Hotate Bacon

Whenever I go to an izakaya place in New York, I always get hotate bacon (bacon-wrapped scallops). Since my yakitori chicken skewers were a hit during Thanksgiving (yes, we grilled on Thanksgiving), I figured I'd try bacon-wrapped scallops for my sister's graduation party at home. Last time I made yakitori, I made my own sauce from scratch using soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar. A couple of weeks ago, I found yakitori marinade or about $2 at HMart and decided to just go easy and do things that way since it's cheaper and easier.

We got about 4 pounds of jumbo scallops for a total of $20, which was ridiculously cheap. Since they were so big, I cut each of them in half and padded each one dry. I then left the scallops in the marinade for about 45 minutes while my brother half-cooked the bacon. Since the scallops would cook faster on the grill than the bacon, we had to pre-cook the bacon. Then we wrapped each scallop half with bacon and put them on the skewers. This takes a little longer than you'd think.

Finally, we grilled the bacon-wrapped scallops for about 3 minutes on each side. Turns out they weren't tasty enough, so we drizzled a little bit of marinade on the finished products. Everyone loved this at my sister's grad party!