Homemade Teriyaki sauce with salmon

Teri means glazed/shiny and yaki means grilled or fried. So it represents a glaze applied to something grilled or fried. 

This is Adam Liaw's wonderful version, with one third of the sugar of most brands you can buy on the shelves. This makes it well worth making yourself, and it seriously only takes a minute.

You literally add all the ingredients into a pan, combine as it warms and bottle it. I cleaned up an old large soy sauce bottle to store mine.

I have also provided his version of Teriyaki salmon below. is my son's favourite way of eating "pink fish" now. I also use the sauce as a simple marinade for pork fillets especially - marinating overnight or as long as possible and roasting on a rack like the Chao Shao quick roast pork recipe.

Pictured: Teriyaki Sauce

Teriyaki sauce – makes almost 700ml

250ml/8 oz soy sauce

200ml/6 oz mirin

200ml/6 oz sake

60-90g/2-3 oz) white sugar

Combine the ingredients in a small saucepan and place the saucepan over medium heat. Stir for a few minutes until the sugar dissolves. Don’t boil the mixture. Transfer the sauce to a bottle and store in the pantry until ready to use.

Adam Liaw’s tips-

• You don’t need to refrigerate the sauce. It will keep out of the fridge for years, but you’ll use it long before that.

• If you don’t have access to sake you can use a 50:50 mix of vodka and water.

• If you don’t consume alcohol, I’d recommend a recipe of 250ml soy sauce and 100g of sugar with 250ml of the stock of your choice. It won’t be quite the same and you’ll need to keep it in the fridge, but this mixture can be applied in the same way as teriyaki sauce in the recipes.

Teriyaki salmon -

½ cup teriyaki sauce

600g salmon fillets – pin-boned, skinned and sliced into 2cm wide fillets

1 – 2  tsp finely grated ginger (optional)

Oil for frying – vegetable or light olive oil

Bring a wide frypan to a medium hot temperature, add  1 – 2 tbsp oil and fry the salmon for 2 minutes each side – in batches if you need to, until the salmon is almost cooked through.  Remove from the pan and wipe clean.

Add the teriyaki sauce to the pan with the ginger if using (not all children like the spiciness but it is wonderful if you can add it) and simmer 2 minutes or more until it thickens and becomes nice and glossy. 

Return the salmon to the pan for no more than a minute and turn once to glaze both sides.

Serve with boiled rice and traditionally you sprinkle with some finely sliced spring onions.

Serves 6