Lightly frying salmon teriyaki at home is an excellent way to add a healthy fish entrée to your nightly cooking repertoire. If you make your teriyaki sauce at home also, you can control the ingredients and reduce sodium content if you choose. Making authentic sauce requires only a few ingredients, including soy sauce that you can order easily from your favorite online Asian market. You can use any type of salmon, but many chefs prefer Chinook or Atlantic because of its moistness when cooked. When you filet the salmon, make sure the pieces have a similar thickness, so they cook more uniformly.
Most of the world's best Asian food cooks recommend coating the salmon on the outside with potato starch. A thick coating of starch on the outside helps the cooked fish soak up the teriyaki sauce. Other options for the outside coating are arrowroot or tapioca starch. Avoid corn starch because of the gumminess it will cause. Then you'll need your favorite Japanese soy sauce – tamari is an acceptable substitute if you need a gluten-free teriyaki sauce. You can also use any sake as long as it is good enough for drinking. But avoid any cooking sake because it is often grain alcohol with flavorings.
When you're evaluating recipes for Japanese teriyaki sauce, keep an eye out for ones with equal parts soy sauce, sake, and sugar. It doesn't need other ingredients – so think twice about the additional ingredients in some recipes (fruit juice, vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, etc.). Good recipes also do not call for thickeners because the sugar creates a clear thickness to the sauce as it caramelizes. Ginger juice added to the sauce is an ingenious way to overcome any fishy flavor while maintaining a clear teriyaki sauce. If you want to add finishing touches like finely chopped scallions or sesame seeds, put them on the salmon.
After you filet the salmon and before you begin cooking it, pat dry with paper towels. Then coat it thinly with potato starch. Next, heat a frying pan with oil and fry the salmon fillets until they are opaque, about one-third up each side. Then flip and cook the other side in the same way. Afterward, wipe all oil out of the pan before pouring in the teriyaki sauce to heat it. Next, add your recipe's ingredients for the sauce to the pan and cook until the sugar dissolves completely. When the sauce is ready, return the salmon and turn over several times in the sauce until both sides are coated completely.