Homemade Teriyaki Sauce

Homemade Teriyaki Sauce:

Hands down the most delicious teriyaki sauce ever. This is our go-to sauce for quick dinners. And it is everything you want, the perfect balance of sweet and savory, and just the right amount of sticky, flavorful, goodness to slather on protein or vegetables.  

Use for a chicken, beef, shrimp, or vegetable stir fry. Slather wings in this teriyaki sauce. Or use it on skillet chicken, or sheet pan salmon. The possibilities are endless with this easy to make, yet universally delicious teriyaki sauce recipe.

Use this recipe for a classic chicken teriyaki sauce or use it as a great marinade for a number of dishes. This teriyaki sauce has a plethora of uses and will become a staple in your home.   This sweet yet savory homemade teriyaki sauce recipe will jazz up a basic dish in minutes.

I love making a big batch of it, and keeping it in the refrigerator for quick dinner fixes on busy nights. I can toss random vegetables into a pan, and sauté them. Then add teriyaki sauce. A protein. And I am good to go.

What  Makes This The Best Teriyaki Sauce?

This is the best teriyaki sauce recipe, and I say that with confidence having tried SO MANY variations. Homemade and store bought.  I love it! It is easy to make, it has a fabulous taste, and the consistency is perfect.

Why Is This Teriyaki Sauce The Best?

1. Homemade sauce is fresher and better than store bought.First, homemade is just better.  It has fresh ingredients and is not loaded with all the preservatives store bought products tend to have.  Starting off with a homemade sauce instead of a store bought sauce already puts the recipe ahead.
2. Sauce has a well-balanced sweet and savory ratio. One of my biggest complaints with teriyaki sauce is sometimes they are just too sweet. I have a total sweet tooth, and love sweet sauces. But I don’t want to feel like I am eating brown sugar. When it comes to teriyaki: You don’t want your teriyaki sauce to mimic a soy sauce and have no sweet element, but you also don’t want the sweetness of the sauce to overpower the rest of the flavors.  A good teriyaki sauce has a good balance between sweet and savory components, which this recipe does. I have tested and tested, and toyed with it over and over to get the ratio right. 
3. Easy and quick to make. I think most of us buy store bought marinades because we want to make life easier.  No one wants to spend tons of time on dinner. And adding a pre-made element keeps things easy. Luckily, this sauce is super easy to make so it is not overwhelming at all. And it is almost as easy as buying something pre-made. You likely already have all of the ingredients on hand.
4. You don’t need an extensive list of ingredients to make this sauce. I hate when you have a recipe that lists a bunch of ingredients that you don’t have and even worse have no idea where to even find them at the store.  That is not the case with this sauce. You probably have most of what you need, if not all of it.
5. Good consistency. The use of cornstarch in the recipe makes the sauce have a great consistency.  It’s not too thick and it is not too runny either. And it is super easy to make it as thick as you want by cooking it down to get that thick, sticky sauce, or leave it runnier to be a marinade.

In a nutshell, this teriyaki sauce is the best because the flavor has the perfect balance in taste, it is easy and convenient to make, and the consistency is spot on and easy to customize.

Substitutions For Teriyaki Sauce:

Sometimes you don’t have all the ingredients for a dish on hand.  

When talking about substitutions for a teriyaki sauce, I say instead of just looking for a substitution for teriyaki sauce, ditch the store bought sauces and make your own.

All teriyaki sauces have some similar base ingredients like soy sauce, a sweetener of some kind, ginger and a lot of times garlic.  

If you are looking at this homemade teriyaki sauce recipe and don’t have all the exact ingredients, there are some substitutions that can be made for some ingredients.

Possible Ingredient Substitutions For Teriyaki Sauce:

• Use coconut aminos in place of soy sauce
• Use sugar, brown sugar, or honey as a sweetener
• Flour or arrow root powder in place of cornstarch
• Fresh ginger or ground ginger
• Fresh garlic or garlic powder

Note: To get the best results use the ingredients from the recipe.  However in a pinch you could make some substitutions if needed. Be aware that proportions may differ with certain substitutions.

What Is The Difference Between Soy Sauce And Teriyaki Sauce?

I love soy sauce and I love teriyaki sauce.  They both have their places in cooking.

However, soy sauce and teriyaki sauce are definitely not the same thing.  Teriyaki sauce typically has soy sauce as one of its ingredients.

So, as you may get a hint of the soy sauce flavor in a teriyaki sauce, as a whole teriyaki sauce tastes different than soy sauce because it has other ingredients as well that are used to create this sauce.

Teriyaki sauce has a sweet undertone to it, whereas soy sauce is not sweet at all.  Soy sauce has a saltier flavor profile, making soy sauce savory with no sweet element.

Basic Ingredients in Soy Sauce:

• Fermented Soy Beans
• Water
• Salt
• Wheat

Teriyaki sauce has soy sauce, which includes those ingredients mentioned, but typically teriyaki sauce, as already mentioned also has a sweetener of some kind, as well as garlic, and ginger, along with other variations depending on the recipe.

Ingredients In This Teriyaki Sauce Recipe:

• White Sugar
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Soy Sauce
• Cider Vinegar
• Black Pepper
• Cornstarch
• Water

As you can see, there are more elements to teriyaki sauce than soy sauce and the ingredient sugar in the list offers an element of sweetness too.

How Do You Thicken Teriyaki Sauce?

Fortunately this teriyaki sauce recipe has a great consistency so you won’t need to find other ways to thicken it, other than cooking it down. The corn starch is what helps it thicken. 

If you ever find that you do not like the consistency of a teriyaki sauce and you are in a pinch, you can do any of the following to thicken it:

• Corn starch slurry: This is where you mix corn starch with cold water. Cold is important. Then add it to the hot mixture, and it will act as a thickening agent. The proportion of cornstarch in this recipe will provide a nice consistency to the teriyaki sauce. But if you need it even thicker, you can do it again.
• Cook it down: The next trick to getting the right consistency is cooking the sauce down. You basically cook it just below a boil, and let it simmer until it thickens. And it will continue to thicken as it cools. If it isn’t as thick as you want, keep in mind it will thicken when you use it if you keep cooking. But also, you can cook it longer to get it as thick as you want.

This Teriyaki Sauce Recipe Make A Great Marinade!

Make this simple, yet delicious, teriyaki sauce, and don’t thicken it as much, and you can use it as marinade rather than a sauce.  On a night you want to elevate the flavor of your basic chicken, beef, seafood, or vegetable dish.  Add loads of flavor with a simple sauce or marinade! 

Want some other sauce or marinade ideas?

• Greek Chicken Marinade 
• Tzatziki
• Mediterranean Marinade
• Peach BBQ Sauce

Homemade Teriyaki Sauce

A thick and flavorful teriyaki sauce. This teriyaki sauce is sweet and tangy, and perfect for chicken, stir-fry, wings, or anything else. This sauce is something we keep on repeat. Delicious.

4.84 from 6 votes

Print Pin Rate

Course: Sauce

Cuisine: Japanese

Keyword: Homemade, stir fry, teriyaki sauce, wings

Prep Time: 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes minutes

Servings: 1 bottle

Calories: 508kcal

Author: Rachael

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon cold water
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup cider vinegar
• 1 clove garlic minced
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Instructions

• Put all the teriyaki sauce ingredients in a heavy bottom sauce pan, and bring to a simmer over medium heat.
• Cook 5-10 minutes, letting the sauce reduce to desired thickness.
• Remove from heat, and store in an airtight container.
• Great on salmon, chicken, pork and more.

Nutrition

Calories: 508kcal | Carbohydrates: 116g | Protein: 12g | Sodium: 6486mg | Potassium: 289mg | Sugar: 102g | Vitamin C: 0.9mg | Calcium: 23mg | Iron: 3mg

Our recipe card software calculates these nutrition facts based on averages for the above ingredients, different brands, and quality of produce/meats may have different nutritional information, always calculate your own based on the specific products you use in order to achieve accurate macros for this recipe.

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