'Noodles', and 'Hot Pots'!).

If you're a committed, serious griller looking for new twists and high returns, I would not hesitate to start your grilling season by exploring 'The Japanese Grill.'

I've been trying to get into yakitori grilling for some time and thought this book would offer some good advice, while it did offer sources for equipment and some nice tips the overall package was a bit underwhelming.

For example the section on yakitori and yakiniku grilling recipes were all basically the same but spread out over many pages. The recipes itself were so stupidly simple that I didn't even need the book to tell me some of the things in the first place. This is one of those cooking concepts that only require you to read a few sentences to understand many recipes.

Note, finding red yuzu kosho is very difficult despite the fact that I myself, being Asian and living in a highly populated Asian area with many native Japanese, its nowhere to be found and even if I could find it its expensive enough as it is to use as a marinade for large amounts of food. I suppose if you are cooking for a tiny household and have a Japanese-sized appetite then it'd be economical but even using regular yuzu kosher is expensive and the author provides little alternative.

I feel the book is really dumbed down and in fact I feel patronized as a cook.

I received this book from the publisher to review and after doing a read-through, I found several recipes that sounded absolutely fantastic. There are, however, some key flaws that caused me to rate 3 stars instead of 4. I bought a grill just to review this book. (convenient excuse!)

First, one of the ingredients in their Yuzu Kosho master recipe, the red yuzu kosho, is extremely hard to find in my city, which actually has a heavy Asian population. I'm still searching, but I've already tried four markets, two of which were actually Japanese markets, and could not find red yuzu kosho. You can buy it here on Amazon, but it will cost you about 18 bucks including shipping for a tiny bottle. I didn't feel like dishing that much out to be true to the recipe. Instead, I'll use the green yuzu kosho I did find and hope for the best, though the recipe doesn't say you can substitute green for red. In any case, having such a hard to find ingredient in a master recipe really annoyed me.

There are over a hundred recipes in the book, which is really great volume wise, but the book suffers in photographs. Out of 115 recipes, only about 24 or so have photos. Recipes don't refer to page numbers of photos either. If this isn't a big deal to you, you'd probably be really happy with the amount of recipes. The photos don't always match the instructions. For example, an eggplant has different cuts in the photo than instructed and the photo of green beans are a pale green, a sign of overcooking, and their recipe states never to overcook your green beans.

Cooking wise, I haven't been all that satisfied with the two recipes I've tried so far. The Classic Yakitori sauce was very time consuming and took me about 2 1/2 hours to make, then when you count skewering and grilling, it's about 3 1/2 hours. I didn't think the yakitori was that tasty, but this is probably due to me not pouring sauce on the chicken before eating. Thankfully the sauce is re-usable if you boil it before storing, so I won't have to start from a whole chicken next time, if I even do it again. Their photo tutorial on how to de-bone a chicken was very informative, but it's not something I want to be doing all the time. I'd rather be able to make a marinade from ingredients than have to simmer a chicken carcass for hours. Sure, authenticity is great, but when you have to break your back to achieve it, I'll settle for something easier and just as tasty.

I also cooked the steak on the cover with ribeye steaks using the garlic soy sauce marinade and it wasn't very flavorful. My husband, who is usually always happy with my cooking, felt he should be honest and told me it basically had no taste. I followed the directions exactly and only used the meat plus the marinade AND I marinated it longer than the recipe said to. If I cook this again, I will salt and pepper the steaks. With the soy sauce, I thought it would be too salty if I did, but it definitely needed it.

I will continue cooking the recipes, this time trying some seafood and side dish recipes, but thus far I'm not as impressed as I'd hoped to be.

UPDATE: I've sadly decided to downgrade my review to 2 stars. I've tried 4 different recipes in this book and haven't been all that impressed with the best one and really didn't like the other three. They just don't really have a lot of taste, even with longer marinating times than the book says. I'm probably going to donate this to the library or something.