teriyaki

January 16, 2012 7:45 PM

Please give me your best teriyaki sauce recipe.

I can't find my old teriyaki sauce recipe but I know that it included kombu. Do you have a kick-ass recipe?

posted by lamp to Food & Drink (5 answers total)

Ive been making this teriyaki for years, dont remember where I learned it.
Its humble and simple, it doesnt have Kombu. its called five-flavor teriyaki.

mix equal parts shoyu and rice wine vinegar to suit your purpose - Ill try to calibrate this to a one meal for two quantity, lets say half a cup each.
Add two table spoons of toasted sesame oil.
next grate a knob of fresh ginger the size of a strawberry, and several cloves of garlic.
mix all that thoroughly and let it stand in the fridge over night.
thats it. mix well before applying.
marinate stuff in it, slop it into stir-fry, what have you. always works for me.
posted by Abinadab at 10:18 PM on January 16, 2012

Haven't heard of teriyaki with kombu or rice wine vinegar / sesame oil either... I figure it's a matter of taste for the specific dish you're making. Teriyaki is basically sweet soy with a bit of booze. The recipes I've seen are roughly:

4 parts low-sodium soy sauce
4 parts mirin
2 parts sugar
1 part water
ginger, scallion, garlic to taste

with variations like replacing 1/2 of mirin with sake, less sugar, no water, equal shoyu/sake/mirin/sugar. You could probably just throw in some kombu broth or dashi for the water part. But it's basically just shoyu/mirin/sugar.
posted by zengargoyle at 11:17 PM on January 16, 2012

My version is more or less the same as zengargoyle's except I use 3 parts mirin and no water. I microplane a knob of ginger and a clove or two of garlic and bring the whole mixture to a boil to blend the flavors. I used to use more sugar, but lately have cut it to 2 parts.
posted by Lame_username at 12:29 AM on January 17, 2012

Mine is very simple, and like everyone else so far, I don't expect to find kombu in a teriyaki sauce. I use:

two parts soy sauce
one part mirin
one part sake.

The original recipe called for some sugar too, but for my taste, the sugar in the mirin is plenty. The sauce cooks down to a thick, sticky glaze if I want it to, but most often I stop before that point. It goes especially well with salmon - cut the salmon into bite-size pieces, marinate it for half an hour or so, then hoik it out and fry it gently in sesame oil; add the sauce towards the end, and boil till it reaches the desired consistency. Mmmm.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 5:15 PM on January 17, 2012

Going out on a limb, maybe the konbu is part of dashi stock which is added to the sauce?

Mine is adapted from a recipe I found elsewhere:

Two parts shoyu to one part brown sugar
Smashed ginger and garlic
A glug, or two of mirin

I taste it as I go along because sometimes I want it more, or less, sweet depending on my mood.
posted by squeak at 8:57 PM on January 17, 2012