Teriyaki Sauce

Name: Homemade Teriyaki Sauce and Marinade with Soy Sauce and Mirin
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 10 min
Cuisine: Middle Eastern
Ingredients: Soy sauce 100 ml; Mirin 50 ml; Honey 1 tbsp (21 g); Dry white wine 50 ml; Ginger, garlic, salt, spices optional; Starch 1 tbsp (10 g); Water a little (to dilute the starch)

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10 mins

Japanese cuisine is one of the most beautiful and mysterious in the world. For a European it is partly a nod to fashion and partly a longing for beauty. No one loves food “with their eyes” like the Japanese. Japanese cuisine has not been absorbed by world cooking, though Japanese “motifs” turn up in kitchens everywhere.

Given the complexity and exotic nature of the ingredients, true Japanese cuisine is perhaps only possible in Japan. Everything else is a parody, an author’s vision or simply a creative reproduction.

But you cannot simply reproduce a recipe. It matters to absorb the spirit and the deep meaning of Japanese food culture. The first settlers from Asia, many centuries ago, had to adapt the customs and diet they brought with them to local conditions. The shortage of protein was made up with seafood, the lack of vitamins with minimal heat treatment of food. Later, products and cooking methods borrowed from mainland Asia appeared in Japanese cuisine: soy sauce, soybean paste, tofu.

Japanese cuisine is a whole philosophy. We will never understand it. For that you have to be born there and live there all your life.

Once an acquaintance who had lived in Japan for many years paused when I asked him, “So what is the point and the difference of Japanese cuisine?”, thought, and answered: “In the dish ‘Chicken with rice‘ the chicken is a side dish to the rice.” With that he said absolutely everything!

Sushi, sashimi, sake, teriyaki. These words burst into our lives and took firm hold. Teriyaki sauce, which I like very much, is made in Japan from soy sauce, sugar, a light alcohol and spices. Teriyaki is a way of frying and cooking foods marinated in the sauce, mostly meat or fish. The word comes from the noun teri, meaning the shine from the sugar in the sauce, and yaki, a way of frying.

Outside Japan, teriyaki most often means the finished dish cooked with the sauce, rather than the sauce itself or the frying method. And the sauce or marinade gets many ingredients added to taste. Still, it is one of the few things you can make very close to the original without spoiling it with additions.

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Ingredients

250 ml of marinade

For the marinade
Soy sauce 100 ml
Mirin 50 ml
Honey 1 tbsp (21 g)
Dry white wine 50 ml
Ginger, garlic, salt, spices optional
For a thick sauce
Starch 1 tbsp (10 g)
Water a little (to dilute the starch)

Step-by-step recipe

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Teriyaki marinade

Strictly speaking, teriyaki is soy sauce, sake and sugar taken in equal amounts. Everything else is written about as major or minor additions that supposedly improve the flavor. Reading original articles about teriyaki, I noticed that few authors dwell on the composition of the marinade or sauce; the lion’s share of the discussion goes to how the food is cooked. It feels as if making the sauce is taken for granted and raises no questions.
Buying good, natural soy sauce is no problem: just read the label carefully and don’t pick a chemical cocktail of hellish composition. Sake is a fairly rare product where I live. Sake is a rice wine made by fermentation without distillation. And sugar, I hope, needs no explanation. With ingredients available here, this set can be replaced with soy sauce and mirin, a very sweet, even cloying rice wine that resembles a liqueur. It substitutes quite well for both sugar and sake and, notably, that is usually what is done in most cases.
Prepare the ingredients: soy sauce, mirin, dry white wine and honey. I add the wine and honey to taste: the wine gives a little acidity, which matters for marinating, and the honey gives extra sugar and its own aroma.
If you don’t use alcohol, simply leave out the wine and mirin and add sugar and acidity to taste (for example, rice or wine vinegar).
Mix the soy sauce and mirin in any suitable bowl, then add the wine and honey. Stir everything thoroughly until the honey dissolves.
Add ginger, garlic or salt if you like. It is believed that to reduce the smell of certain foods fried with teriyaki, you should add ginger, fresh or dried, to the marinade and then reduce the sauce a little. Garlic is added for extra aroma. Salt is added so that the food fried with teriyaki releases its juices. This is a bit puzzling, since soy sauce is salty enough on its own.

Marinating and frying

Marinate meat, chicken or fish in the marinade for a few hours in the refrigerator. Even 1 hour is enough, really. The meat will be incredibly tasty. Tested many times.
Fry the meat in a pan or on a grill, basting it with the sauce. The result is a beautiful, dark, glossy glaze, so highly valued in dishes called teriyaki.

Thick sauce from the marinade

Make teriyaki sauce from the leftover marinade: bring the liquid to a boil, add 1 tbsp starch (10 g) diluted in a little cold water, and stir until it thickens.
Or, which is most likely the proper way, simmer the sauce over medium heat to the desired thickness, without starch.

Serving

Cool the sauce and serve it cold with meat or fish. If you like, add spices to taste.

Calories and macros

96 kcal

100 g

Protein4 g21% of kcal
Fat0.3 g3% of kcal
Carbs14.1 g75% of kcal

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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