Japanese Chicken Meatball Recipe (Tsukune)
Tsukune is a Japanese chicken meatball. Restaurants often skewer them, cook them on a grill and flavor them with a kind of teriyaki sauce. In this recipe, I show how to cook tsukune at home on a stove top with homemade tsukune sauce. I shaped them like a small hamburger steak and cooked them in a frying pan. This method is much easier to make quickly at home. Please try this Japanese Chicken Meatball Recipe and let me know what you think!
In this recipe, I created three types of tsukune: plain, edamame, and corn. I highly recommend trying them because they are absolutely delicious! Please try all three and let me know which one is your favorite!
Ground chicken is the main ingredient for Tsukune. I made the Tsukune sauce with traditional Japanese seasonings including garlic, cooking alcohol, miring, ginger, soy sauce, sugar, and sesame oil.
Tips for Making Japanese Chicken Meatball Recipe (tsukune)
- There are other methods for cooking tsukune on the grill with a skewer, but it takes much longer and is more effort than cooking tsukune based on this recipe.
- While I added edamame and corn to the tsukune, you can also add other types of vegetables. These include water chesternuts, lotus root, and other vegetables.
- Tsukune is a type of dish often served at izakayas (Japanese informal bar) and yakitori locations. Bar owners serve tsukune as an otsumami (appetizer) with beer. Kinpira is similar in that it is also served as otsumami. While Japanese chicken meatballs are not often cooked at home, this version is delicious and easy to cook at home.
- In this version, I created a type of patty, but you can use this same recipe to make different shapes. You can skewer and grill these different shapes (long cylinders on a stick) if desired.
- In Japan, we often dip the tsukune in mixed raw egg. If you have the opportunity to safely eat tsukune with raw egg, I recommend it.
Japanese Tsukune (Chicken Meatballs) Recipe
Ingredients
Meatball Ingredients
- 1 onion
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 200 grams ground chicken (~1/2 pound)
- 0.25 tsp salt
- 40 grams edamame (1/4 cup)
- 30 grams corn (~1/8 cup)
Tsukune (Japanese Chicken Meatball) Sauce
- 1 tsp grated garlic (I used garlic and ginger from squeeze tube)
- 1 tsp grated ginger
- 1 tbsp cooking alcohol
- 1 tbsp mirin
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp sesame oil
Bringing it together
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
Instructions
Making the meatball (tsukune)
- Peel and dice an onion
- Add 2 tbsp of corn starch and the diced onion into a small mixing bowl
- Add the chicken into a larger mixing bowl with 0.25 tsp of salt and mix together
- Add the diced onions and corn starch into the larger mixing bowl with the ground chicken
- Mix well and divide into three separate piles within the mixing bowl
- Make meatball patties from one of the piles
- Add the edamame to one of the two remaining piles and form into meatball patties
- Finally, add the corn to the final pile and form into meatball patties
Making the Tsukune (Chicken Meatball) Sauce
- Add the grated garlic, grated ginger, cooking alcohol, mirin, soy sauce, sugar and sesame oil into a small mixing bowl and mix well
Cooking the Chicken Meatballs
- Add 1/4 tbsp of vegetable oil into a frying pan
- Add all the chicken meatballs into the frying pan and fry on medium heat until the bottom is browned
- Flip the meatballs and fry on the other side until browned
- Add the tsukune sauce into the frying pan and flip the meatballs to season both sides
- Reduce the sauce until the water content is low
- Plate, serve, and enjoy!
Video
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