Teriyaki Sauce Recipe
Why make my own Teriyaki sauce?
The great thing about this recipe is that you’ll have majority of all the compulsory ingredients in your cupboards somewhere! We tested this recipe on a friend who cannot cook to save their life yet miraculously had all the ingredients lying about in the kitchen. So is this a winner in our eyes? Absolutely yes. Not everyone will have Teriyaki sauce lying about, but with this recipe, you can have it whipped up in no time and then store in the fridge for up to a week!
Teriyaki sauce is so versatile. You can use it so many different ways. If you watched our cook-along with Women in CTRL then you’ll see we used this sauce to create delicious bento bowls; we’ve included so many variations of how to incorporate this sauce in our Teriyaki Bento Bowl recipe. And those are just a couple of ways to use it.
You may also like to marinade some meat in the sauce, chuck it on the grill and prepare a lovely light rice noodle salad to accompany it. Or why not make a Teriyaki stir fry, like we said, limitless options. So if you do make this recipe and end up with a lot of sauce leftover for the week, rest assured this is not a one trick pony. There’s four ideas in two paragraphs!
What’s even better, making your own Teriyaki sauce is a lot healthier than shop bought versions.
Is homemade Teriyaki sauce healthier?
If you look at the ingredient list on a shop bought bottle, you’ll tend to find sugar is high on the list. When you make your own homemade version, you can control how much sugar you decide to put in, which is great! See our substitutions section for other sugar alternatives for a healthier choice.
Some may find that the taste of Teriyaki is quite sweet. So instead of buying a whole new sugar you might not use again, you can adjust the sauce by incorporating less sugar to suit your tastebuds or health requirements. You’ll see in the method that we dedicate a step for you to taste test your sauce so you can balance it to what you like best. If it slightly deters away from tasting like an original Teriyaki sauce, who cares? If you like it, go with it! I mean, you’re the one eating it.
One last positive note, making your own sauce means we don’t have to digest any of those nasty additives included in those oh so yummy sauces.
Teriyaki sauce ingredient substitutions
As we may have mentioned, some ingredients are optional; mirin, sesame oil. Although we highly suggest grabbing mirin or rice wine vinegar.
You can make healthier substitutions to this sauce as well, through healthier sugar alternatives. A lot of people have started to replace sugar with stevia powder, which can work here too. Alternatively, instead of adding more sugar, why not add more honey instead? There are also tons of other sugar alternatives with lower calories so feel free to improvise on your own here to suit your dietary needs.
If you go to make this sauce and realise you don’t have any fresh ginger or garlic, fret not! You can easily replace this with ginger and garlic powder (separate powders). Start with the following measurements:
- 1 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp ginger powder
and start to incorporate a 1/4 tsp if you feel to add anymore out of the two. You may want to dissolve the ground spices with about 1 tbsp of warm water, to prevent any clumps of spices in the sauce.
What is Mirin?
Mirin is a sweet rice wine commonly used in Japanese cooking. It is similar to Sake but with more sugar and less alcohol content. It provides a lovely contrast to dishes that are salt heavy; those that include soy.
Majority of Teriyaki sauces out there whether in the shops or other recipes will include Mirin as a core ingredient. However, you can opt out of this ingredient in this recipe, it isn’t a must. If you don’t use this in the sauce you may need to adjust adding some more of the other ingredients to balance out the sauce, such as a little more sugar or honey. Your sauce will still end up with a distinct Teriyaki taste.
Alternatively, substituting this ingredient for something similar is also an option. Why not replace the Mirin with Rice Wine Vinegar if the time calls, like in this dish! Replacing with rice wine vinegar works well as Mirin is a type of rice wine.
Can I use this recipe for a Teriyaki Marinade?
Of course! Sometimes when using this in our bento bowl dishes, or in our poke bowls, we’ll reserve some to act as a marinade and then use the other half the create a stickier sauce to glaze on top!
To do so, simply exclude adding the cornflour into the mixture – this is what thickens the sauce up as it cooks on the heat.
As per usual, you know how we are, we want you to play around when developing the sauce. We know you’ve come here for a recipe but sometimes people get so stuck into a recipe that if something goes wrong they don’t know what to do because they have followed the recipe. But, not everyone has the same flavour profile. Some people may like things a little sweeter or tangier. Others may not have some ingredients handy, so we want you to adapt and improvise. Don’t worry we have given you a list of ingredients here and a method, but when making we start off with adding in partial measurements of ingredients so we can slowly build if and when we need to as the sauce cooks.
Tips
When making this sauce, we alwayyyys recommend making more than needed. You’ve never heard of too much sauce have you? This sauce can keep in the fridge for up to a week so you can always end up using the leftover sauce in a different dish if you don’t end up using it all in one go.
Sometimes certain vegetables or meats soak up more of the marinade or sauce you’ve used too. Or if you end up making an exact amount of the sauce to use in another recipe and it’s not as saucy as you expected, you’ll be wishing you made that extra little bit of sauce. So trust us, size up.
| Prep Time | 5 minutes |
| Cook Time | 10 minutes |
| Servings |
servings
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- 60 ml soy sauce tamari for gluten free option
- 2 cloves garlic peeled and minced
- 2 inces ginger peeled and grated
- 1-2 tbsp brown sugar
- 1/2 tbsp honey
- 1-2 tsp sesame oil optional
- 1 1/2 tbsp mirin optional
- 1-2 tsp cornflour mixed with 30-40ml warm water
Ingredients
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- Heat a pan over high heat.
- Combine the soy sauce, minced garlic, grated ginger, honey and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar into the saucepan and gently mix until combined. Stir and let cook for about 2 minutes, letting the ginger and garlic flavour infuse.
- If using the sesame oil and mirin, add in 1 teaspoon of sesame oil and 1 tablespoon of mirin with the other ingredients and mix.
- So we now have a base to our sauce, give it a try. You know us, we want you to tweak it depending on what you like best. Is it too sweet? Add a tiny bit more sesame or soy. Not sweet enough? Add in your other tablespoon of brown sugar. Everyone's taste palettes are different which is why we've given approximate ranges for some of the ingredients. Play around with it.
- Once you're happy with the flavour profile of your sauce add in the cornflour and water mixture to the pan and start to bring to a boil. *SEE RECIPE NOTE
- Once the mixture starts to boil, turn down heat and allow to simmer for a few minutes. We say about 5 minutes give or take but different stove tops may vary and the sauce may thicken quicker than others.
- Sauce can be used immediately or stored in the fridge for up to a week.
*If you're happy with the flavour of the sauce, prior to adding your cornflour, you can leave the recipe here and use the sauce as a marinade for your protein or veg.
