Shio-koji pork skewers 塩麹豚肉の串焼き

With a success of shio-koji marinated chicken thighs, I made these "Yakitori"-style (or "Muroran" style) pork skewers. One is shio-koji marinated and the other, sweet miso marinated (the one more blackened is shio-koji marinated in the picture below).


Pork: These are the trimmings from two pork tenderloins. I cut them in bite size chunks.

Marinades: One is shio-koji and the other sweet miso (white miso 2 tbs, sugar 1 tsp and mirin 2 tbs). I put enough marinade to coat the meat in Ziploc bags, massaged it and removed as much air as possible and sealed (left in the picture below, the brown one is miso marinated and the white one shio-koji marinated). I let it marinade at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Skewers: I first soaked bamboo skewers in warm water while the meat was marinating. I alternated pieces of meat with sweet onion and made 4 skewers (left in the picture below)


Cooking: Since previously, I badly burned the chicken thighs, I decided to cook these skewers in the oven first. I preheated my toaster oven to 350F (in the convection mode) and baked the skewers for 15 minutes. Then, I switched to the hi-broil mode and moved up the grate so that the skewers were one inch below the broiling elements. After 2-3 minutes when the one side started charring, I turned them over and broiled for 2 minutes.

I served this over the bed of couscous. Again we were impressed with the tenderizing effect of shio-koji despite the rather brief marinating. The shio-koji version was tender, moist and succulent. The sweet miso version had a nice sweet nutty flavor but was considerably more chewy.