Tsukune-inspired Chicken Meatballs

This post does a quick dive into the world of Japanese-inspired chicken meatballs. We’ll look at Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli’s recipe for Mortadella & Chicken Meatballs in Italian American: Red Sauce Classics & New Essentials (2021). Then I’ll share a recipe that I developed incorporating Rito and Tacinelli’s use of a cooked sausage to improve the flavor and texture of a chicken meatball. Definitions first.

 

In A Dictionary of Japanese Food (1995), Richard Hosking defines tsukune as meatballs. Although associated with chicken, tsukune includes ground or minced fish, fowl or other meat served grilled, simmered or fried.

 

Even when using wing, thigh or leg meat, chicken meatballs often benefit from additional fat and other ingredients to increase flavor and improve texture. When I make meatballs—whether pork, beef, chicken or shellfish—I typically add a number of ingredients to increase richness, such as finely minced onions sautéed in butter, grated cheese and whole milk. I add breadcrumbs for texture.

 

Even with these additions, I’ve never made a ground chicken meatball that tasted exceptional. To get better results, I tried incorporating traditional ingredients used in yakatori recipes. For example, Matt Abergel’s tsukune recipe in Chicken and Charcoal (2018) includes minced cartilage from the chicken’s soft breastbone. Other recipes add ground chicken skin (sometimes along with cartilage). In my household, these ingredients and their texture met resistance.

 

Then I came across Rito and Tacinelli’s tsukune-inspired mixture. Rito and Tacinelli turned chicken meatballs into something exceptional. They introduce their recipe in Italian American like this:

 

“We developed this dish as part of a special-occasion Japanese-inspired pasta omakase menu, feeling inspired by tsukune, the juicy ground chicken skewers popular as a drinking snack in izakayas. But it was so delicious that we now make these meatballs all the time, mixing ground chicken (ideally dark meat) and mortadella, the Italian-American version of bologna, which adds an extra dose of fat and flavor.”

 

Here’s their recipe for Mortadella & Chicken Meatballs, which makes about 28 meatballs.

 

2 cups nickel-sized chunks bread, crust removed (from about half an Italian-style loaf or baguette)

1 cup whole milk

½ pound mortadella, roughly chopped

½ pound ground chicken (preferably dark meat)

3 tablespoons Roasted Garlic Puree (on page 300 of Italian American)

1/3 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

1 tablespoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/3 cup thinly sliced scallions, whites only (4 to 6 scallions)

1 large egg

 

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spray the paper with nonstick cooking spray.

 

2. In a medium bowl, combine the bread and milk and soak until the bread is thoroughly saturated, about 15 minutes. Squeeze the bread in a clean kitchen towel to wring out as much milk as possible and discard the liquid. You should have about 1¼ cups of wrung bread.

 

3. Meanwhile, in a food processor, process the mortadella into small pieces, the same size as the ground chicken.

 

4. In a large bowl, combine the chicken, mortadella, bread, roasted garlic puree, parmesan, salt, black pepper, cayenne, scallion whites, and egg and mix by hand until well incorporated. Form into 1½-inch meatballs (about 2 tablespoons each) and place on the lined baking sheet.

 

5. Bake the meatballs until golden brown and firm, and a thermometer poked in the center reads 160°F, about 15 minutes.

 

Leftovers keep, tightly covered in the refrigerator, for up to 3 days.

 

Now, as delicious as these meatballs are, to my taste, they boarder on being almost...too rich. I’ve made Rito and Tacinelli’s recipe four or five times but now dial back the amount of mortadella. To my palate, the meatballs taste better with less added fat.

 

This made me wonder: what if, instead of mortadella, I made a chicken meatball kneading in a slightly leaner, lightly smoked, coarsely ground Japanese-style sausage called arabiki? I gave it a try and really liked the result. The pre-cooked arabiki sausage added just enough extra fat and a subtle, smokey flavor. Adding a cooked sausage with an almost crunchy bite to ground chicken also helps with the meatball’s texture.

 

After a lot of fine tuning, here's my take on a Japanese-inspired tsukune. You’ll see I use a few timesaving shortcuts. Replacing fresh bread with finely ground panko does away with the need to wring out milk-soaked bread with a kitchen towel. And hand-mincing the pre-cooked sausage eliminates the need to use (and clean) a food processor. The finished mixture weighs approximately 325 grams, which I use to form a dozen meatballs weighing about 27 grams each.

 

40 grams finely minced white onion

15 grams salted butter

pinch Diamond Crystal kosher salt

20 grams panko, finely ground

57.5 grams whole milk

5 grams finely grated Pecorino Romano cheese

5 grams tomato paste

2 grams mushroom seasoning powder

1 gram toasted onion powder

1 gram garlic powder

4 grams Diamond Crystal kosher salt

5 grams white sugar

1 gram ground black pepper

.35 gram yuzu shichimi togarashi

160 grams ground chicken, preferably leg meat

25 grams finely minced arabiki sausage

 

1. In a small pan, sauté the minced onion in the butter adding a pinch of salt to season. Put the cooked onions into a small bowl. Place the bowl into the freezer to quickly cool.

 

2. Put the finely ground panko into a medium size bowl and mix in the milk to make a slurry. Add the remaining ingredients. Add the cooled onions to the mixing bowl and knead the mixture by hand until well incorporated. 

 

3. Take a small amount of the ground chicken mixture and fry in butter or oil to judge for seasoning. If necessary, adjust the mixture by adding salt or sugar to taste.

 

4. Form the mixture into small meatballs. I keep a small bowl of ice water at hand to help form the approximately 1½-inch meatballs. Place on a small tray or plate, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour (or longer) before cooking. This refrigerator rest improves the meatball’s flavor.

 

Rito and Tacinelli bake their mortadella and chicken meatballs in an oven. I’ve never tried oven baking meatballs, but I see recipes that suggest this. Usually, I sauté meatballs. However, I’ve cooked these chicken meatballs in other ways (e.g., poached in a tomato sauce for pasta or simmered on top of rice and dashi in a Japanese donabe). I even pre-cook the meatballs by poaching them in chicken stock or dashi and adding the cooked meatballs into my dish of choice, such as an Italian timballo or lasagne. One constant: When using ground chicken, I always use an instant read thermometer to test a cooked meatball to make certain its center reaches 160°F. 

A little information on the ingredients.

 

I buy this brand of arabiki sausage at a friendly Japanese grocery called Yaoya-San on San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito, California. Berkeley Bowl West also carries these sausages. (Look for them across from the meat counter.) These lightly smoked pork sausages come pre-cooked and one sausage weighs 25 grams. Yaoya-San also, conveniently, sells ground chicken and all sorts of sliced pork and beef for Japanese dishes like sukiyaki and shabu-shabu.

The recipe for the mushroom seasoning powder comes from Danny Bowien's Mission Vegan (2022). To make a half recipe I blend 21.25 grams dried shiitake mushroom powder; 44 grams MSG; 16 grams Diamond Crystal kosher salt; and 2.5 grams granulated sugar. I use this powder whenever I want to add extra flavor. The mixture keeps for a month or so at a cool room temperature.

 

Queens-based Burlap & Barrel sells an excellent quality toasted onion powder and garlic powder. It also offers an interesting selection of hard-to-find spices and ingredients. (If you enjoy cooking Indian food, check out their Wild Hing powder.)

 

And finally, I am truly addicted to the yuzu shichimi togarashi mixture imported by The Japanese Pantry and made by the Yamatsu Tsujita Co. Ltd. located near Osaka, Japan. It’s fantastic to finish ramen, udon and tamagoyaki. It is also delicious on a fried egg sandwich. As I type this post, The Japanese Pantry is out of stock of this blend, but look for it. 

I find these chicken and arabiki sausage meatballs as versatile as they are delicious. If you cannot find arabiki sausages, try the recipe with mortadella à la Rito and Tacinelli. This version tastes rich but not as decadent as a 50/50 mortadella/ground chicken blend. Of course, always feel free to adjust a recipe to your personal preference. 

Armenian Arsig

I found the two recipe cards pictured above among my mother’s cookbooks.

I asked my mom about these recipes written out by her sister. My mom recalled eating both dishes as a young girl. She especially enjoyed Arsig, which the card spells phonetically. My material grandparents came from Chunkush (aka Chunkoosh), so my mother thought that recipe traveled from the region between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea to Chicago, and ultimately, to the San Francisco Bay Area. Being curious about family recipes, I set out to learn more about Arsig.

 

I searched my Armenian cookbook collection for a similar lamb and grape leaf stew recipe. No luck. I consulted Musa Dagdeviren’s outstanding The Turkish Cookbook (2019, Phaidon) which contains a host of recipes that I recognize as Armenian, but I didn’t see a dish comparable to Arsig. Nothing turned up when I tried various internet searches. Then fortune smiled upon me: I had Armenian Cuisine (2011) by Aline Kamakian and Barbara Drieskens sent from the Glendale Library, Arts & Culture (GLAC) to my local library. This cookbook contains a recipe for Gertembourt that the authors translate as Vine Leaf Stew. Although not identical to Arsig, the recipe for Gertembourt looks pretty darn close. When I google Gertembourt, my search returns a single hit: Kamakian/Drieskens’s cookbook on eatyourbooks.com.

 

The found Arsig recipe card lacks detail. I’ve cooked the dish, which serves 6 to 8, a number of times now. Here’s how I make Arsig.

 

1.4 liters / 48 ounces lamb stock

454 grams / 16 ounces brined grape leaves, cut into ¼-inch slices

1000 grams / 2.2 pounds boneless lamb shoulder stew, cut into 1½-inch cubes

794 grams / 28 ounces whole peeled tomatoes, cut with scissors into ½-inch pieces

0.5 grams / ¼ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

Kosher salt to taste

120 ml / ½ cup lemon juice from 2 large lemons

400 grams / 14 ounces bulgur wheat

 

In a 7.25 quart round Dutch oven, add lamb stock, sliced grape leaves, lamb, tomatoes with juice, kosher salt and cayenne. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, reduce to low heat, cover and cook. After 15 minutes, add lemon juice, cover and continue to cook at a low simmer for 2 hours.

 

After 2 hours, bring contents to a boil over medium heat, add bulgur wheat while stirring. Return to stew to a simmer over a low heat, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally. After 15 minutes, turn off heat, season to taste and let stew rest, covered, for 10 minutes.

 

Some notes. I use Karkazian Ranch Fresno Grape Leaves to make this dish. I sometimes use grape leaves imported from Armenia and from Bulgaria but think the Karkazian Ranch leaves tastier and much easier to handle. I do not rinse these leaves before slicing them for Arsig.

 

Food manufacturers grade bulgur wheat by size (e.g., extra fine, fine, medium, course and very course). In this recipe I often use Bob’s Red Mill Bulgur, which the company grades as medium. I also like Duru stone-milled bulgur from Turkey.

 

I buy both my lamb shoulder and lamb stock from The Local Butcher, located near the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Cedar Street in Berkeley. I’ve purchased a lot of lamb for Armenian dishes from this shop; its butchers do a great job sourcing and cutting meat. The Local Butcher sells frozen lamb stock that makes Arsig much faster and easier to prepare. I prep the cubed lamb by sprinkling them with a heathy amount of Crystal Diamond kosher salt and placing the meat on a rack and tray to sit overnight, uncovered, in the refrigerator. 

 

As grandparents and parent pass away, it can become increasingly difficult to save a family’s food history, especially of people forced into diaspora. Through serendipity I stumbled upon these two cards. Otherwise, my family’s history of these dishes would have vanished.  When I spoke with my mom about Arsig, she remembered her family eating it with lavosh bread and thinly shaved red torpedo onions.

 

This lamb and grape vine stew deserves to live on. Arsig tastes bright and delicious. I made a vegetarian version of the stew for my daughter using chickpeas in place of lamb and 4 cups chickpea stock (here), 2 cups water and 40 grams of butter. This version tastes delicious, too!