Skip store-bought and make our easy homemade teriyaki sauce instead! Our 5 ingredient sauce tastes so much better than what you can buy at the store and keeps in the fridge for weeks! You can use it as a marinade, sauce, and glaze!
I’m so unbelievably over the moon with this authentic homemade teriyaki sauce recipe. It’s so good that I’m actually kicking myself for using the store-bought stuff for so long!
I love this easy sauce for my teriyaki chicken recipe, and it’s excellent with shrimp and salmon. You can use it as a marinade or a glaze! For more homemade Asian sauces, try our easy stir fry sauce and this homemade hoisin sauce.
Key Ingredients
- Low-Sodium Soy Sauce: I use the green-topped soy sauce as the base of my sauce. It might seem salty, but trust me, it’ll blend beautifully with the other ingredients. You can substitute with light tamari with no changes.
- Sugar: I use granulated sugar, which balances the soy sauce and makes our teriyaki sauce thick and glossy when cooked. Feel free to experiment with brown sugar, coconut sugar, or even honey, but remember that these might make the sauce taste sweeter.
- Sake: Don’t stress about buying expensive sake for teriyaki sauce! Use something you’d enjoy drinking, but it doesn’t need to be top-shelf. If you can’t find sake, mirin (a sweeter rice wine) works well too. You can swap it in directly or slightly reduce the sugar in the recipe.
- Rice Vinegar: This adds a little zing to the sauce. You can usually find it near other vinegars at the grocery store. For substitutes, try white wine vinegar or plain white vinegar. Don’t worry if the sauce seems a bit strong after adding the vinegar—the flavors will mellow as it cooks.
- Fresh Ginger (optional): I like to grate it finely with a microplane so it melts into the sauce.
How to Make Teriyaki Sauce
Making your own batch of teriyaki sauce is easy, and it will taste much better than anything you can find at the store. This sauce is so good you will always want a batch in the fridge. You can use it as a marinade, stir-fry sauce, or glaze for meats and seafood. Think teriyaki chicken, salmon, and shrimp!
Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan, then heat over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. You can cool and store the sauce in the fridge or simmer it for an extra 5 to 10 minutes for a thick and glossy sauce. Easy!
Easy Teriyaki Sauce
- PREP
- COOK
- TOTAL
This homemade teriyaki sauce is incredibly versatile! Use it as a marinade, stir-fry sauce, or glaze for chicken, salmon, or shrimp. I love the depth of flavor that sake adds, but if you don’t have any, check out the tips section below for easy substitutes.
This recipe makes about 2 cups of sauce – plenty to keep in your fridge for weeks! If you’d prefer a smaller batch, simply use this ratio: 1 part soy sauce, 1 part sugar, 1/2 part sake, 1/4 part rice vinegar.
You Will Need
1 cup (235ml) low-sodium soy sauce
1 cup (200g) granulated sugar, see notes for lowering sugar
1/2 cup (120ml) sake (Japanese rice wine)
1/4 cup (60ml) rice vinegar
1 heaping tablespoon finely grated ginger, see notes
Directions
1Combine ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves.
2For a thick and shiny sauce, bring the teriyaki sauce to a simmer and cook for an extra 5 to 10 minutes. Cool.
3Store the sauce in the refrigerator for several weeks. You can also freeze it for up to three months. If it ever seems too thick, thin it with a tablespoon or so of water.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Substitute for sake: We love the delicate flavor of sake for teriyaki sauce, but if you cannot find it, there are some alternatives. Mirin is a sweeter version of sake. You can either swap it for the sake and leave the sugar amount as is or pull back on the amount of sugar slightly to accommodate the extra sweetness (Try 3/4 cup of sugar instead of 1 cup). Dry vermouth or dry sherry can also work as a substitute.
- Can I reduce the sugar: The 1:1 ratio of sugar to soy sauce makes a nicely balanced sauce similar to great teriyaki restaurants and bottled sauces. It’s delicious, but if you are concerned with the amount of sugar, you can get away with reducing it. Reducing the sugar from 1 cup to 3/4 cup or even 1/2 cup should work. Since the sauce does not need to cook long, you can taste it as you go. Start with 1/2 cup, taste, and then increase the sugar until you are happy with the balance of salt and sweet.
- Ginger: We use a Microplane rasp grater for the ginger, which helps it “melt” into the sauce. You can finely mince it, but you will be left with bits of ginger in the sauce.
- Cornstarch: We omit cornstarch in our recipe. Some teriyaki sauce recipes call for a bit of cornstarch mixed with water added to the saucepan to thicken the sauce. We find that an extra few minutes of simmering thicken the sauce enough for us, but you can include it if preferred.
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates.
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Thank you for your recipe. Could you please suggest alternatives for sake and rice vinegar because we do not consume alcohol. Thanks again.
Hi Tehmina, We have substitution suggestions for Sake in the notes section of the recipe. Rice vinegar shouldn’t have alcohol content. This shouldn’t be confused with rice wine which does have alcohol.