Tsukune

Ground chicken, worked and shaped into a skewer. The surface glistens with a glaze of sauce, and the bite gives way soft and fluffy, releasing juice as you chew. Many shops mince in cartilage, so a sudden crunch interrupts the softness here and there — a way to break up what could otherwise be a one-note ground-meat dish. Within the whole lineup of skewers, this is the one built by hand rather than cut from the bird, and its texture belongs to a different family from everything else on the menu.

Ground chicken is mixed with onion, tofu, egg, ginger, and the like, kneaded until it turns sticky, then shaped into ovals or balls and skewered. Meat ground mostly from thigh comes out fattier and juicier; mostly breast, leaner and milder — the blend shifts the whole character of the skewer shop to shop. It's grilled in stages while being brushed with sauce, and dipping the finished skewer in raw egg yolk is a common way to eat it — both the grilling and the seasoning leave plenty of room for a cook's own judgment.

Tsukune is thought to have grown out of a way to make use of trimmings and cuts too awkward to skewer whole, by grinding them instead. Ground meat delivers a softness no sliced cut can, and in doing so adds a whole separate category — the "kneaded" skewer — to the yakitori lineup, filling in a texture that cutting alone could never produce.