The classic ingredients for a truly authentic teriyaki sauce are mirin and sake. Mirin is made from glutinous rice and used to be drunk as a sweet luxury rice wine in the Edo period in Japan (1603~1868). It was also frequently used in fish cookery, as it stopped the delicate fish from breaking up and removed any fishiness during cooking. The fish itself tasted better and had a good shiny finish, so mirin became more widely used in a variety of Japanese dishes. You can easily buy mirin in most supermarkets nowadays although it can be a bit pricey. It's not really an everyday ingredient and my teriyaki could wait no longer! I came across golden syrup, a sweet British treacle created as a by-product from the sugar cane and sugar beet refinery process. It looks so appealing with its amber colour and lovely thick sticky consistency, it even smells so deliciously buttery...mmmm! Compared to mirin, it's more affordable to use regularly and actually replaced both mirin and sake in my Delicious Teriyaki Chicken with Golden Syrup quite nicely as it doesn't contain alcohol so you don't need to cook it out. It really does work, but you'll never know if you don't try it!