This teriyaki marinade/sauce can be used for almost everything, vegetarian stir fry, chicken, fish and beef. It’s a marinade before cooking and a sauce after it is cooked and thickened. We first set out to make it for salmon and spiced it with our Rojo spice blend. While eating the yummy salmon, we envisioned that the teriyaki sauce could go with other proteins, and wondered which of our spices would work the best. Well, that led to a working dinner…which is a time for us to turn our kitchen into a lab and begin experimenting! I’m here to report that ALL of our spices worked beautifully in the teriyaki sauce!! Each of our blends resulted in a unique flavor and emphasized interesting components of the blends. You can’t go wrong using any of our 4 spices. Here are our tasting notes:
The ROJO: This blend fits magically with the other recipe ingredients. Wait with patience and it will make its appearance after you experience the ginger and garlic. Quiet and elegant.
The JAVA: This addition provided a “sweet” flavor and the coffee and chocolate were blissful. Use this if you are looking for quieter depth of flavor and less bite on the tongue.
The JERK: My personal favorite. This blend becomes a surprisingly sassy spice. This is the spice to use if you prefer the ginger and garlic to stay in the background. The jerk takes the lead role with heat and the allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg.
The ORIGINAL: This may have been the most interesting. Yes, it tastes spicy, but the teriyaki seems to draw out an unexpectedly strong flavor from the fennel seed in the spice blend. Very unusual and very original (pun intended).
Ingredients:
1/2 cup soy sauce (or gluten free tamari sauce)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup honey (or agave nectar or maple syrup)
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger root
1 large clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons any Little Bottles spice blend
2 teaspoons arrowroot powder
2 tablespoons water
Preparation:
Mix together in a glass bowl all ingredients except the arrowroot and water.
Place in a shallow pan whatever protein you wish to marinade. Pour teriyaki sauce over the contents of the pan. Cover and refrigerate for at least one hour and not more than 3.
Remove the protein from the marinade and set aside. Pour the remaining marinade into small saucepan and bring to a boil over a medium high heat. Once it boils, immediately turn down the heat to keep the sauce at a good simmer. Keep simmering for at least 5 minutes.
Add the arrowroot to the water in a small bowl and mix until smooth. Immediately add to the simmering sauce and keep stirring. The sauce should thicken pretty quickly. If you need to thicken it more, mix water and arrowroot again in a small bowl. Add only enough to thicken sauce until it isn’t runny. Not too thick, because you want it to pour.
When your protein is cooked, drizzle the sauce over the protein and serve. We put extra in a small serving bowl on the table for diners to use as desired.
Enjoy!
