Yakitori Grills offer street food style grilled meats, all in the comfort and convenience of your own backyard. Its compact and lightweight construction makes it quick and easy to prepare your favorite skewers, allowing all yakitori lovers to relive the Japanese market experience. Here are 3 of the best yakitori grills that will help YOU take your grilling to the next level.
Yakitori grills are an interesting upgrade to any kitchen, and a great way to make cooking and grilling at home more social and, worth saying, more fun.
Yakitori is a Japanese style of cooking in which small pieces of meat are skewered on a skewer and then grilled over a small bed of hot coals.
It’s the style of cooking at home that has made other styles of cooking, like Korean barbecue or Chinese stew, so popular.
This guide will show you different types of yakitori grills and help you choose the best one for you.
At a Glance: Our Top 3 Yakitori Grills
- Fire Sense Large Yakatori
A beautiful tabletop yakori built in a clay box with a large grilling surface. - Party Griller Stainless Steel Grill Charcoal
Grill A large freestanding grill with the perfect setting for those looking for an easy transition from traditional charcoal grilling. - Uten Barbecue Portable Yakitori Grill
Small and lightweight, this is simply the best portable yakitori grill out there.
Fire Sense Yakatori Large Charcoal Grill
Who is this Grill Perfect For?
For those of you who might want to talk or cook in groups, take advantage of your 17×10 inch cooking space and cook multiple skewers at once.
It’s also great for anyone concerned about safety when cooking at parties, as its safety clips ensure everything stays firmly in place with no risk of spills.
Fire Sense Yakitori Grill Review: Coming Soon
This grill combines the best of both worlds of yakitori grilling by combining a clay exterior with a ceramic interior. This clay-mode construction gives it a beautifully authentic look, while its ceramic inner coating ensures your food is grilled evenly without leaving any cold spots.
What also sets it apart is its ease of use. It has four ventilation doors at its base that you can adjust to regulate heat.
It also offers one of the largest grilling areas on our list of yakitori grills with 170 square inches of cooking space to work with. This can be securely hooked to the grill grate so that it does not wobble or tip over during use.
Its adjustable vents make it stand out from the crowd, while its authentic clay construction ensures it looks great on a patio or tabletop.
Easy to use, extremely durable and with plenty of cooking space. What more do you want?
Party Griller Charcoal Grill Made of Stainless Steel
Who is this Grill Perfect For?
This freestanding yakitori is ideal for users who want a garden stand with a more durable construction. If using an outdoor gas or charcoal grill has been your default choice over the years, transitioning to it will be easy.
Party Griller Yakitori Grill Review: Coming Soon
This is a unique yakitori grill designed for cooking quantities.
Crucially, it’s also a ton of fun to drive. If, like me, you’re used to a traditional North American grill setup, then using it won’t cause that great American culture shock.
It’s also made of durable stainless steel, so it can withstand heavy use for a long time. A good investment.
There are adjustable vents at each end of the grill, allowing YOU to increase or decrease the airflow and therefore the heat.
Then its stainless steel construction means it’s a lot easier to clean than most other types of grills.
Party Griller’s Yakitori is a respected and durable grill that should be perfect for anyone looking to make the switch from traditional charcoal grilling. Its adjustable vents make it easy to use and its stainless steel frame ensures durability.
It’s not traditional yakitori either, and it’s certainly a tabletop grill, so it won’t be for everyone. However, for users who are open to a more liberal take on yakitori, this is a great option.
Uten Barbecue Grill Portable Yakitori
Who is this Grill Perfect For?
This grill is ideal for people who want to try grilled yakitori or want something that is easy to store and keep out of sight.
Uten Yakitori Grill Portable Grill: Coming soon
Despite the fact that it’s lightweight and portable, Uten Barbecue hasn’t skimped on durability or reliability. It is made of high quality chrome wire and iron to make it heat resistant and safe to use.
It’s relatively small size makes it quick and easy to turn on, getting you up and running in minutes. However, this means that it can easily be dented if not handled heavily. If you also want something that’s built to last, you might not want to look anywhere else.
Also, there are 12 vents on the side, giving you a lot of flexibility in temperature control.
The perfect portable yakitori grill for camping or travel. Uten hasn’t made portability a reason to sacrifice quality, with materials engineered to retain heat well.
Durability is an issue with this grill as the material is likely to be dented, but if you just need something to carry then the Uten is perfect.
What is a Yakitori Grill?
The yakitori grill has similar appeal to Korean grilling as it has a party and social attitude towards cooking and allows you to grill while you eat.
What makes it different from Korean barbecue is that it is mainly prepared with skewers.
That may seem expected, but it is far from it. Although its name comes from the Japanese for “grilled chicken,” yakitori makes the most of a variety of meats and vegetables, and allows plenty of room for creativity.
Yakitori grills are much more compact than traditional outdoor grills , often being rectangular and extremely narrow. This construction is designed so that the ends of the skewers can rest on the edges of the grill. It’s its compact design that makes it the perfect DIY yakitori grilling project .
The charcoal remains under the food, but the grill is long enough to allow techniques such as 2-zone grilling and indirect grilling.
This is crucial as yakitori grilling is best done low and slow. As with barbecue smoking, yakitori is often cooked at around 200-250°F.
What Makes a Great Yakitori Grill?
The best yakitori grills are rectangular and compact in shape. This shape helps you with indirect grilling while ensuring the heat is distributed as efficiently as possible for your skewers.
Yakitori is also traditionally served at the table, so it’s important that the grill is small enough to be the centerpiece of the table without dominating the area.
An important feature is also a ceramic interior. This coating helps the heat emitted by the charcoal to radiate, ensuring consistent and even cooking temperatures.
Traditional yakitori grills were made out of clay. If you also want something older in construction and looks, this is one to check out. However, this is not critical and I personally don’t think it has anything to do with the actual performance of the grill.
What is the Best Charcoal for Yakitori Grills?
What makes the yakitori grill even more unique is that the charcoal needed is also different from the regular charcoal that we can use for outdoor grilling.
The charcoal that will likely be Binchotan BBQ.
Lumps of charcoal or briquettes may be needed, so don’t worry if you can’t get Bunchotan. But if you can get your hands on one, I highly recommend it.
Binchotan charcoal cleaner, which makes it ideal for use on a table. It’s also better able to produce consistent heat than more traditional forms of charcoal.
Writer & content creator. BBQ fanatic!
