How Chef Atsushi Kono Makes Chicken Skewers From Wings to Testicles — Smoke Point

At NYC’s Kono, chef Atsushi Kono serves a 16-course yakitori menu featuring a rotating variety of charcoal-grilled chicken skewers. The skewers include chicken knee, chicken crown, ovary, and more.

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Credits:
Producer: Connor Reid
Directors: Murilo Ferreira, Carla Francescutti
Camera: Murilo Ferreira, Carla Francescutti
Editor: Howie Burbidge

Executive Producer: Stephen Pelletteri
Development Producer: Ian Stroud
Supervising Producer: Stefania Orrù
Audience Development: Terri Ciccone, Frances Dumlao, Avery Dalal
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– Feel like cooking is a very important tempo, not a slow cook. We need like this and this and that, and heat up and subbing. It’s not like a slow process. That’s tempo and rhythm. (grill sizzling) (upbeat music) All right, so this is a charcoal starter. So we start right, ready to grill. So I’m using Kishu Binchotan charcoal, which is a white oak from Japan. Binchotan basically keeps burning for almost like, two, three hours. This is from Japan, like a Japanese charcoal grill. Basically strong material, high temperature also works on this grill. Then also I use the this bar so I can control, depend over skewer size. Sometimes like a large size, some are small size, so I can control back and forth. So we just got the delivery from Pennsylvania, organic chicken. It’s kind of like Amish chicken, and free range organic. So this chicken is good for the yakitori, for the size. Each part’s very big. Almost like one chicken is like five, six pounds. It’s nice yellow fat, very dark meat. This chicken is for everything. So we can use it for the skewers and pate, and a bit of our appetizers. I love female chicken because of moist meat, it’s tender. But male chicken is a little tough. So also farmers, they don’t want to sell male chickens. Male chickens, they have a lot of work, they have to make babies. When I break down chicken, I can make over 28 kinds of different types of parts. People have no idea chicken makes over 28 kinds of skewers. So this is here the beautiful tenderloin, we call sasami. In Japan we can eat a chicken sashimi from this part. So this is not like a regular-style breakdown chicken thigh. So I can make four different kinds. So I have chicken oyster, inner thigh, knee, and drumstick. So first of all, take out the bones. The best parts, our signature for chicken oysters. This is a chicken thigh skin, you can imagine it’s going to be the same as a wing, crispy. And this is best part, it’s like juicy and tender. So this is breast meat and I can make three kinds. It’s different skewers. Chicken wing skewers, chicken breast, also shoulder, chicken wing drumstick, chicken wings here and shoulders. So here’s we call kushi. So which is a bamboo skewers. So we have two types. So one we call kaku gushi, angled skewer. It’s very strong. So the other one a round skewer. It’s not a strong skewer. So, good for the vegetables and small meat skewers. So I want to show you first of all, chicken wings. The skewer’s going to under the bone, straight into the meat. So from here under the bone skewers, also inside the meat. Okay, let’s go chicken knee. It’s a lot of rolling, roll and love. Chicken knee. So also I love this because I love crunchy. Also the outside of the meat is nice, soft and juicy, and crunchy at the same time. Okay, here’s the butcher station. Basically we spend like six hours for breakdown and skewers. We make around 600-700 skewers. So now he’s preparing the chicken wings. We break down the 80 pound chicken bone so we can get its tails, belly skins, chicken bellies and kidney. Also bones going to soup. So we have gizzards, liver, and hearts. So we have chicken crowns, this is fallopian tubes. Ovaries here. We call shirako, chicken testicle. It’s one of our best parts, so pure. This is so clean and creamy. So when you bite it, inside the mouth it melts, it’s like texture, like inside the mouth, pop! This is the crown. Actually good size. Poultry factories, they throw out a million things, like, like I mean lot of money thrown out. I’m like, "Stop it!" Something like that. This is the best for me. I think I serve ovaries in the US just here. So the original design idea is, this is the organ system. Chicken organs, everything connects: ovary, liver, heart, gizzard, all one contact. It is mini organ systems on the stick, and then I bring it to the charcoal grill. We show you the process of tsukune, like a chicken meatball. So our homemade meatball is basically chicken thigh and seasonal duck breast. So meatball basically it’s one of the signatures of a yakitori restaurant menu. Chicken thigh and duck breast. So we mix the seasonings. So I always keep challenged and this is still processing, not completely, I want to make it better. But so far this is my best meatball. So, I want to make it sticky, so it never breaks, and grills also very easily and also nicely heats up. So after I mix, I take the portion and almost like a little massage, because inside is a lot of air, almost like a rice ball. Chicken pâté, basically I use chicken thigh and liver. This is my signature. It’s like a chicken sandwich. Actually I’m doing authentic yakitori but not only yakitori. So also kappo-style. So kappo-style basically is like a kaisaki cuisine where all the time, seasonal, creating like a new dishes with yakitori skills. I grew up in my parents’ restaurant in Saitama prefecture in Japan. So all the processes I learned from them and then I just transferred that technique to the chicken. I came New York at 17 years old for summer vacation. One month I stayed here and it was a big trip. I was inspired by so many things in New York. It was hip hop and skateboarding. I started skateboarding and same time I would break dance. When you become chef, it’s not just "chef." So chef needs a style. So also dancers, b-boys, hip hop, they need a style. You have to find original, you have to find that not other people do this. Original things and foundation of yakitori, that’s my style. It’s very helpful from hip hop and dance. So another of our signatures, chicken roll. So this is inspiration from, actually, seafood texture. We use a chicken thigh skin. So originally, I wanted to make a similar scallop texture. This technique actually it’s originally from Western technique. So chicken thighs already marinated, salt and pepper and sugar and dashi. This is a little starch, starch works like a glue. So right now it’s going to be chicken roll with pumpkin soup. So after roll-up we are going to boil in the sous vide and then after it cools down we use like a torch. This is a chicken roll with a sea urchin with a seasonal pumpkin soup. This is basically a sous vide chicken roll and on top, a sea urchin from Hokkaido and seasonal pumpkin soup with a yuzu zest flavor. It’s very new and very creative, that dish. We put smoke, cedar smoke, inside the dishes and then light. So we’re serving, and when we open, cedar smoke comes out. And basically smoky pumpkin soup with chicken roll and sea urchin. Yeah, this one for the tare sauce. It’s going to be a nice char, smoky bone. And so we put it in the tare. So it’s going to be chicken umami in the tare sauce. So basically this is the chicken tare sauce for the yakitori. So that’s why we need extra chicken flavor and umami. It’s almost like six years old. And this is for the yakitori sauce. So this is like our flavor, like mother sauce. So some restaurants are very salty and some restaurant are very sweet, very thick. And yeah, each restaurant is different. So you can compare the, you know, each yakitori tare sauce. It’s dipped and little by little we caramelized all the skewers. And when you bite it, chicken juice and my tare, its combination, it’s beautiful. So this is for tonight for all the customers. So I’m making today’s selection. So this is a specialty box for today. We have gizzard, chouchin ovary, shirako, like a chicken testicle, and crown, feet. So, this is a Japanese pork belly and today’s seasonal mushroom, eringi. and this a Wagyu beef A5 from Miyazaki, and king crab from Alaska. – Now, I love so much chicken so maybe I feel like the yakitori process and yakitori service, it’s, I start to become so much a lover chicken. So because this process is very pure it’s the best ingredient, I can serve immediately. If it’s not delicious people won’t give me a smile, no reaction. Very immediately I can recognize it, so that’s why I’m working at the counter. So I try to communicate to the customers and what they like. That’s my hospitality, that’s my style.