Teriyaki sauce...who doesn't love the stuff. The savory sweetness of it is just so appealing. You can pretty much put it on top of anything and it's going to be addicting.
Since we have dessert often, I tend to shy away from sweet sauces for my stir-fries. However, this is a worthy exception. Also, I have to admit that I was sometimes reaching for a store-bought teriyaki sauce anyway whenever I was looking for a quick flavoring so when I spotted a recipe for homemade teriyaki sauce a couple of years ago, I gave it a try. It was truly so much better than what you can get from a bottle!
So I've been making this sauce once in a while for the last couple of years. The other day, I realized I should post it here and spread the word so I cooked up some chicken teriyaki for dinner. Of course, you could use this sauce for many things - from seafood to meat, vegetables to tofu.
The sauce is made with soy sauce, water, sweet rice wine (or mirin), brown sugar, granulated sugar, as well as grated garlic and ginger that give it such great flavor. I simply place the ingredients, with the exception of the grated garlic and ginger, into a measuring cup, warm it for a handful of seconds in the microwave and stir until the sugar is melted. Then, I stir in the garlic and ginger, and the sauce is done.
I use it as a marinade, as a glaze or sauce. If you want a thicker consistency - to create a sauce you can pour over a final dish - you can thicken it with a cornstarch slurry. In this case, I took some of the teriyaki sauce to marinade chunks of chicken (I used thighs) that I tossed with a small amount of cornstarch, then I stir-fried it in a skillet until cooked through. Near the end, I add the remaining teriyaki sauce I reserved to the pan. The sauce will thicken slightly and coat the chicken as you stir it all together. You end up with plenty of sauce to pour over the final dish.
Of course, you need rice! I served this chicken teriyaki with brown rice, letting it soak up all that sweet teriyaki sauce.
