Monday, March 24, 2008

Homemade Teriyaki Sauce

More Like Teri-Yummy!

Heloooo out there. I apologize for neglecting my blog for so long but I have had very little free time for writing or even cooking (gasp!). I know, it's terribly unfair to my loyal readers but my GMAT prep consumed way more time than I anticipated. It seems to have paid off though, as I received a near perfect score on my analytical writing assessment and 94% on the verbal section.

Unfortunately, I am not out of the woods yet and it is now time to prepare my applications for business school. I do hope to have things wrapped up pretty quickly though. That is to say, I absolutely MUST have things wrapped up and submitted within the next few days if I have any hope of attending school in the fall.


In any case, I plan on being back in the kitchen again soon. Until then, I will try to tide you over with a classic recipe from my old blog, which now features some updated comments (in various shades of blue).


Teriyaki Sauce Recipe (Updated 6.13.08)


3/4 cup of sugar

1 cup Soy Sauce*

1 cup of water or vegetable stock-I used Trader Joe's Ginger Soy stock (I had actually totally forgotten about this stuff)


1 tablespoon of mirin (rice wine vinegar)


2 teaspoons of sesame oil


1 cloves of garlic finely minced or grated


1 teaspoons of grated ginger

*Allow me to appologize for forgetting the primary ingredient of soy sauce in the initial posting of this recipe. That was a huge and embarrasing oversight. For anyone who tried the recipe up to this point only to effect the dismal result of what must have been garlicy, gingery sugar broth, I offer my sincerest appologies.


(Boy, that's an ugly shot)




Just toss all of the ingredients into a medium-sized stock pot and boil that sucker on high for like 5-7 minutes. Seriously, wait until you are boiling the peepee out of it and then let it go for another 5 minutes. ( Peepee? Yeah, I'm not sure what I was talking about here. It really is quite the reduction but just boil it for about 5 minutes and you should be set. The longer you boil the sauce, the deeper the flavor will be from the water evaporating.)


(AH! The dreaded top-down perspective)

As you can see, the peepee is rapidly being boiled out of this sauce. (I can't argue with that!)


That's it (or is it?). Let it cool and use for dipping, marinades, drizzling over rice or anything you like. I'm guessin' it would probably last in a sealed container in the fridge for like a week but you will probably be storing it all in your tummy long before the week is up! (Tummy? Peepee? Yummy... ugh.)

I'd like to add an additional note here that this sauce is great with steak and makes for fantastic burgers when incorporated with your ground meat!

EXTRA FUN:
You can add any kind of extra flavor you like to the sauce just by adding in your selected ingredients before you boil it. I have used raspberry jam, orange marmalade, slices of apple, apple juice and citrus zest. Go nuts. Heck, maybe even add nuts (don't add nuts).

In today's batch, I used grapefruit zest. (Finally, a decent photograph!)