Picture: Chicken with Sauce Teriyaki
Although teriyaki sauce is easily available in bottled form, there is nothing like making it yourself at home. To make an authentic teriyaki sauce you need soy sauce, mirin and sugar. If you do not find mirin at your local grocery store, you can replace it with sake and sugar.
Basic Sauce Recipe
There are several variations of teriyaki sauce that you can try out. The basic teriyaki sauce uses ¼ cup of dark soy sauce, ¼ cup of sake, 2 tablespoons of mirin and a tablespoon of white sugar. All the ingredients are combined together in a small saucepan over a moderate heat. You need to keep cooking the sauce till all the sugar has dissolved. This sauce can be used for marinating fish, chicken or any other meat.
To make a teriyaki sauce that you can use for basting, combine a cup of soy sauce, a cup of sake, half a cup of mirin, ¼ cup of brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of minced, fresh ginger. Heat the concoction until all the ingredients are well blended. To add extra spice to your sauce, increase the amount of ginger.
Advanced Teriyaki Sauces
Another version of teriyaki sauce can be made out of ½ a cup of soy sauce, 2 teaspoons dark sesame oil, the juice of 2 oranges, 2 tablespoons honey, 2 tablespoons minced ginger, ½ a cup of chopped scallions, 2 teaspoons of minced garlic and 2 teaspoons of toasted sesame seeds. Combine all the ingredients together in a bowl and chill for an hour. This may also be used to marinate shrimp, beef or chicken.
While making teriyaki sauce, if you find it is too runny, add some cornstarch or potato starch to the sauce and bring to the boil. To maintain the authenticity of the sauce, you can use kuzu root starch as a thickening agent. If mirin is not available, you could try using pineapple juice. If you do not want your teriyaki sauce too sweet, you can add a dash of lime juice to it.
Note also our recipes for a teriyaki marinade and the special marinade for beef.
