Making your own Tari sauce...

[Alan D]

Tari sauce is one of my secret 'que sauces, and it's not hard to make...

In case you're not familiar with Tari, you may know it as Teriyaki sauce, yaki is bbq in Japanese, and more common in use is on chicken, as in yaki-tori, but I use it on pork with great success. Most of our Japanese friends love it on pork, not sure why it's not popular like that in Japan.

The base of tari sauce is 3 ingredients, soy sauce, sake, and raw sugar. These are basically added as 1 part each.

At low temp over heat (do it in your smoker if you're adventurous), add in the sake and raw sugar. You can experiment and find out what works best for you, I'll explain that in a second...slowly cook the sake until the raw sugar dissolves and then add the soy sauce.

Now you just reduce this to whatever consistency you like, and you can adjust the amount of sugar for your taste, we prefer a bit less sugar, and thinner for the 'que...I use this to baste yaki-tori over direct heat. This can get messy, but people love it.

Most sauce sold in America is very sweet, at least what is sold as Teriyaki sauce, so this is a way to get great sauce that is not as sweet by making it yourself.

If you are using it for yaki-tori, here's an additional trick which makes it ever so perfect.

With the tari sauce in a bowl or container, take the skin from the chicken and cook it over the coals, as it heats up and juice started to bubble/grill, put the skin in the sause...mix it around, and take it back out and put it back over the coals...keep doing this and dunking it in the sause...this makes killer yaki-tori sauce that was taught to me by a close friend of the family.

I usually use boneless thighs, cut up, and placed on bamboo skewers, leaving the ends of the sticks hanging over the indirect side of the 'que..the kettle works well having coals down the center so you can have stick ends on both sides...but one needs to understand that in Japan they have special 'ques for this that are more like long trays, allowing to cook and not burn the stick ends, and they dip the entire stick into the sauce...

You can still get excellent results in a kettle.

Great party food!

Don't be afraid to experiment with the tari sauce, as I said I use it on spareribs (yaki-ribu (tm) and fish as well...without a doubt, one of my secret 'que sauces, but recently experimenting with miso also...my family likes the miso better on ribs, tari on chicken.

Ok, time to go buy some swordfish...all this talk about 'ques is making me hungry...some fish tacos is in order...*lol*

 

[Steve Petrone]

Alan, I like your enthusiasm. Help, there is a wide variation in quality in both sake and soy. My experience in the wine business did not include sake. What brands do like and what do you toss in to vary things...ginger maybe?

 

[Alan D]

Steve,

Good question, I go for the absolute cheapest sake, in Cali we have several local sake's which are fairly inexpensive. You need to get to a Japanese or Chinese market if you have one in your area, but you don't need that much...large 1.5 liter of Sho-Chiku-Bai commonly sell for about $4.99 locally. This is exactly true for wines in cooking, much of it is reduced through cooking, so it's not as critical, IME.

I do try to get the dry sake, I prefer it for drinking also, opposed to the sweet. Sweet is often used in Sushi, another topic in itself. So I favor any of the cheaper bottles of dry, and they will say dry on them, or extra dry...for me the drier the better, and I prefer Japanese origin

As far as the soy sauce, most any Asian market should have common ones in gallon sizes, this is a LOT cheaper for this purpose. My wife uses so much of it, I don't have to worry about buying it, but she often buys the low sodium soy sauce, sometimes you have to get that in a smaller sized bottle. They sell liter size bottles also, if you don't get a gallon.

I think you can get it at Costco, although they might make you buy a case of it...*lol* Seriously, I think you could buy a gallon size at Costco, it will work, it's gonna reduce down also.

As per ginger, yes, but use it sparingly. It's very easy to get carried away with it unknowingly, in the same way that Chinese 5-spice can.

With that said, there is a style of fish which has sake, soy sauce and ginger that is cooked together in a pan and it works well. It just depends, IMO, what you're cooking and/or how you're serving it. For the 'que be careful, ginger has bite.