Iga-yaki Grill Recipe...Grilled Seafood with Ponzu Sauce

After the meaty "yakiniku" night, we decided to do grilled seafood.
With Iga-yaki grill, "Yaki Yaki San", we can enjoy table-top grilled seafood dinner with very easy preparation.

Here's how we do our Yaki Yaki San seafood.


First, get the ingredients to cook on "Yaki Yaki San" ready. Sashimi grade salmon (sliced and seasoned lightly with salt), jumbo shrimp (tail on), calamari legs, cut asparagus, baby bell peppers, and enoki mushrooms.


Sauce and condiments. Homemade yuzu ponzu with grated daikon, lettuce wrap, sliced scallion, daikon sprouts, garlic, and lemon wedges. Very simple.


Get "Yaki Yaki San" ready by pre-heating and brushing oil on, and start grilling. Lightly-seasoned jumbo shrimp.


Calamari legs and vegetables.


Salmon sashimi slices are grilled to rare. It's good in a lettuce wrap.

This Iga-yaki grill, "Yaki Yaki San", which is made from ancient clay doesn't release smoke, and it does a nice and calm grilling. I love it so much.

Happy donabe life.

Home "Yakiniku" Dinner with Iga-yaki Grill

A friend came over and we did a family-style grilled meat ("Yakiniku") dinner at home. With our Iga-yaki grill, "Yaki Yaki San", we can do smokeless table-top "Yakiniku" dinner at home. It's so easy and so much fun.

We got 4 kinds of meat ready...beef tongue (lightly marinated in salt, pepper, sake, and sesame oil), prime "kalbi" short rib slices (seasoned with salt and pepper), beef tri-tip slices (marinated in soy-honey sauce), and pork belly slices (marinated in salt, pepper, and sake).


Different kinds of sauces (apple miso sauce, ssamjang, and sesame soy sauce) and condiments were prepared.


Once some oil was rubbed on the grill top, we just kept grilling and eating. This grill is made of 100% historic Iga-clay, and it does a quiet and effective cooking while releasing virtually no smoke. You can find my basic "Yakiniku" recipe with "Yaki Yaki San" here.

To keep the grill top clean (and for easy cleaning at the end), between every batch, I just place a few ice cubes on the grill top and wipe with a paper towel. That's it.

We had a nice big meal.
Happy donabe life.

Iga-yaki Grill Week...Beef Tri-tip and Sun-dried Mushrooms

It was time for red meat.


I got beef tri-tip meat and sliced for table-top grilling on our authentic Iga-yaki Grill, "Yaki Yaki San".  I seasoned half of the slices simply with salt and pepper, and for other half, I marinated in soy-based marinade (grated ginger, grated garlic, 1T sake, 1T honey, 3T soy sauce, 1T sesame oil) for a couple of hours.


Yaki Yaki San was set on a portable gas burner at the dining table.  Once the grill was ready, we started with the non-marinated meat first.  I love that Yaki Yaki San releases no smoke or very little during cooking.  So, I never need to worry about the room becoming smoky.  Also, to me, the way Yaki Yaki San cooks meat is quite spiritual...it's quite calm and almost like the meat is meditating.  And, when the meat is ready, it's cooked evenly and tastes juicy and so flavorful.  I tried some pieces with Ume-shichimi (plum-flavored 7-spice paste) from Fukuoka, Japan.  Delicious.

No wonder there are many Yaki Yaki San fans among restaurants in Japan and they have menu for cooking with Yaki Yaki San.  I heard that there is a very popular horse meat restaurant in Osaka, where Yaki Yaki San is set at every table and the customers cook different parts of horse meat on Yaki Yaki San...honestly, I want to go there!


I tried grilling (1-day) sun-dried shimeji and enoki mushrooms on Yaki Yaki San, too.  This was a recommendation by Nagatani-en (the producer of Yaki Yaki San) people.  Wow, this was definitely different from grilling fresh mushrooms and I liked it so much!  The texture of the grilled sun-dried mushrooms was so meaty and the more I bit the more I could taste the deep umami flavors.  It was great with my homemade chunky la-yu.


The last item for the grill was the marinated beef tri-tip.  Just a couple of hours of marinade made the meat even more tender and it was super juicy.  I made a wrap with nori seaweed.

What a great grilling dinner without smoke.  Yaki Yaki San is wonderful!

Happy donabe life.

Iga-yaki Grill Week...Seafood & Chicken night

Outdoor grilling is typically a summertime thing for us, but table-top Iga-yaki grilling is for all year round whenever we feel like it.

We call it terroir of Iga, because our authentic Iga-yaki Grill, "Yaki Yaki San", is made from 100% clay from Iga, Japan.  This ancient clay promotes far-infrared radiation (like charcoal on the grill) and cooks the ingredients very efficiently.  But, it doesn't make loud cooking noise.  Also, during cooking, the grill releases very little smoke, if any.  So, we don't have to worry about our small dining room filled with smoke, or even setting off the smoke alarm by accident!

Getting the dinner ready with Yaki Yaki San is so easy.  These were all the ingredients for the night.  Jumbo scallops (sliced in half), shrimp, and chicken thighs were all simply marinated with shio-koji for a couple of hours.  Some veggie, condiments (homemade chunky la-yu, yuzu-kosho mayo, scallion, cilantro, lime wedges, and lettuce wraps.

Yaki Yaki San was set on a portable burnet at the dining table, and once the grill was ready, ingredients were arranged on the surface of the grill.

It's always fun to watch the ingredients getting cooked and releasing nice aroma.  Mmm...everything came out really nice and flavorful.  

Such a wonderful way to enjoy simple ingredients.  Yaki Yaki San is our star!

Happy donabe life.

Super Bowl "Yakiniku" with Iga-yaki Grill

Last Sunday, we did our version of Super Bowl dinner. We did "yakiniku" (grilled meat) with our table-top Iga-yaki gril, "Yaki Yaki San".

Our special grill, made of the ancient clay from Iga, Japan, was just set on the table-top burner. We got all the ingredients ready. So, all we had to do was just cook, eat, drink...all at the table while watching the gave on TV. We got some beef tri-tip, chicken, and kurobuta "ton-toro" (fatty neck to shoulder meat of kurobuta pork), as well as mushrooms to cook on the grill. We also had some salad and appetizers.

This is a brilliant smokeless table-top grill. All the meat cooked perfectly juicy and flavorful. We also made some "temaki" style by wrapping the meat with donabe rice in nori seaweed.

You can find the basic Yakiniku recipe on toiro's website. Hope you will try it at home.

Happy donabe life.