Yuki Gomi, chef, teacher and friend of The Wasabi Company, talks us through why sake is ideal for steaming seafood. See more from Yuki at Japanese Food. Simply. Main photo by Keiko Oikawa.
Yuki on teri, teriyaki, and the sweet-salty glaze that makes a bowl of rice disappear.
Ask five Japanese mothers how to make teriyaki and you’ll get five different answers.
“A splash of soy sauce.” “Some mirin.” “A little sugar.” “Enough sake.” Most won’t measure a thing. Some will tell you their family adds grated ginger, or garlic, or a spoon of honey, or oddly, I’ve seen in a recent recipe, apple juice. Others swear by a spoon of miso stirred through for backbone. None are wrong.
Teriyaki was never a fixed recipe in Japan, and if you asked ten home cooks for theirs, you’d likely come away with ten slightly different versions, none of them claiming to be definitive. It would simply be “the way we make it,” the way your mum’s shepherd’s pie has a slightly different ratio of Worcestershire sauce to your aunt’s, and neither of you has ever thought to write it down.
The story behind the word
The word Teri, 照りcomes first, and it means shine or gloss, referring to that glossy, lacquered finish you get on food that’s been glazed with something mirin based, reduced down until it clings and shines rather than runs. It’s a look and a texture, not a fixed sauce. Teri turns up wherever Japanese cooks want that shine, in simmered dishes, in grilled fish, in vegetables finished in a pan.
Yaki, 焼き, means grilled or pan-fried. Teriyaki, the two words joined, describes one specific application of that gloss: food that is glazed and grilled or pan-fried at the same time, traditionally basted in layers as it cooks so the glaze builds up slowly rather than being tipped in all at once at the end. Fish carried this method through most of its history in Japan, yellowtail and mackerel especially, long before chicken became the version most familiar outside Japan.
What I’ve made this week is properly a teri sauce, not a teriyaki. I’m not building the glaze onto the chicken in layers as it cooks, and I’ve added sesame and miso, which pulls it away from anything a Japanese cook would recognise as classic teriyaki. It’s my own glaze, using the same soy, mirin and sake base and chasing the same shine, but I wouldn’t put it forward as teriyaki.
Once you know teri names a finish rather than one fixed sauce, it stops being strange that everyone’s version looks a little different. My sesame and miso addition isn’t a variation on someone else’s teriyaki. It’s simply my own teri sauce, the way I like it.
I think the distinction gets lost by the time teriyaki reaches a British supermarket shelf, where it usually means one very sweet, slightly gloopy bottled sauce, and where most people have only ever met it poured over chicken, or occasionally salmon. It’s a bit like judging Italian cooking, generally, on jarred bolognese.
That glossy soy mirin glaze, in its many forms, turns up in Japan on aubergine, on tofu, on beef, on whatever needs a bit of shine and a reason to be eaten alongside plain rice
Photo courtesy of @rah_man_uk @vegang_z and @thomlangford
Making your own
My version this week adds ground sesame seeds and a spoon of red miso to the usual soy, mirin and sake. The sesame gives the sauce a bit of body and a nutty depth, and the miso rounds it out so it doesn’t taste purely of sweetness.
I like it far more than a plain soy and mirin glaze, which I find a touch one note taste-wise.
The full recipe, along with my tips on getting the glaze right, the rice properly cooked, and a good tofu swap for a meat-free version, is available on Japanese Food. Simply.
If you've ever wondered why your teriyaki tastes flat compared to what you get in Japan, or burnt a sauce the way I did, this one's for you.
This article was originally published on Japanese Food. Simply. by chef and teacher Yuki Gomi.
Yuki blends traditional and modern techniques to make Japanese cooking approachable and delicious.
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