Homemade Teriyaki Tilapia by Rachel

Working in and around Times Square, sometimes it's hard to find a place to have a good, well-balanced lunch.  Some of my favorite lunches in the area tend to be bento boxes from little Japanese delis.  If you aren't familiar with a bento box, it's basically a mix of things that you can eat with rice.  Usually it comes with a protein and a few vegetables or a salad.

My favorite bento boxes have a teriyaki glazed fish as the protein and last night I had a serious craving for it.  Luckily for me, homemade teriyaki sauce is super easy to make and you can make it sweeter or saltier depending on what you like.  I prefer mine a little saltier, but if you like yours little sweeter, just add a little more mirin and a little more agave.

Ingredients
1lb of fish separated into two filets- I used tilapia, but this type of sauce is popular on salmon as well
1/4 cup mirin
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp good soy sauce
4 tbsp Agave
2 tbsp water


- Mix the mirin, soy sauce and agave together in a dish that will be big enough to place your fish flat into the plate.  Make sure that the agave is well mixed into the soy sauce and mirin.

Yummy sauces all mixed together!

- Dab your fish filets dry with paper towel.

Tilapia filets from Fresh Direct!  Looking good, right?

- Put the filets flat into the sauce.  Let it rest in the sauce on that one side for about 10 minutes.

- Flip the filets over in the sauce so that the other side can also marinate for about 10 minutes.

- Heat a large skillet on medium high.  Do not add oil to the pan.  Place eat filet flat into the hot, dry pan and let the sauce that is on the fish caramelize.  This should happen pretty quickly- about 5-8 minutes.

- Flip the fish only once.  To keep the sauce from burning, lower the heat to medium after the sauce has caramelized and take about 1/3 of the sauce and add it to the pan with the fish and add 1 tbsp of water and let the sauce cook down as the fish continues to cook.

- As the sauce cooks down, add another 1/3 of the sauce is in the pan.  Add another 1 tbsp of water.  Let this cook down and the fish should be done in about another 5-8 minutes.  Be careful that the sauce doesn't burn.  If it starts to burn, just add a little more sauce, but only add the sauce in one tbsp at a time.

- Remove the fish from the pan.  Add in the rest of the sauce into the same pan that the fish was in and let it cook for about two minutes on medium.

So delicious and easy!

Et voila!  Now the sauce is ready.  Put as much as you want on top of your fish, but you can definitely use it on other things.  I dipped kabocha squash into it and it was delicious!  This recipe will certainly get filed into personal favorites for me.  Enjoy!