I Stopped Buying Barbecue Sauce: This 20-Minute Japanese Recipe Beats the Bottle

📌 DESCRIPTION You spend the afternoon at the grill, and the chicken reaches the table black on the outside and slightly bitter underneath. Most of us blame the grill or ourselves, but the trouble usually starts with what's in the bottle and when it goes on. I'm Kenji Nakamura, a 78-year-old retired potter from a mountain village in Gifu, Japan, now living in Kansas City. In this video I share the tare my grandmother kept beside her small clay shichirin grill. Tare is a Japanese finishing sauce made from soy sauce, mirin, sake, grated apple, garlic and ginger, not corn syrup. It takes about twenty minutes and costs around three dollars a jar. We look at how to read the first ingredient on a label, how to tell true hon mirin from mirin-style seasoning, and lower-sodium choices. There's also a gentler way to grate for tired hands and a habit from the pottery studio that changes how a glaze sets. In the spirit of mottainai, leftover rice becomes yaki onigiri. And there is one lesson about fire that I learned the hard way on the Fourth of July. If you watch your salt, please check with your doctor first. 00:00 Why the chicken turns black 01:42 The label check to do today 02:55 Grandmother's clay grill and tare 04:29 Soy sauce and a note on salt 05:52 Mirin and the label trap 07:54 Sake, apple, garlic, ginger 11:14 A Fourth of July story 14:56 Simmering the tare 16:19 The tasting mistake 17:28 A potter's way to glaze 19:10 A two-pan kitchen test 20:15 What a pottery kiln taught me 24:24 Chicken, salmon, yaki onigiri 26:11 Storing tare safely 28:48 The full recipe in one place 🏷 HASHTAGS #JapaneseMethod #JapaneseLifestyle #JapaneseCooking #JapaneseHome #Mottainai #Tare #HomemadeBBQSauce #BBQSauce #Yakitori #YakiOnigiri #Mirin #SoySauce #Shichirin #GrillingTips #CharcoalGrilling #LowSugar #CookingFromScratch #SustainableLiving #SimpleLiving #JapaneseRecipes