Teriyaki dishes are found in many different type of cuisine nowadays, even in Mexican and Western dishes. Then, what is teriyaki? It's a way of Japanese cooking. The word, teriyaki is a combination of two Japanese words "teri" and "yaki." Teri means luster, and yaki means grill or broil.
To make a teriyaki dish, ingredients are broiled, roasted, or grilled after being marinated in or basted by teriyaki sauce. It's the teriyaki sauce that brings the shiny look (teri) to the ingredients. This is the real teriyaki, although any dish cooked with teriyaki sauce seems to be called teriyaki nowadays, whether the ingredients are Japanese or not.
You can buy teriyaki sauce in a bottle at the grocery store, but authentic teriyaki sauce is very easy to make. To make teriyaki sauce, you need soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. (If you don't have mirin, you can substitute it with sake and sugar.) The key ingredient in teriyaki sauce is mirin. Mirin adds luster to ingredients. See Teriyaki Sauce Recipe. Teriyaki sauce can be used for glazing and marinating meats and vegetables.
Japanese Teriyaki Recipes
Enjoy cooking!
