Teriyaki Prawns (or Chicken or Beef or Tofu)

I got my hands on a nice bag of frozen prawns and decided to pre-marinate them in teriyaki sauce so that they can simply be removed from the freezer at a moment’s notice, sit in a bowl of warm water in their freezer bag for a few minutes, and then quickly pan fried with some onion and broccoli. Teriyaki sauce is something Kale actually likes, and so these are awesome for a super fast meal served with rice or chow mein.

I froze them in packages of about 300 grams, to serve all three of us. For that amount I would use about 1/2 cup of the teriyaki sauce. Teriyaki sauce is super simple to make. There’s one ingredient you might not have that I think makes teriyaki sauce taste that much better, and that’s mirin. It is a type of fermented rice wine that is low in alcohol but higher in sugar (but, wikipedia tells me, it is a complex carb, not a refined sugar) and it adds just enough to the teriyaki sauce to make it taste more restaurant-y.

This recipe makes about 2 cups of teriyaki sauce, so if you are batch freezing some prawns or chicken or beef or tofu cubes for #fillthefreezerday, adjust accordingly.

 

Teriyaki Sauce for Prawns, Chicken, Beef, or Tofu

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup soy sauce – I used the reduced sodium kind
  • 1 cup mirin – this will feel like a lot, especially if you bought more expensive, higher quality mirin, but it really does make it taste more complex
  • 1 cup sugar – I often do this a scant cup or even reduce to 3/4 of a cup
  • a few minced or pressed garlic cloves to your taste – I LOVE garlic but Kale does not so we compromise on about 1 clove per cup of soy sauce
  • If you’d like to thicken it up a bit when you actually cook the food that is in it, you will need some corn starch

Method:

  1. Stick everything is a nice thick pot on medium heat. It might boil up a bit so use a pot that is a good size.
  2. Bring it up to a boil, slowly, stirring regularly. You might need to bump the heat up a bit depending upon your stove.
  3. Let it simmer for a while, about 15 minutes is what I do. Taste it and make sure the sharp taste from the soy sauce has cooked off.
  4. Add to pre-portioned freezer bags of the protein you intend to marinate in this, and then freeze.

When you’re ready to cook up whatever you marinated, take the freezer bag from out of the freezer, and immerse in a bowl of hot water. I stir fry it and add a bit of corn starch and water shaken together (maybe 1 or 2T of cornstarch in about 2T water?) and dump that in, and it thickens.

Here’s what it looked like at dinner tonight with fresh mushroom, carrots, celery, and fresh chow mein noodles. The prawns come out a bit chewy (from being frozen, then refrozen) but the flavour was great and Kale ate it up.