- 2 days ago
We challenged chefs of three different skill levels–amateur Billy, home cook Emily, and professional chef Yuji Haraguchi–to make us their take on teriyaki. We then asked expert food scientist Rose to explain each chef's choices along the way. Which teriyaki dish do you want to tuck into first?
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00:00Hi, I'm Billy and I'm a level one chef.
00:06Hi, I'm Emily and I'm a level two chef.
00:09Hi, I'm Yuji, I'm a professional chef.
00:11I've been cooking more than 10 years.
00:15What do I love about teriyaki?
00:16It's ubiquitous, a little bit of sweetness,
00:19but that umami underpinning
00:21that kind of makes your mouth water.
00:22Sake, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar.
00:25To me, that's like a classic teriyaki.
00:27Teriyaki is just a way over cooking.
00:29Teriyaki means glazed and then yaki means cooking.
00:33So it is a way to cook any protein
00:35with a really nice glaze on top.
00:43You can do teriyaki for all kinds of protein.
00:47I've got two chicken breasts here.
00:48First things first, I wanna get some of this skin
00:50off of the chicken breast and then the yaki stuff here.
00:55A very technical name, the yaki stuff.
00:57I have salmon fillets skin on.
01:00I grew up in a place where there's a lot of salmon actually.
01:03Fun fact about me.
01:05I choose a hanger steak for my teriyaki.
01:08Hanger steak is very meaty and very fatty
01:10and it really has a really good flavor.
01:12I'm gonna slice it into smaller pieces
01:14so that there's a lot more surface area
01:17for the teriyaki sauce to get onto.
01:19I'm going to portion the steak
01:21so that it has a really nice thickness
01:23and then when I cook it,
01:24I can still remain the piece to be medium rare.
01:28My chicken is now strippified.
01:31I got my steaks ready.
01:32I'm gonna move on to making my own marinade.
01:35You gotta have teriyaki sauce.
01:36Teriyaki is the name of the sauce.
01:38Without the teriyaki sauce, there's no teriyaki.
01:41Traditionally, teriyaki is made with a combination
01:44of soy sauce, sake, and mirin.
01:46Mirin is also sweet.
01:47I usually call it SSM, soy sake mirin.
01:50It's a long term, so I just SSM.
01:51And sugar.
01:52That's it, four ingredients.
01:54This is so easy.
01:55The idea of making my own teriyaki sauce
01:57seemed a little daunting,
01:59so I am blessed with plenty of different
02:01store-bought options to work with
02:03and I think this is probably the best one I've come across.
02:05You can buy like pre-made teriyaki mixes.
02:08Some of them have other stuff in them.
02:10I'm adding kombu.
02:11Kombu is a type of seaweed, also known as kelp.
02:15It has a really nice umami acid,
02:17which is known as a puritanic acid.
02:20I'm adding bonito flake.
02:22This has a really special umami acid
02:25known as inocenic acid.
02:27I like to have some bay leaf, clove,
02:30and then a cinnamon stick.
02:31Then I like to have a little bit of citrusy flavor,
02:34so I'm going to add orange.
02:36Little bit of live seasoning that we're doing here.
02:39Some fresh ginger.
02:40Real rough chop, just try to get it as small
02:42as somebody of my chef caliber can.
02:45Fresh ginger into the bag.
02:47I'm just going to simmer it a few minutes.
02:49I want to melt the sugar,
02:51and I want to reduce it a little,
02:53just thicken it up teensy tiny bit.
02:54Make almost like a stock.
02:56As much as I love sake,
02:57you don't want like a pure alcohol taste with it.
03:00You know, you want it to be cooked off a little bit.
03:02Next up, two cloves of crushed garlic.
03:04Very nice.
03:05Looks great.
03:06I'm ready to strain this.
03:08My version is going to be a little bit different.
03:11I like the flavor of honey so much
03:13that I usually use this instead of a milling.
03:15I'm not going to reduce this down
03:18because honey is going to thicken up.
03:19All right, this is the hardest part of the recipe.
03:21You ready?
03:23Here we go.
03:26Alrighty, and we're ready to go with the marinade.
03:29Give it a massage,
03:30and I'm going to let this marinade off to the side
03:34for about a half hour.
03:35Everything's kind of married together.
03:36The sugar is melted.
03:38We've reduced a little bit of the liquid out.
03:40That's all I was really going for.
03:41So teriyaki sauce, ready for action, baby.
03:44Now my marinade is ready for my cooking.
03:46For this recipe, I'm using plain old jasmine rice.
03:48I would not probably use jasmine rice.
03:50Japanese cooking is always made with short grain rice.
03:54I'm going to use short grain rice for the koshihikari.
03:58And using a microwave rice cooker.
04:01I'm going to be making it in a rice cooker.
04:03Donabe rice pot.
04:04Donabe is a traditional clay pot
04:07used for a lot of Japanese cooking.
04:08I'm going to start washing the short grain rice in water.
04:12Don't wash too much.
04:13If you wash too much, it's going to break the rice.
04:15If you break the rice, rice is going to be very amushi.
04:18So rice rinsed, I'm going to add it into my rice cooker,
04:21add my water just up to the wine.
04:23I do like a little pinch of salt.
04:26It's not like a big pinch.
04:27It's literally, honestly, I kind of think of it more like
04:29for good luck than for flavor.
04:32It's five minutes on high and then 15 minutes on 50%.
04:35I'm just going to pop that lid on there and press.
04:44Cook it at a really high temperature.
04:45As soon as I see the steam, I'm going to turn it down to low heat
04:48and I'm going to wait for another 15 minutes.
04:51Big bag of chicken marinade ready to go.
04:53Going to put it in the skillet and get things cooking.
04:56The first thing I need to do is just dry off my salmon a little.
04:58Traditionally, teriyaki is just cooked in a saute pan with a protein
05:03and this sauce goes into it.
05:04And as you cook it, the glaze gets kind of like completed
05:07on the saute pan.
05:08The way I'm going to cook this hanger steak is a little bit unique
05:13on top of the baking dish.
05:15Everything gets cooked really nicely and even
05:18and it has really nice caramelization.
05:20I have salt here.
05:21I'm not going to be too aggressive with this
05:23because I am going to also basically cover this in soy sauce.
05:25I'm going to do just a little bit of white pepper.
05:28Add my oil.
05:28Sizzle, sizzle.
05:31Give everybody room.
05:32You don't want anybody crowding.
05:34I don't want all of this marinade to make its way into the pan.
05:37I think that's going to end up being a sloppy mess real quick.
05:39So I'm going to try to retain what comes naturally
05:41as I take the chicken out of the marinade and put it into the pan.
05:44We're going to cook this almost entirely on the skin side down.
05:47I'm going to go into the oven and then I repeat this process
05:51every three, four minutes.
05:53Marinate, cook several times until the surface is really nicely glazed.
05:58Just a good old fashioned stir fry
05:59ought to make sure that everything is cooked through
06:01as long as it's brown on all sides.
06:03The skin, it'll sort of like fuse to the pan at first
06:06and then eventually once it cooks enough,
06:07it should unlock and I'll be able to lift it.
06:10And then we'll just get a little flipperoni.
06:12The first cooking, it was about five minutes
06:14and I start seeing a little bit of caramelizations right here.
06:18So I took it out.
06:19I'm going to marinate it again and then back to the oven.
06:22It doesn't feel raw anymore.
06:24It's starting to feel proper,
06:27like the kind of consistency you want to put in your mouth,
06:30not the kind of consistency you want to spit into a napkin.
06:32The edge is getting nice and like hard and then I see more charred.
06:37I'm very excited.
06:38Okay, go back. Maybe one more time. We'll see.
06:40I think this chicken's done.
06:42Cutting the heat.
06:45Nope. That's the other way. Cutting the heat.
06:46There we go.
06:47My salmon is looking perfect, beautiful, delicious.
06:51I'm just going to add my sauce to the bottom of the pan
06:54because the top is nice and beautiful and crispy right now.
06:56And I really want to kind of preserve that as best I can.
06:59The chicken's got to rest for a little bit,
07:00but you don't want all the moisture to just escape into the room, right?
07:03So, boom, we tense the chicken.
07:06We take the chicken camping, put it in the tent,
07:09but hold on to this pan because we're going to use it for the broccoli.
07:12I think that this is perfect. The fish looks great. It's well cooked.
07:15And I'm going to hold on to this sauce and use it for plating.
07:18Meat is looking perfect.
07:19Exactly the texture and the flavor, aroma that I was looking for.
07:24What I have to do right now is you wait and rest.
07:26And then after that, I'm going to serve this.
07:28For my side, the aforementioned broccoli.
07:31I have a pot of boiling water and here is a bowl of ice water.
07:36So when this is boiled for a couple of minutes,
07:37I'm going to take it out and shock it in the ice water,
07:40which should keep things nice and toothy and snappy and good.
07:43I'm going to be making some oyster mushrooms.
07:45One of the things I like about oyster mushrooms
07:47is that you can really kind of crisp them up in a pan like this.
07:49They've got a lot of surface area.
07:50I'm going to use uni.
07:52Half is going to be served fresh on top of your sliced hunger steak.
07:57And then the other half is going to be dehydrated.
08:00Got this pan with all the delicious stuff stuck on the bottom,
08:04ready to get heated back up.
08:05They're already starting to stick to the pan a little and we want that.
08:07We want them to kind of get a little crispy, a little brown minced garlic.
08:12A little bit of cooking on the garlic before I put the soy sauce in
08:15because I don't want to poach it.
08:16This chicken is pretty much most of the way, all the way cooked.
08:18So we want to introduce this at the last possible moment
08:21so that we're not overcooking the chicken.
08:23Don't want it undercooked, but you don't want it overcooked either.
08:26Sploosh, technical term of soy sauce.
08:29And because we are making a teriyaki dinner, sploosh of teriyaki sauce.
08:34I want it to have something very refreshing.
08:36What I mean, radish is really pretty.
08:38The color is really nice inside.
08:40Sprinkle of sugar, sprinkle of salt, and you just toss it.
08:44This type of pickle is called asazuke.
08:46Asazuke means quick pickle.
08:48And I'm going to let this sit for about 10, 15 minutes
08:50until the water comes out.
08:52Do we need any more teriyaki sauce?
08:54Where would I get more teriyaki sauce if I needed more teriyaki sauce?
08:57If you're smart like me, you didn't throw out that big old bag of marinade
09:00that you were using earlier.
09:02I'm just going to throw a little bit in.
09:04We're going to let this cook, baby.
09:05Cook.
09:05Pick up all the delicious stuff that got loosened from the bottom.
09:08And folks, we're ready to put this onto some rice.
09:11Now I tilt these into here.
09:13And that's what I call a frigging mushroom.
09:16I can tell this radish is ready.
09:18I don't see any more salt and sugar on top of the radish.
09:22And I will also see water coming out.
09:24I can add vinegar and lime.
09:26And then the shiso.
09:28This is my watermelon asazuke pickle.
09:31Everything's done, now it's time to plate and serve.
09:33We're going to put down a bed of white jasmine rice.
09:36I want lots of rice on here because it has to soak up
09:38all of those delicious teriyaki flavors.
09:41Broccoli here.
09:42Delish.
09:43Now, chicken.
09:44Then I'm going to take my salmon.
09:46Crispy chicken up.
09:47I want him shown off.
09:49I'm going to slice hangar steak teriyaki.
09:53Kind of like omosake sashimi.
09:54My serving plate is going to be actually this donabe.
09:58I'm going to put the steak over the donabe rice.
10:02Mushrooms.
10:04This is the prettiest mushroom.
10:05Watermelon radish.
10:06It's going to add a really nice color, texture, and flavor.
10:10Scallions for a little color, a little bit of onion flavor.
10:13And then it's going to have a really nice yellow color
10:15from sea urchin.
10:17So I'm just going to grab a little pickled ginger.
10:18We don't need a lot of this.
10:19It's like pretty salty and it packs a pretty big punch.
10:22I took the extra teriyaki marinade and then reduced it
10:26so that I could actually use it as a finishing.
10:29Very last step.
10:29I'm going to give this a subtle dust with some sesame seeds.
10:33A little sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle.
10:36Little bit of flavor, but mostly aesthetics.
10:38This is shichimi togarashi, which is like a seven flavor
10:41red pepper flake mix.
10:43I love this because it brings a lot of different flavors
10:46and it adds a little bit of heat.
10:47And finally, I'm going to have this dehydrated uni shave all over.
10:52Ladies and gentlemen, this is my chicken teriyaki with broccoli.
10:57And this is my salmon teriyaki dinner with mushrooms and rice.
11:02This is my beef teriyaki with uni.
11:11Everything looks great.
11:12Now comes the fun part, tasting.
11:14All right, we want some rice.
11:16We want a mushroom for sure.
11:18Let's break into that salmon.
11:20Doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before, actually.
11:22Very excited to try.
11:24Mm. Wow.
11:25Mm.
11:26Chicken's good, not overcooked, thank God.
11:28Mushrooms are perfect.
11:30Umami and sweet and salty, a little garlicky, just delicious.
11:34It's a very nice mix of authentic child food teriyaki
11:39that I ate growing up together with sea urchin.
11:43I don't even know how to describe
11:44because it's a special combination.
11:47Broccoli's not too soft, not too tough.
11:49Got it just right.
11:50Thank you, Mr. Ice Bath.
11:51And then the salmon, my beautiful salmon.
11:53You get like a little bit of teriyaki flavor
11:56and it's just a really nicely cooked piece of fish.
11:58I don't want to toot my own horn here too much, but toot, toot.
12:01Came out so good, more than I expected.
12:05Let's see how each of our three chefs made teriyaki.
12:11Billy marinated strips of chicken breasts
12:13in his teriyaki sauce with added crushed garlic.
12:16Crushing promotes the mixing of cell components in the garlic,
12:19so the enzyme alanase forms allicin,
12:22a sulfur-containing compound that contributes a spicy bite.
12:26It balances the very sweet sauce with savory flavor.
12:29Emily seared salmon.
12:31Patting the salmon dry encouraged quick
12:33Maillard browning and crust formation.
12:36This gives an extra flavor and crispness
12:38to the outside and edges of her salmon.
12:41What's not to look?
12:42Yuji used hanger steak,
12:43a portion from the upper plate or belly of beef.
12:46He broiled his skewers over a baking dish
12:49with sides deep enough that they retained heat
12:51from the radiant coils of the broiler
12:53located above the skewers.
12:55It's taking all the excess water and the juice out.
13:00Billy purchased commercial teriyaki sauce,
13:03which has quite a lot of sugar.
13:05It also contains soy sauce
13:07in addition to water, vinegar, and salt.
13:09Close enough for something that I made.
13:11Emily made her own teriyaki sauce
13:13by cooking together equal parts soy sauce,
13:15sake, and mirin.
13:16Mirin is an alcoholic beverage
13:18made from fermentation of polished rice
13:21combined with koji and shochu.
13:23The addition of the shochu
13:25limits alcoholic fermentation
13:27while it's aged for a few months
13:28between 77 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit.
13:32During aging, the starches in the rice
13:34are broken down by enzymes in the koji
13:36into glucose, giving mirin characteristic sweetness.
13:40Yuji marinated beef in soy sauce and sake
13:43with other warming spices
13:44like cinnamon, clove, and ginger, plus orange,
13:48which adds sweetness and citric and ascorbic acids
13:51for a unique brightness.
13:53Sake is an alcoholic beverage
13:54made from fermented polished rice.
13:57The flavor profile is a result
13:59of the microorganisms used in fermentation.
14:02Sake has various amino acids
14:04from the catabolism of proteins
14:06and is particularly high in glutamic acid,
14:09giving an umami quality.
14:11Honey's a nice addition
14:12because it's made from glucose
14:13and fructose in solution.
14:15So the sweetness is intense,
14:17but modified by the presence
14:18of organic acids and minerals.
14:24Billy made his rice in a microwave.
14:26Microwaves cause polar molecules
14:28to quickly rotate,
14:29which causes friction and heat,
14:31which cooks the rice.
14:32Water is a polar molecule
14:34and is an essential component
14:35for cooking in a microwave.
14:37Emily rinsed her jasmine rice
14:39to remove excess starch
14:40and then used a rice cooker.
14:42This is an electric apparatus
14:43that has a heating coil
14:45wrapped around the internal bowl,
14:47which cooks the rice
14:48to a precise temperature.
14:49Jasmine rice is long grain
14:51and very fragrant.
14:52Two-acetyl-1 pyroline
14:54is an abundant aromatic compound
14:56in jasmine rice
14:57that gives flavors reminiscent
14:59of pandan and popcorn.
15:01I would not probably use jasmine rice
15:03for clay pot
15:04and also Japanese food in general.
15:06Yuji made short grain Japanese rice
15:08in a traditional donabe,
15:11which is slightly porous clay pot
15:13designed to bake very evenly.
15:15The glazed exterior
15:17promotes far infrared rays.
15:20This is similar to how charcoal
15:21continues to cook
15:22even after the flame is gone.
15:27Billy blanched broccoli.
15:29This sets the bright green color,
15:30which is expressed when broccoli is heated
15:33and water evaporates from cells,
15:35leaving the chlorophyll intact
15:36and expressed as a beautiful,
15:38bright green color.
15:40Yuji garnished with dried uni,
15:42which is another name for sea urchin.
15:44It concentrated the savory amino acids in brine.
15:47It's almost like snowflake,
15:49yellow snowflake.
15:50Teriyaki is a delicious, sweet, savory,
15:52and tangy all-in-one marinade,
15:54sauce, or seasoning.
15:56We hope you'll take some of these tips
15:58from our three amazing chefs
16:00to make teriyaki your own.
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