Not Quite Teriyaki

This recipe is inspired by my Filipino heritage and one of my favorite dishes - my mom's Chicken Adobo. I'll post the recipe for adobo some other time, but one of the base ingredients (besides chicken) is soy sauce. I love making adobo, especially when it comes out tasting just like my mom's ;-)

Sometimes, however, I'm too impatient (or maybe too lazy =P) to measure out the proportions of soy sauce, water, vinegar, etc. necessary for the tangy deliciousness of adobo. So I started just mixing things together without bothering to measure anything, and ironically (or maybe not so ironically) the initial experimentation process turned out to take longer than just following the adobo recipe in the first place! But the process has since been refined (sort of) and has led to this recipe, which I dubbed "Not Quite Teriyaki." It is basically a soy-based marinade that is sweet like teriyaki sauce, but not thick or syrupy like most teriyaki sauces. And it excludes one of the key teriyaki ingredients.

Since this was a make-it-up-as-I-go recipe, I'm just going to list the ingredients and guesstimate the measurements. I'll include some variants that I've tried that turned out pretty okay. The final marinade is highly dependent on personal preference...hence a lot of taste-testing along the way ;-) I like to use this marinade with both chicken and fish (salmon, to be exact - it's my favorite).

Base Ingredients:
Soy sauce
Water
Sugar (or sugar substitute - I'm partial to Splenda)
Ground ginger
Garlic powder

Variants (additional ingredients)
Orange juice, lemon or lime juice (for a citrus-soy marinade)
Black pepper
Vinegar (for a bit of a tangy bite)

For the base marinade: Mix about 1-2 tsp ginger, 1-2 tsp garlic powder, 1/2 - 1 cup sugar. Add 1/2 - 3/4 cup soy sauce, 1 - 1.5 cups water and mix.

What I actually do is dump some sugar in a bowl, sprinkle ginger and garlic powder over it so it makes sort of a thin layer on top of the sugar, mix it together, then add water and soy sauce and taste-test to to make sure it's not too watery, salty or sweet. Then I proceed to adjust the amount of each ingredient until the sauce taste is to my liking.

For the citrus-soy variant, add about equal amounts of soy sauce and orange juice and maybe a couple tablespoons of lemon or lime juice (or a mix of both). Again, the final product will be very dependent on personal preference.

Once the sauce is mixed, place chicken or fish in a sealable container and, using a fork, poke holes into the meat to let the sauce seep in. Pour the sauce over the meat so that it is mostly submerged. Let it sit for 1-2 days in the refrigerator. When you're ready to cook, place the meat in a broiling or baking pan and:

For fish: broil 4-5 minutes on each side

For chicken: broil 5-7 minutes on each side or bake at 375 F for 1.25 - 1.5 hours (for chicken, I think baking is better, if you have the time!)

To make a sort of "au jus" type dipping sauce with the leftover marinade, pour it into a saucepan and bring to a low boil, then let it simmer for roughly 10 minutes. Serve meat over rice or noodles (or by itself!) and pour sauce over dish as desired!



I've made this plenty of times with both chicken and fish, but am usually too eager to dig in to stop and take a picture of the finished product! Thankfully, Gayatri swooped in with her camera one time when I made salmon, pictured above with brown rice and seaweed salad - store-bought, but something I'll attempt in the future!

~Karla