We have a friend, Gary Barnett, who is a gourmet chef. Not that he works in a restaurant, but I’ve eaten his fine cuisine, and to call Gary an amateur would just be wrong. For the past few years, he’s been working his magic in the tiny galley of the Gallant Fox, their 39-foot Malö sailboat.
The following comes from his website, from the section entitled “The Propane Chef.”
“(Teriyaki) sauce is so easy to make, and homemade tastes so much better than bottled:”
1/2 cup high quality soy (no Kikkoman here)
2 tablespoons Sake
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 tsp of arrowroot starch
Simmer for about 3 minutes to thicken.
According to Gary, “You can use leftovers to make other sauces – add a bit of butter and some dry wasabi (Japanese horseradish) to make a pan sauce for salmon, or black cod, or pork cutlets. We love to drink Sake’ – so I cook a bit of Japanese something every week or two. But I don’t use so much teriyaki that I want to store a bottle of it around in my precious storage space – also, the bottled stuff tastes like salt.”
You could also make this using mirin instead of sake. Since sake can be dry or sweet, but mirin is always sweet, you should reduce or leave out the sugar.