Skip the store to make our simple homemade teriyaki sauce! Our 5-ingredient sauce tastes much better than what you buy in the store and keeps it in the fridge for weeks! You can use it as a marinade, sauce and glaze!
This authentic homemade teriyaki sauce recipe makes me incredible on the moon. It’s so great, I actually kicked myself for so long with something I bought in the store!
I love this simple sauce from my teriyaki chicken recipe and it has very good shrimp and salmon. You can use it as a marinade or glaze! For more homemade Asian sauces, try our easy sauté sauce and this homemade hoisin sauce.
Key Ingredients
- Low-sodium soy sauce: I used the green soy sauce as the bottom of the sauce. It seems salty, but trust me, it will blend perfectly with other ingredients. You can replace it with light tamari without any change.
- sugar: I use granule sugar, which balances the soy sauce and makes our illuminated sauce thick and shiny when cooked. Feel free to try brown sugar, coconut sugar or even honey, but remember that these may make the sauce taste sweeter. If you love honey, you might love this honey-lit chicken!
- sake: Don’t stress on buying expensive illuminating sauce! Use something you like to drink but doesn’t need to be on the shelves. If you can’t find sake, Mirin (a sweet rice wine) works well too. You can swap it directly or you can reduce the sugar in the recipe a little.
- Rice vinegar: This adds a little bit to the sauce. You can usually find it near other vinegar in the grocery store. For alternatives, try white wine vinegar or pure white vinegar. Don’t worry, if the sauce looks a bit thick after adding vinegar, the flavor will be softer when cooking.
- Fresh ginger (optional): I like to fine-tune it with a miniature rummaging so it can melt it into a sauce.
How to make Teriyaki sauce
It’s easy to make your own teriyaki sauce, and it tastes much better than anything you find in the store. This sauce is so good that you will always want a batch in the refrigerator. You can use it as a marinade, sauté sauce or glaze for meat and seafood. Think of Teriyaki chicken, salmon and shrimp!
Mix all ingredients in a saucepan and heat over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. You can cool and store the sauce in the refrigerator or simmer for 5 to 10 minutes to keep it thick and shiny. Simple!
Relaxed Teriyaki sauce
-
Prepare
-
chef
-
All
The versatility of this homemade Teriyaki sauce is incredible! Use it as a marinated sauce, sauté sauce or glaze for chicken, salmon or shrimp. I like the depth of flavor added by sake, but if you don’t have any flavor, check out the tips section below for an easy substitution.
This recipe is about 2 cups of sauce – lots can be kept in the refrigerator for weeks! If you want smaller batches, just use the following ratio: 1 part soy sauce, 1 part sugar, 1/2 part sake, 1/4 part rice vinegar.
2 cups
You will need
1 cup (235 ml) low-sodium soy sauce
1 cup (200g) granulated sugar, see the notes for lowering sugar
1/2 cup (120 ml) sake (Japanese rice wine)
1/4 cup (60 ml) rice vinegar
1 tablespoon grated ginger, see notes
direction
1Mix the ingredients in the pot over medium heat and cook, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
2For thick and shiny sauce, cook Teriyaki sauce and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes. Cool.
3Store the sauce in the refrigerator for a few weeks. You can also freeze it for up to three months. If it looks too thick, thin it with a tablespoon or so of water.
Adam and Joanne’s Tips
- Reason for substitution: We love the sake flavor of Teriyaki sauce, but if you can’t find it, there are some options. Mirin is a sweet version of sake. You can swap it and leave the amount of sugar behind, or you can pull back the sugar content slightly to accommodate the extra sweetness (try 3/4 cup sugar instead of 1 cup). Dry vermouth or dry sherry can also be used as a replacement.
- I can reduce sugar: The 1:1 sugar to soy sauce ratio gives the soy sauce and bottled seasoning a good balanced sauce. It’s delicious, but if you focus on the amount of sugar you can reduce it. Reducing sugar from 1 cup to 3/4 cup or even 1/2 cup should work. Since the sauce doesn’t need to be cooked for a long time, you can take it with you. Start with 1/2 cup, taste and then add sugar until you are satisfied with the balance of salt and sweetness.
- ginger: We use the micro-bian RASP Grater as ginger, which helps to “melt” it into the sauce. You can chop it up, but you will leave a piece of ginger in the sauce.
- Corn starch: We omitted corn starch in the recipe. Some teriyaki sauce recipes require mixing some corn starch with the water added to the pot to thicken the sauce. We found that more and more minutes can make the sauce thicker, but if preferred you can include it.
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates.
Nutrition per serving
Service size
About 1 tablespoon
/
Calories
32
/
Total fat
0G
/
Saturated fat
0G
/
cholesterol
0mg
/
sodium
209.7mg
/
carbohydrate
7.4 grams
/
Dietary fiber
0G
/
Total sugar
6.7 grams
/
protein
0.6 g
We are Adam and Joanne, a couple who are passionate about cooking and sharing delicious, reliable recipes since 2009. Our goal? Inspire you to enter the kitchen and cook fresh and delicious meals confidently.
Previous Post: The Perfect Brownie
