Teriyaki Sauce

As promised, today I’m delivering the very first meat marinade recipe. I came up with this homemade sauce though I have a store bought version but I honestly did consider faithful fans outside Lagos and kept thinking to myself, if I use the ready made bottle, what value have I added?

I don’t want to create fancy recipe with ingredients that are out of reach especially for those outside Lagos,  I honestly did set up this blog for busy Lagosians but if God decided to enlarge my territory, who am I to protest! I especially appreciate faithful ladies who not only follow the blog, try out the recipes and take out time to comment, thank you!

So about today’s recipe which is originally Japanese and has soy sauce as the major ingredient. Most add an alchoholic cooking wine like mirin but who am I kidding? Which one of my dear women will use alchohol to cook meat? Cooking tasty meat honestly means you have to add a little extra effort and a some good ingredients, it just doesn’t become tasty by itself.

I came up with this recipe using the basic teriyaki ingredients minus alchohol plus my own additions. Its a delicious recipe that can be used as a sauce after marinating but MUST BE BOILED first. The reason for boiling the marinade after you have removed the meat is to kill of all the bacteria and raw meat juices that sip into the marinade while it’s marinating. This is one of the few marinades I have come accross that can be used as a sauce after marinating.

It’s best with white meat which includes chicken, I used turkey to demonstrate today’s own. The best way to enjoy this marinade on the meat is to grill it in a gas or electric oven. I used an electric top grill oven which worked out perfectly.

Electric grill

Frying works too but you have to be careful the meat doesn’t over brown. If you are using boneless chicken fillets then you can pan fry with little oil in a non-stick pan.

Enough talk, let’s go there!

Ingredients : ( 1 cup ) 6 turkey wings

4 tablespoons dark soy sauce

2 tablespoons honey 1/2 cup of water + 7 tablespoons

1 teaspoon dry Cameroon pepper

1 tablespoon freshly chopped garlic (1 1/2 large clove)

1 tablespoon freshly chopped ginger

3 tablespoons finely chopped onions

1/4 teaspoon thyme 1 fresh pepper -atarodo

1/2 tablespoon pepper flakes (recipe on Wednesday)

2 teaspoons cornflour

2 Maggi cubes

1/2 teaspoon salt

Dark and light soy sauce

Turkey with cuts so the marinade can enter properly

Method :

Chopped garlic, onions and ginger

Blend the pepper, onions, garlic and ginger with 5 tablespoons of water.

Rough blend of onions, garlic and ginger

Measure out all the other ingredients into a bowl except the cornflour and mix. Add the onion ginger blend and mix well. Put the sauce on fire after you have added the 1/2 cup of water.

Let it boil so the ingredients are activated and the honey melts. Let it boil for about 3-4 minutes then mix the cornflour with 2 tablespoons of water and add to the boiling sauce mixing vigorously.  The sauce will thicken instantly.

Sauce boiling

Thickened sauce after cornflour has been added

Let it boil another 1 minute then turn off heat and let it cool.

Once the sauce cools down to room temperature,  add your washed clean turkey to it and marinade for 1 hour. Depending on what meat you decide to use, the marinade should at least cover the meat.

Marinaded meat

Marinate chicken in the mixuture for 1 hour Now the rest in pictures.

Rub very little oil on the foil before placing the turkey pieces ( if broiling or grilling)

Grilled on each side for 25 minutes

Fried version

Fried version

For the sauce:

Add about 5-6 tablespoons of the marinade to a small pot with 1/2 cup of water and boil

Let the marinade boil vigorously for 5 minutes, then add 5 tablespoons of ketchup and extra dry Cameroon pepper if you wish

Stir the sauce and let it boil for another minute, turn off heat and serve with your juicy grilled meat

Drizzle sauce on the turkey and place it on your rice

Or enjoy it on its own with fresh carrot sticks

Sauce generously poured on the chicken, shot retaken with my new Nikon Coolpix camera.

Teriyaki sauce generously drizzled all over the turkey!

Have a great week, Azu 🙂 .

*Tips: you can use light soy sauce if you want, I used dark soy sauce because mine is expiring in August and I need to finish it 🙂 .

Grilling the meat was way tastier than frying.

You can reserve some fresh marinade for the sauce instead of using all the marinade for the meat but follow the same process above.