Teriyaki

I wanted to make buffalo burgers for the fourth, but top wasn't stocking any buffalo meat. For some reason it makes me think of Teriyaki sauce. The french neglected to take into account the whole spectrum of mirin based sauces when they left it out of the 5 categories. It's incredibly simple and the difference between homemade and store bought is expectedly large. There's reason not to make it just before you need it since it only requires you combine 4 ingredients:

1/2c. mirin
1/4c. shoyu (soy sauce)
1/4c. sake
2 Tbs. sugar

warm to dissolve sugar.

This teriyaki isn't thick and syrupy like the kind you'd buy already made, and can be brushed onto meat as it grills in layers. The extremely high salt from the soy sauce makes it into more of a brine than a marinade and consequently more effective. The mirin really makes all the difference in the world - use a good one and your dreams will come true, but use a bad one and see what I'm talking about. Unfortunately there's not much selection when you're living in a fairly small town like olympia. There's nothing to be learned from the smell, you have to taste it. It should be rich and much to sweet to ever be consumed on it's own and taste only of rice. It's the perfect representation of the japanese simplicity and love of sweetness in savory dishes.

Another in the mirin sauce family is tare, or yakitori basting sauce. It's made with mirin, sugar, shoyu and sake, but is simmered with grilled chicken wings for 30-35 minutes afterward. The result is unbelievable. In restuaraunts the grilled chicken on the skewers would be dipped into the tare pot during cooking and acquire more chicken flavor with each skewer. According to the cookbook this recipe came from - The Japanese Kitchen by Hiroko Shimbo - Restaurants boast to have been using the same tare base for ten years. Eating the wings afterward is the recipe thanking you for making it.