Teriyaki Tempeh & Sticky Miso Rice


Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten-free, Dairy-free

Meal Type
Dinner
Cuisine
Japanese
Author
vegan.io
Serves
4
Preparation Time
10 minutes
Cooking Time
30 minutes

Ingredients

Protein

  • 300g Tempeh
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil/ rice bran oil

Teriyaki sauce - Blender

  • 3 cloves garlic, peeled
  • 1 inch/ 1Tbsp ginger, minced
  • 1/2 a pineapple (see notes)
  • 1/2 cup soy sauce/ tamari
  • 1 tsp sesame oil

Rice

  • 2 cups rice, short grain
  • 2 1/4 cups water (or whatever your rice cooker wants)
  • 3 tsp miso paste (shiro/ awase)
  • 2 Tbsp wakame seaweed, re-hydrated
  • a dash of sea salt

Garnish

  • 2 tsp toasted sesame seeds
  • 1 cucumber
  • green onions
  • wakame seaweed
  • tsukemono daikon

Instructions

Saucepan Method - Rice

  1. Bring water to a boil. Meanwhile, rinse the rice to remove excess starch.
  2. When the water boils, add salt and miso paste. Whisk to thoroughly dissolve the miso.
  3. Add the rice and lower the heat. Let the rice simmer with a lid covering the pot until the water is almost fully absorbed by the rice.
  4. Turn off the heat and let it stand for 15 minutes. Do not open the lid before the 15 minutes is up.

Rice cooker Method

  1. Add seaweed and miso to a blender cup with 250mL (or whatever fits) boiling water, allow to sit for 5 minutes while you prep other ingredients.
  2. Add rice to rice cooker (rinse if you like), blend the miso seaweed mix. Add the blender contents to the rice cooker, top up water to necessary level, cook.

Teriyaki sauce

  1. Add all sauce ingredients to a blender cup, (if you have a small cup, you may want to reserve some of the liquids and blend the solids that fit first). Blend until smooth and set aside.

Tempeh

  1. Slice the tempeh into strips and then slice it again into matchstick length. (or you can crumble it into a mince, it depends only on how you want to serve. Over rice or, mixy mixy.?)
  2. Heat up oil in a saucepan and fry the tempeh about 10 minutes, flipping each slice every few minutes after the first side is browned.
  3. Pour in most of the sauce mixture over the tempeh and continue cooking until the sauce is thickened. (I say 'most' encase it all congeals while you wait for the rice to be ready)

Assembly

  1. Either dispense rice into portions, add tempeh on top, drizzle any extra sauce, garnish and serve. OR
  2. Pour temeh and sauce into cooked rice, fold together, decant to a serving platter or container and garnish (this method is more of a super fried rice)
  3. Garnishes recommended are sliced cucumber, chopped spring or green onion stems, toasted sesame seeds, more re-hydrated wakame seaweed and most importantly Tsukemono Daikon / Yellow Pickled Radish.

Notes

  • If you're gluten free, just remember the soy sauce...
  • When I say half a pineapple, what i mean is; the solids from a 432g can of pineapple in juice... just drink the juice. This replaces any refined sugars the recipe would have otherwise involved.
  • The teriyaki sauce is also a dip, so if you are crazy enough to have bought a whole pineapple and have no idea what to do with it.. make a double batch of sauce and save half for laters. Just remember to add the oil we used to fry the tempeh to the half you intend to keep as a dip, the tempeh will dry fry just fine if you choose later to make this dish with the sauce again.
  • The wakame seaweed is great for digestion, if however you are not a fan of big chunks of seaweed (like my fuzzy), i suggest putting the dry seaweed and miso paste in the blender cup first with enough boiling water for proper blending and puree both until you just have coloured water, then add this to the rice and top up any extra water needed before cooking the rice. Also, skip the extra seaweed for garnish... hide the nutrients in the sticky brown sauce...
  • I find using rice bran oil makes it all more 'buttery', but you can use any oil you like.