You know how the irresistibly sweet-salty teriyaki-slathered grilled meat you get at a Japanese restaurant is infinitely more delicious than the stuff you make at home? Well, the reason is simple: Homemade teriyaki sauce is just always better than the sickly sweet store-bought stuff. How, you may ask, do we know that the stuff being used at said restaurant is homemade? Because teriyaki sauce is so ridiculously easy to make that no restaurant cook in her right mind would buy it, that's why. And once you understand the fundamentals of making it at home, neither will you.
Teriyaki is a very simple Japanese condiment that usually consists of just three ingredients: Sake (rice wine), mirin (sweet, low-alcohol rice wine), and soy sauce (the salty, fermented soy bean-based condiment you know and love). These are all very shelf stable, versatile ingredients, so they’re great investments. (Okay, well, sake should technically be refrigerated after opening, but if you're using it for sauce and not for sipping you can get away with keeping it on the shelf.) Once you use a portion of these bottles, it won’t be a bummer to have to keep them around. And once you make teriyaki sauce, you can keep it for weeks in the fridge.
Teriyaki anything is very tasty on top of some rice
Making teriyaki is a simple process of reduction. Mix 2 parts sake, 1 part mirin, and 1 part soy in a sauce pan, and turn the stove to medium heat. You have to reduce teriyaki more than you think; the goal of reduction is to remove water from the mixture to concentrate the sugar, salt, and umami present in all of those ingredients. We want our teriyaki to be seriously syrupy and thick. Once it starts to noticeably reduce, turn the heat down, since sugar will burn pretty easily at this point. You know what they say: Better safe than burning your teriyaki (aka sorry).
What most people get wrong about teriyaki is that they use it as a marinade. You read Basically. You’re better than that. You don’t want to apply a glaze this sugary to vegetables or meat before cooking, because the sugar will end up burning before your food has cooked through. Instead, use your freshly made teriyaki as a finishing glaze. Paint it onto meat during the last few minutes of cooking, or add it to sautéed vegetables midway through the process, so the sugar has time to caramelize just enough to create big glaze-y flavor without turning into a sticky burned mess. You almost want it to cook onto whatever you're applying it to, resulting in lacquered layers of flavor.
This approach works across the board with just about any protein, from chicken wings to pork ribs to salmon, but we like it best on the grill, where painting, flipping, and painting again is second nature. The same technique can be used for snap peas, carrots, asparagus, and bok choy (whether grilled or sautéed). But wait! There’s more! Teriyaki also works as a glaze for meatloaf or meatballs, a dipping sauce for katsu or crispy chicken, and a mix-in with fried rice.
