Bringing inspiration and ideas to better manage your home kitchen
When someone asks, “what’s your favorite food?” I’ll usually answer with pizza. I subscribe to the mantra “there is no bad pizza, only better pizza.” I have so many pizza memories that deeply marked me. The earliest were in Italy, where I spent a summer …
When my husband brags on me, I’d bet it’s probably the tight loop I can cast from a 5-weight fly rod. And not too far down the list from that would be how I could graciously wing a great vinaigrette for a weeknight salad. While …
When we were dating, my now husband and I would occasionally wrap up a long workday in the city coupled with a long commute home, and like many “normal” people, end the day ordering teriyaki takeout. We’d both go for spicy chicken teriyaki, and he would add gyoza. There was a quaint family owned and operated stand-alone teriyaki restaurant just down the road from my house. Their teriyaki was good (not great), but always better than any strip mall competitor we’d tried in our local area. After we married and sold that home, life moved on and we returned only to find our quaint little go-to teriyaki joint closed. Saddened, we tried other strip mall teriyaki joints in the local area, but all of them were a disappointment. Something was just off with either the flavor of the meat or the quality of the plate.
Cooking technique, usually presented in the form of YouTube videos, draws my husband’s attention in his spare time. He doesn’t scroll social media, instead he scrolls YouTube to learn how to do something. I love this about him. He found Pro Home Cooks’ video explaining how to master a simple teriyaki sauce that required sourcing a few ingredients that were a bit more expensive, but not one of those ingredients was a form of sugar. This captured my attention. We found the ingredients at a local quality grocer (in the wine/liquor department) and tried the recipe. It was superb and filled the void that the neighborhood joint had left when it closed its doors. Plus, we get all the benefits of making this at home – we know what’s in it, and more importantly what’s not in it (sugar – only residual from sake and mirin), we save money, and we can make it anywhere.
This recipe will rival any local teriyaki shop. Give it a try, I think you'll love it as much as we do! Plus, it has no added sugar so you can feel good about what you're eating too.
Ideally, you’ll have leftover teriyaki sauce in the fridge which will benefit you in two ways. One, you can marinate the raw chicken early with refrigerated sauce and two, you can make the sauce you’ll be spooning over your finished chicken fresh as the meal is coming together. This recipe will leave you with 1-2 cups of leftover sauce which you can use as a marinade or sauce in many ways outside of this recipe. However, when you’re making this recipe for the first time, you may need to make the sauce early to have something to marinate with. If this is the case, do not worry, the sauce will heat up just fine to serve with as well. Alternatively, if you have another teriyaki sauce, feel free to use this to marinate your chicken this first time around.
Sauce: To make the sauce, add 2 TBSP olive oil to a small saucepan (a 2-quart is perfect). Over medium heat, heat the oil, then add ginger and garlic and sauté until fragrant and cooked but before it browns much (about 3 minutes stirring frequently). Next, add the soy sauce, mirin, and sake to the saucepan. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. You’ll want to reduce this liquid to about two-thirds of the original volume, but make sure you are tasting along the way. You don’t want to over reduce, which will lead to a very intense, very salty sauce. Let the sauce simmer while you are preparing the remainder of the recipe. If you need this sauce for the marinade, it’s ok to pull some of it off now (before adding the cornstarch) and get it to cool down to the temperature of the chicken or cooler. Use an ice bath, if needed.
Marinate the chicken for at least 30 minutes, but ideally 2-4 hours in the refrigerator.
Vegetables: Stir-frying the vegetables takes some time and dedication, but it can be done in advance. Heat a large cast iron pan over medium heat and add 2 TBSP olive oil. Your pan needs to be hot before you add any vegetables. Cook each vegetable, one at a time, being sure to season with salt. If you add all of them to the pan at the same time, the pan may be able to accommodate, but the end result with be steamed vegetables instead of veggies with crispy edges and good flavor. Cook each vegetable until it starts to develop a dark brown color on the edges. For the cabbage, you’ll want to char the edges. Once this is achieved, remove it from the pan while still slightly undercooked and the texture still has a bite to it. Remove from the pan, adding it into a large bowl on the side. Repeat with all vegetables. These can continue to sit in the bowl until you’re close to serving the meal. When ready, return to a medium heat pan, continue to sauté briefly, adding ginger and garlic, and turning often. Be sure to not overcook, just until aromatics are fragrant, and vegetables are heated through.
Rice: Make rice in rice cooker.
Chicken: Grill chicken thighs on outdoor grill until it develops a nice char on the edges and chicken is cooked through. Let chicken rest. Cut chicken into ½” strips, cutting in the direction of shortest edge of the thigh.
Back to the sauce, once the alcohol has cooked off and the sauce has reduced to roughly two-thirds, whisk in a cornstarch slurry of 2 TBSP cornstarch and 4 TBSP water. Bring to boil. Once to desired thickness, remove from heat.
To plate, add an oval-shaped serving of rice to the plate and arrange chicken on top of the rice. Spoon Sambal Oelek over chicken if you prefer it spicy. Then spoon teriyaki sauce over
the chili garlic sauce and chicken. Add stir-fry vegetables alongside rice and chicken.
A few notes on equipment and ingredients that we’ve found critical for the best outcome.
Sake: We experiment with different sake because there are so many choices, and to be honest, our knowledge of sake is limited to what the bottle describes. We will learn more, just know that the sake you choose will impact the taste of the teriyaki (maybe for the better or maybe for the worse). In the picture above, you can see the one we have used and like, resulting in a good sauce. You can experiment too, but at least you'll have advice on one that works!
Mirin: Mirin comes in different types as well. Like sake, this decision is also important. I’ve include the brand we have used and liked in the photo. The difference with mirin is that some have sugar as an ingredient, others just have residual sugars present from the fermentation process of making wine. I always opt for the latter now that I know.
Chicken: We started the journey using breast meat and weren’t totally happy with it. Even when cooked right, it still tasted a bit drier than the succulent and juicy meat you get with good takeout. So, we moved to boneless, skinless chicken thighs and marinated them in some of the teriyaki sauce leftover from the last time we made it. Winner, winner chicken dinner. I choose skinless because I want to eat the seared sauce and charred edges, not peel it off with the rubbery skin (often the result of grilling) and we prefer the grilled flavor of teriyaki chicken to the pan-fried crispy skin version. This is certainly a personal preference, so adjust your plan to your preference. Also, you can make variations with your favorite form of protein (beef, salmon, etc.).
Rice Cooker: You need one if you’re going to make rice. This is very similar to the one we use (we have an older model). You don’t need the professional model, nor do you need one that can sauté or slow cook. Find one that works for you and is in your budget, just make sure it has decent capacity so that when needed, you can cook for a small crowd. A note on using an Instant Pot. I can’t personally attest to cooking rice in an Instant Pot, so take my Instant Pot comments with a grain of salt. Generally, I find that equipment that does many things ok can’t do all of them well. As an aside, I will buy an Instant Pot, because how can you write a food blog without an Instant Pot? However, for now, I have all the individual pieces of equipment that we purchased before Instant Pots were a thing that do tasks very well – rice cooker, pressure cooker, slow-cooker, etc. I guess that makes me an old soul. Or just old.
Rice: We use and prefer jasmine rice. The outcome of jasmine rice, cooked in the rice cooker, is simply the best. The fragrance, the grain, the bite – it checks all the boxes.
Adapted from Pro Home Cooks (teriyaki sauce only).
