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Teriyaki. Simple & easy. So why does everyone screw it up?

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I’ve been making Teriyaki sauce for years now.  I learned it from my old roommate Lisa.  We were living together when she was in college and she used to make all kinds of amazing food.  Thanks to her and her fried rice, Spam will forever have a place in my pantry, along with Panko.  I used to watch her in fascination as she took ordinary ingredients and turned them into amazing meals.  In a way it helped reignite my love of cooking.  I got disenchanted for a brief moment when I went vegan.  At that time soy products sucked.  So I left my Veganism behind and dove back into carnivore land.  Just in time to enjoy some Hawaiian/Japanese comfort food.  There was was Ramen with an egg dropped in, Spam fried rice, Coroke, and my favorite Chicken Teriyaki.  I have been making these dishes ever since, especially the Chicken Teriyaki.  It has become a staple in my dinner party cannon.

Once you try this you will never order it in a restaurant again.  I have ruined many a persons teriyaki experience with this recipe.  In a good way.  You can change it to your taste, sweet, salty, garlicky, gingery.  What ever way you want to go.  I tend to go heavier on the soy sauce and ginger and garlic.  I don’t like super sweet teriyaki sauce.  When I make for friends I make it how I want it and they usually have that moment of, why does everyone make such a sweet sauce? So here is what I do.  Be adventurous and don’t be scared it’s easy.

Ingredients:

Soy Sauce

Brown Sugar

Garlic(fresh)

Ginger(fresh)

I start with soy sauce and add brown sugar (remember we want a savory sauce so more soy then sugar).  I then add chopped garlic and chopped ginger.   Simmer for a few minutes to thicken and then place the chicken in a baking dish, add sauce on bottom of dish and on top of the meat and bake for about 45 minutes, turning a couple of times.   I use chicken thighs, they soak up the sauce best.   Cook rice and some veggies and you have an amazingly easy dinner.

 

 

 

 

It all started with Meatballs

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It started as a possible trip to IKEA for meatballs.  Then we realized we had some in the freezer, cure all we needed was the gravy.  A quick search on the internet and presto we had the recipe.  I then started to look at what else we had to go with these delicious round balls of meat.  We had left over mashed potato’s, rice, veggies, kimchi and beets.  It was beginning to look like things were shaping up. I had a flashback to when I lived in LA and my roommates and I had watch the movie Mermaids one too many times and started to have appetizer nights.  We called this a mermaid dinner.  If you’ve seen the movie you’ll understand.  If not, then watch at your own risk.  I started to imagine our dinner was all round and how fun that would be and what a challenge it would be with the ingredients we had.  So we started with the potatoes and took the left over onions and peppers and made Coroke,  a side dish a different roommate I had back in San Bernardino used to make.  Usually you would make them into small patties with meat and onion and fry them, but tonight it was veggie rounds.   I also had made Teriyaki chicken a couple night’s before(also a recipe from the same roommate) and used the chicken, added some ginger, red onions, garlic, egg and presto fried rice.  We used our  microwave egg poacher(more on that in another post) to make them.  Next the ice cream scooper and a spoon were perfect for the kimchi.  We now had everything, put it all together and  had a great time being silly, making our evening well rounded.