Teriyaki is a Japanese cuisine cooking flavor which is often tasted as a broiled or grilled sweet-tasting marinade. Teriyaki was traditionally used as least as far back as the 1600’s, usually on fish such as marlin, tuna, salmon, and squid, but in the west today is used mostly on chicken, beef, and pork. There are many good brands of teriyaki-flavored sauces or packets available commercially, and this article shows you the ingredients that are used to get that flavor on your own.
Teriyaki flavoring can be made with a few or many different ingredients. Some people prefer to make it completely from scratch, some prefer just to make a quicker fix out of more popular commercial ingredients. For making a sauce, some basic ingredients often used are soy sauce, sugar, brown sugar, syrup, or honey, and mirin or sake, (which are alcoholic beverages made from rice), sesame seeds, garlic powder. The sauce is boiled to a desired thickness and can either be used as a marinade on the meat you are cooking, or can be poured over food that’s already cooked.
Powdered teriyaki flavoring is made up of mostly the same ingredients. Sugar, soy sauce powder (which is made up of soybean, wheat, salt, starch), onion powder, powdered ginger, coloring, or other spices. You can concoct your own powder to your satisfaction and use it just the same as a commercial packet, usually just by adding water and cooking it as a marinade sauce. As far as what amounts to use, it’s best to do what professional chefs do, go by taste. If you wish to try to replicate a packaged recipe, keep in mind that the items listed first under "Ingredients" are the ingredients that are used most. The ingredients listed last are used least. Foods that taste great with teriyaki flavoring are stir fry, steaks, burgers, beef jerky, chicken, chicken wings, fish, and pork.
J.D. Cunningham loves to eat different types of teriyaki-marinated foods, particularly teriyaki beef jerky, and enjoys tasting all kinds of different flavored foods and snacks.