Featured Comment
Yamachan’s tebasaki are indeed a standout and frankly addictive. Your recipe is simple and brings the delicious chicken wings to life for me half way around the globe.
★★★★★
– Tommy
Maybe you ate tebasaki, the Nagoya chicken wing, on a trip and never got over it. Maybe you have never tried it, and either way you are in the right place.
Decent Nagoya wings are easy. Great ones are not, and that gap is what this recipe is for. I am from Aichi, thousands of wings deep, and this is not just a copycat. It is the peppery road, the one Yamachan, a chain of Nagoya pubs, made famous, pushed as far as a home kitchen can take it.
Tebasaki
Recipe Snapshot
- What is it? Nagoya’s izakaya chicken wing. Deep-fried with no marinade and no batter, then brushed with a soy and mirin glaze while it is still too hot to hold, and dusted with a pepper-forward seasoning blend the second it lands.
- Flavor profile: The glaze is sweet and savory, and then a heavy wave of black and white pepper rides in on top of it. Pepper is the loudest thing on this wing.
- Why you will love this recipe: The distance between a wing that is fine and a wing you cannot stop reaching for is short, and it closes in the last 30 seconds. The glaze goes on while the wing is too hot to hold. The pepper blend lands straight on top of it. Those 2 moves, in that order, are the whole dish.
- Must-haves: Starch cut with a little cake flour for the dusting and chicken bouillon powder, ground straight into the finishing blend.
- Skill level: Medium, and about 35 minutes start to finish. The wings fry twice, at 2 different temperatures, and the finish moves fast once they leave the oil.
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What Is Nagoya Tebasaki?
Nagoya tebasaki (手羽先) is fried chicken wings, glazed with soy and mirin the moment they leave the oil, then buried in pepper. It belongs to Nagoya meshi, the city’s own regional canon, alongside miso katsu, a pork cutlet under dark red miso, and hitsumabushi, grilled eel over rice.
It all started at Furaibo (風来坊) in 1963. The Nagoya izakaya ran out of chicken for its signature dish and brushed the house sauce onto wings that, at the time, were mostly bound for the stockpot. The accident became the city’s most famous plate, and the copies came fast. Yamachan arrived 18 years later. Its founder tried to match the sweet Furaibo-style wing and could not, so he went the other way, away from the sweet glaze the city was chasing and straight into fiery pepper.
In my version the glaze and the pepper blend do all the work, and every decision below bends toward them. All the flavor sits on the outside, so you eat these with your hands, fast. Around Nagoya, people are unreasonably good at that. My wife loves wings too, and she says it is unfair, because I’ve usually devoured half the plate before she’s finished her first.
Yamachan-Style Tebasaki Ingredients
- Chicken wings: The cut you want is the flat middle section with the pointed tip still attached to it, the 2-part V-shape. If your store sells its wings whole, the meaty drumette will still be joined on at the wide end, so cut it off at the joint and keep it for another dish. Size matters more here than you would expect, because this dish was built on small wings, and the balance between the chicken and the glaze is set for that size. Look for the smallest, plumpest ones in the case, with the skin unbroken.
- Peppers: Black and white, and you want both. Pepper is the loudest thing on this wing, and the 2 of them together are what separate a Yamachan-style blend from plain seasoned salt. They go into the mortar and get taken finer still.
- Chicken bouillon powder: This is what carries the savory depth into the finishing blend. It gets ground in dry alongside the peppers, so it lands on a hot wing as powder and never dissolves into anything.
Substitutions & Variations
Here is the honest shape of this list. The glaze is soy sauce, mirin, sake, sugar, and a smashed clove of garlic. The blend is 2 peppers and 2 powders. So almost everything below is about what your store actually stocks rather than what you have to give up.
- Chinese-style chicken bouillon powder → Western-style chicken bouillon or stock powder: The amount going into the blend is tiny, so all it really has to carry is salt and savory depth. Crush it fine so it does not sit on the wing in gritty little clumps.
- Potato starch → Cornstarch: Cornstarch swaps in cleanly for the dusting and the glaze still grabs onto it. Keep the coat every bit as thin.
- The whole wing (flat & tip) → The flat section on its own: If the only wings your store sells are giant, cut the V at the joint between the flat section and the pointed tip. Keep the flat piece, the one with the 2 thin bones running through it, and freeze the tips for stock. It cooks faster, sits flatter in the oil, and is far easier to eat with your hands.
- Sake → Dry sherry/wine, Shaoxing wine, or water: Sake is in the glaze to lift the aroma and round off the edges of the soy sauce. Dry sherry/wine or Shaoxing wine gets you most of the way there. Water works in a pinch, and the glaze still reduces to the same place, just a little plainer.
- Japanese dashi granules → A pinch of the chicken bouillon powder: In this glaze the granules are working as a seasoning, so if you do not keep a jar of them around, a pinch of the same chicken bouillon powder that goes into the pepper blend does the same work.
Have trouble finding Japanese ingredients? Check out my ultimate guide to Japanese ingredient substitutes!
Variations:
- Air fryer: If you would rather not heat a pot of oil, roast the wings hot until the skin is crisp and they are cooked through. Then glaze them the second they come out, and go straight in with the blend while they are still too hot to hold. The skin browns less evenly than it does in oil, so give the wings room and turn them once.
- Shallow-fry in about 1 cm of oil: You do not need a pot deep enough to swim a wing in. Pour about 1 cm of oil into a frying pan and cook them in that, turning them so every side gets its own time down in the oil. The 2 stages still hold. Low first, until they are cooked through, then onto the rack to rest, then bring the oil up hot for the finish.
- Other cuts, and everything else you fry: The glaze and the blend are not loyal to wings. Drumsticks, thigh chunks, karaage, fried tofu, cauliflower, potato wedges. What changes is the heat, so adjust your frying time and method to whatever you are cooking. What does not change is the finish. Brush it hot, dust it immediately.
How to Make My Nagoya Tebasaki
Before you start (Mise en place):
- Wings: pat every surface dry with paper towels, into the folds and under the skin. A wet wing spits in the oil and never crisps the way you want it to.
- Garlic: smash the clove flat with the side of your knife. No need to grate or chop it.
- Setup: wire rack, tongs, and a pastry brush, all of it within arm’s reach of the pot before the oil goes on. Once the wings come out, you have seconds, not minutes.
To develop this tebasaki recipe, I used a 30cm carbon steel wok.
i. Put the soy sauce, mirin, sake, sugar, and the smashed garlic clove into a saucepan while it is still cold. Then turn the heat to medium and let the whole thing come up to a boil together.
ii. Once it boils, drop the heat to low and reduce it down to about 2/3 of what you started with. Then stop. What you want is a glaze that still runs a little looser than maple syrup. Load the brush and it should drip.
iii. Right before you kill the flame, stir in a pinch of Japanese dashi granules and let them dissolve. Set the pan aside where you can reach it.
A smashed clove that sits in cold liquid and climbs to temperature with it gives up its oils slowly, the way loose tea gives up its color in water that is still warming. Those oils spread through the whole glaze instead of sitting on top of it.
Grate the garlic and you get the opposite. The flavor shows up sharp and out front, the pulp catches on the bottom of the pan, and the glaze goes cloudy. Same clove. Completely different wing.
i. Combine the black pepper, white pepper, garlic powder, and chicken bouillon powder and grind with a mortar and pestle until the pepper is fine and the whole thing looks like a single seasoning instead of 4.
ii. Do this before the oil goes anywhere near the stove. This blend is the last thing that touches the wing, and once the frying starts there is no time to stop and make it.
i. The wings get no salt and no marinade before they fry. That part is deliberate, and it is the design of the whole dish.
ii. What they do get is a thin coat of powder. Drop them into a plastic bag with the potato starch and the cake/AP flour (or simply brush them thin), trap a little air in the bag, and shake. It is faster than a bowl and the coat comes out far more even.
iii. Take them out and shake the excess off each one. You want a haze of white on the skin and nothing thicker.
i. Bring the oil to 160°C (320°F) and work in 2 batches of 5 wings. Lower the first 5 in and fry them 4 to 5 minutes per side, 8 to 10 minutes in total, until they are cooked through to the bone and only pale gold on the outside.
ii. Lift batch 1 onto the wire rack and leave it there for at least 5 minutes. Those minutes are doing real work. Do not cut them short.
iii. While batch 1 rests, drop batch 2 into the same 160°C (320°F) oil and give it the same first fry. That is another 8 to 10 minutes, so batch 1 ends up resting for longer than 5. Good. The oil is busy and the rack is busy, and nothing is being wasted.
If you are frying in 2 batches, batch 1 will sit there for the 8 to 10 minutes that batch 2 spends in the oil, and that is exactly how it should go. If you are cooking half a batch, or you own a fryer big enough to take all 10 wings at once, 5 minutes is all you need. Skip the rest and the moisture is still trapped under the skin when the wing goes back into hot oil, which is how you get a wing that looks golden and eats limp.
i. The moment batch 2 comes out of its first fry, turn the oil up to 190°C (374°F). Let it actually climb. Nothing goes back in until it is there, and batch 1 is resting on the rack while it happens.
ii. Slide batch 1 into the hot oil and give it 1 minute per side. Batch 2 follows the same way once it has had its own time on the rack.
iii. Pull them when the whole wing is an even golden brown and the crackling in the pot settles down. The color is the tell. Too pale and the skin never sets, so the glaze soaks straight through and the wing goes soft in your hand. Push the color too far the other way and the meat inside starts to give up its juice. Clean golden brown. Stop there.
iv. Onto the rack again, and let the oil run off them.
i. The second the oil stops dripping, brush the glaze thinly over both sides of every wing in the batch. Thin. If it runs down onto the rack you have used too much, and a wing wearing that much glaze goes soft before it reaches the table. Batch 2 gets the same treatment the moment it lands.
As the wing fries, its moisture flashes to steam, and that rapid expansion is part of what builds the crisp texture. Brush the glaze on right then and that outward pressure holds the sauce up on the surface where you want it, so the wing takes the flavor without drinking it in.
ii. Go straight in with the blend, both sides, and cover the whole wing evenly. Do not be shy about it. Everyone holds back on the first wing, and the wing that looks a shade over-dusted in your hand is the one that tastes like Nagoya.
i. Eat them hot, with your hands, over a pile of napkins you are going to need. That is the whole delivery instruction.
Essential Tips & Tricks
- Be careful with the chicken bouillon powder when you grind the blend. I built a version with double the amount and it went straight past savory into flatly salty, with the pepper left standing there behind it with nothing to do. There is no walking a dusted wing back, so the amount you grind is the amount you eat.
- Pull the wings out of the first fry while they are still pale. This is the hard thing to do in the recipe, because 8 to 10 minutes is a long time to stand over a pot and not chase a nice golden brown. The clock gets you close and the color makes the call, and the color I am waiting for is barely there. Take them further and the wing still tastes good, but the juice inside starts walking out, and once they have been through the second fry there is nothing left to do about it.
- Stop reducing the glaze while it still runs. A thick, syrupy glaze feels like the more serious version of itself, and it is the wrong one. It drags across the skin instead of spreading, so more sugar lands on every wing, and sugar is the one thing in this recipe that can shout over the pepper. Looser than maple syrup is where you take the pan off the heat, and it will look thinner than you think it should.
None of this is difficult. It is just fast, and it happens in an order you do not get to improvise.
Storage & Meal Prep
Fridge: Not recommended.
Freezer: Not recommended.
Meal prep: The glaze and the blend are both built ahead and both keep. Reduce the glaze, let it cool, and park it in a jar in the fridge. Grind the blend and keep it in a small jar in the cupboard, where it will sit happily until you want it.
TL;DR: Fry the number of wings you actually intend to eat.
What to Serve With This Recipe
Yamachan Tebasaki Troubleshooting
The oil never got where it needed to be. Too many wings hitting the pot at once will drag the temperature down hard, and oil that has dropped steams a wing instead of frying it, so the skin browns without ever setting. The other cause is water. A wing that went into the pot with moisture still on the surface will not crisp no matter what the oil is doing. Fry 5 at a time, let the oil climb all the way back to 190°C (374°F) before the second fry goes in, and dry every wing properly before it goes anywhere near the pot.
No. A wing that went too dark is a little drier inside than it should be and it is still a very good wing. Next time, work out where the color came from. If the wings already looked golden when they came out of the first fry, that fry ran too long, because its only job is to cook the wing through to the bone. If they were pale then and dark afterward, the second fry was too high or went past its minute a side. Either way, the color belongs to the second fry and nowhere else.
Salt is not a place to be generous in this recipe. When a wing comes out flatly salty, it almost always traces back to seasoning the wings before they fried, or to a heavy hand with the bouillon powder when the blend was ground (or perhaps the spice mix was not sprinkled evenly). Grind the blend at the amounts given, put nothing at all on the wings before they go into the oil, and taste one before you reach for anything else.
More Japanese Chicken Recipes
- Juicy Chicken Tsukune Meatballs
- Teriyaki Chicken
- Chicken Nanban with Tartar Sauce
- Chicken Sukiyaki Hot Pot
Still hungry? My full Japanese chicken recipe collection is where I keep the rest of them.
Did You Try This Recipe?
I would love to hear your thoughts!
💬 Leave a review and ⭐️ rating in the comments below. 📷 I also love to see your photos – submit them here!
Yamachan-Style Tebasaki (Nagoya’s Chicken Wings)
Ingredients
For the Yamachan-style blend
- ½ tbsp ground black pepper
- 1 tsp ground white pepper
- ⅛ tsp garlic powder
- ¼ tsp Chinese-style chicken bouillon powder
For the glaze
- 2 tbsp Japanese soy sauce (koikuchi shoyu)
- 2 tbsp mirin
- 1 tbsp sake or dry sherry/wine, Shaoxing wine, or water
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 garlic clove smashed flat with the side of a knife
- 1 pinch dashi granules stirred in right before the flame goes out
For the wings
- 10 pieces chicken wings the flat with the pointed tip still attached (V-shape), relatively small wings are recommended
- 1 tbsp potato starch (katakuriko) or cornstarch/tapioca starch
- 1 tbsp unbleached cake flour or all-purpose flour
- cooking oil neutral, for deep/shallow frying
The ingredient brands and tools I trust are in my Japanese pantry guide and my cooking tools guide.
Can’t find certain Japanese ingredients? See my substitution guide here.
Instructions
- Start heating the cooking oil for deep frying to 160 °C (320 °F). While it heats, make the glaze. Put 2 tbsp Japanese soy sauce (koikuchi shoyu), 2 tbsp mirin, 1 tbsp sake, 1 tsp sugar and 1 garlic clove (smashed flat with the side of a knife) into a cold saucepan.
- Bring the glaze to a boil over medium heat, then lower the heat and simmer until it reduces to about ⅔ of the original volume. It should still pour easily, a little looser than maple syrup. Stir in 1 pinch dashi granules until they dissolve, then turn off the heat and set the pan aside.
- Grind ½ tbsp ground black pepper, 1 tsp ground white pepper, ⅛ tsp garlic powder and ¼ tsp Chinese-style chicken bouillon powder together with a mortar and pestle until the pepper is ground fine. Set this blend aside with the glaze.
- Pat 10 pieces chicken wings dry with kitchen paper, working into the folds and under the skin.
- Put the wings in a plastic bag with 1 tbsp potato starch (katakuriko) and 1 tbsp unbleached cake flour. Trap some air in the bag and shake until the wings are evenly coated. Take each one out and shake off the excess, leaving a thin haze of white on the skin.
- Check that the oil is at 160 °C (320 °F) and fry the wings in batches of 5. Lower the first batch in and fry for 4-5 minutes on each side, 8-10 minutes in total, until the wings are cooked through and only pale gold. Lift them onto a wire rack.
- Rest the first batch on the rack for at least 5 minutes while you fry the next batch of 5 the same way at 160 °C (320 °F). Lift the second batch onto the rack as well.
- Turn up the heat and bring the oil to 190 °C (374 °F). Once it reaches temperature, lower the first batch back in and fry for 1 minute on each side, until the wings are evenly golden brown. Lift them onto the rack and let the oil drain off.
- While the first batch is still hot, brush the glaze thinly over both sides of every wing. Then dust both sides with the pepper blend, covering each wing evenly.
- Fry the next batch at 190 °C (374 °F) for 1 minute on each side, lift onto the rack to drain, then glaze and dust in the same way.
- Serve straight away and enjoy!
I have visited Nagoya many times. In the mid-1990’s, I went drinking with the bishop of Nagoya.
I lived in Tokyo (1956-1957 & 1959-1961) where I attended a Japanese kindergarten and 3rd & 4th grade at an international school.
Since the early 1980’s, I have frequently visited Tokyo. I have enjoyed visiting Sekai no Yamachan establishments many times in various neighborhoods of Tokyo.
This past summer, I met my nephew and his family in Nagoya for the July Grand Sumo Tournament. (I was saddened by the retirement of Akiseyama in September but enjoyed watching him win on the opening day of the July tournament.) We visited the original Yamachan in Sakae. Yamachan’s tebasaki are indeed a standout and frankly addictive.
Your recipe is simple and brings the delicious chicken wings to life for me half way around the globe.
Hi Tommy, thank you very much for sharing your experience! I’m also a fan of sumo and Yamachan, but somehow I’ve never been to Nagoya-basho or Yamachan Honten in Sakae even though I’ve been in Aichi for so long! I really should visit both.
Again, thank you very much for leaving a comment!
I have never been to Nagoya so i didnt know what to expect. But I tried this recipe today for lunch with my sisters family. It was a hit with the kids. The two things I did differently was that I omitted the sesame seeds as they don’t like that. And I air fried the wings instead of shallow fried them. These wings were super flavorful and delicious. Wonderful recipe and simple to make too.
Hi Ce,
Thank you for the comment and sharing your experience!
I’m glad it was a hit! 🙂
Yuto
Excellent
Never visited Nagoya and never tasted its famous chicken wings. Nor have I seen them in the menus of Japanese restaurants in my hometown.
Curious as I am, I finally decided to make them. But… I didn’t realize that the chicken wings I had were the 3 piece ones. So I was a bit short of sauce to baste them fully.
However, they were tasty and made a nice dinner with a green salad.
Hi Carmen,
Thank you for trying this my local recipe, and I’m glad it made a good dinner. Funny timing, I just updated the recipe and post today. Check it out if you’re interested in giving this a go again! 🙂
Yuto