HELP - I'm craving "REAL" teriyaki steak?

I ain't sharing.

landarc said:

I ain't sharing.

Click to expand...

Translation: Lemme go look. Either BRB, or, it could be awhile...

First off, you need alaea salt if you want to do this right. I learned this from Hawaiian guys here.

1. Take cheap stakes and heavily salt them with medium to coarse alaea salt, let them sit in the salt for at least two hours. Pour a good Hawaiian Lager over the steaks at that point, to rinse off the salt. Let sit for 15 minutes, remove and let sit to dry.

2. Prepare 'tare', they used sugar, pineapple juice, shoyu (Japanese soy sauce), garlic, ginger and red pepper flakes, just a pinch, it should not be hot.

3. Get the grill going, they used charcoal because that is what we had stateside. You can use a little mesquite in there, to get the Kiawe feel to the cook. I don't care for it, I feel it messes up the flavors.

4. Grill the steaks hot, you want to char the surface a bit, aboiut halfway through, sit them in the 'tare' for 10 minutes or so. Remove and back on to the grill to finish to your chosen temperature. Some folks added cornstarch to some of the 'tare' to make a glaze.

Hawaiian-style Teriyaki
3 cups shoyu
1 cup or so of sugar, make as sweet as you like
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1 tablespoon each of grated garlic and ginger
pinch of red pepper flakes

Mix and heat to dissolve sugar, do NOT boil.

Japanese style...Teriyaki...Tare yaki...

The Japanese actually rarely eat whole steaks at the table, this is largely because knives were never used at the table. So, food was prepared in small portions, for ease of eating in a polite (for Japan) manner. Of course, beef was a rarity, and mostly eaten by Royalty, who had a lot to gain by not having sharp implements anywhere in the house. I digress.

Making a good tare is specific to each cook. I can give you mine.

Bob's Tare:
1 cup good dashi (steep 2 cups shaved bonito, 1 4"x4" bonito sheet in 2 cups 165F water, strain)
2 cups shoyu
1/2 cup Mirin (sweet wine)
1/4 cup sake (or sherry)
1/2 cup to 1 cup sugar, honey, sugar and honey, glucose syrup
2 tablespoons grated ginger
1 tablespoon grated garlic
1/2 teaspoon citrus zest, lemon and grapefruit work great, yuzu if you an get it
2 dried shiitake mushrooms, reconstituted, save water after straining

Some people add Arrowroot (Kuzu) which is a thickener, it adds a great clear glaze to meat.

Reduce dashi to 1/2 cup, add all other ingredients and heat to low simmer. Reduce by half, you are looking for a light, aromatic, syrup. Remove and cool.

Cut steaks into strips, and place on skewers. Fire up grill, you need lump and it needs to be very hot. Place the 'tare' in a deep container, a brush will be needed. Placing skewers a few at a time, sear until halfway done, remove, brush with tare and return to caramelize. Meat should remain rare if you can stand it that way. More well done is not uncommon, but, the Japanese eat a lot of their beef almost raw.

Love it landarc, thanks! :thumb:

I'd prepare a small amount of Landarc's tare and use as a dip for your steak as you eat it. :hungry:

Lived in Hawaii, this is the real deal for the locals...

1 cup soy sauce
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated ginger, very fine
1 large garlic clove, minced
3 scallions, chopped fine (optional)

That's it, keep it simple.

Katonk/American-Japanese style Teriyaki

We do serve large hunks of steak here in the mainland, and we do it with a combined method. First off, we always salted the steaks, using coarse sea salt and layering it around the steaks. Then we prepared our teriyaki sauce thus:

Landarc's Teriyaki:
1 cup good dashi (steep 2 cups shaved bonito, 1 4"x4" bonito sheet in 2 cups 165F water, strain)
3 cups shoyu
1/2 cup Mirin (sweet wine)
1/2 cup sake (or sherry)
1 to 2 cups sugar, honey, sugar and honey, glucose syrup
2 tablespoons grated ginger
2 tablespoons grated garlic
1 teaspoon or so of hot sauce
1/2 teaspoon citrus zest, lemon and grapefruit work great, yuzu if you an get it
2 dried shiitake mushrooms, reconstituted, save water after straining

Prepare 'Tare' by throwing all ingredients into a pot, low simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, it should reduce by about 15% or so. Split batch and cool each. Into one batch add 1 teaspoon of cornstarch or kuzu and whisk until dissolved and thickened over low heat. Remove and cool. Take the steaks and toss into a plastic bag, add un-thickened 'tare' to bad and marinate for at least 4 hours. 8 to 12 hours is better.

Grill over high heat, it is gonna burn. If you want it done to medium or more, than cook if offset from the meat until about 120F and then sear it off. Last few minutes of the cook, either method, basted the meat with the thickened stuff, give it a good shine. Work fast, there is a lot of sugar. FIRE! FIRE! Move the grill away from the house!

Marinating works better in my opinion, the flavor gets into the meat better. I grew up around a large community of Hawaiians, and I rarely saw them marinate the meat. My family, not Hawaiian, marinated the meat overnight. It functions a lot like a brine due to the salt content. All methods will yield excellent food. The first method I listed is how we used to do the steak dinner cooks for the Berkeley Buddhist Temple, bunch of Kanakas, cooking and they did it their way. 500 steaks a day, never a complaint. The last method, if you use chicken instead of steak, that is how we used to cook the chickens for the church bazaar at Berkeley Methodist United Church. We ran through as many as 1000 halves a day. Open pit, the only difference was that with chicken, you have a longer cook. We used three 'tares', one with very little sugar and a little vinegar. A second with the sugar and a little vinegar and the third with sugar and yuzu. Our chickens were deeply flavored, deeply browned but, never burned. I learned to cook a lot of chicken, open pit, in wire racks that way.

well, that is it, no more!

unless I think of something else...

Yummy... What should I prepare using the mushroom water? It has always hurt my feelings to pour it down the drain.

Here's what I use to make my terra:

Tamari soy
Saki (7-Up and Vodka work if you don't have Saki)
Pineapple juice
Brown sugar
Mirin (Rice Wine vinegar works also)
Fresh ginger
Fresh garlic
Scallions
Cilantro

Here's a very nice simple teriyaki marinade:

1/3 cup each - soy sauce, cheap cooking sherry, and peanut oil. 1 T. each minced garlic and grated fresh ginger. Make it 24 hr. ahead of use, and strain out the chunks.

You can reserve some of this for use as a baste, and you can add some molasses to the baste to make it caramelize (this is good!).

I marinate chunks of chicken and skewer with pineapple.