Gwyneth Paltrow Invented Teriyaki Sauce

We’re flying right along here, as I completed two more recipes last night: Broiled Salmon with Homemade Teriyaki Sauce, as well as Fragrant Jasmine Rice. And both of these were almost comically simple, let me tell you. I mean, can you really claim as your own recipes the basic ingredients for a teriyaki sauce, as well as just throwing some spices into rice? I mean, really. This is just getting absurd.

The good news is that for both of these recipes, I basically only had to buy the salmon fillets and the jasmine rice. Everything else was already in my house. So that’s pretty great. I made the teriyaki sauce by combining soy sauce, mirin, honey, water, ginger, and cilantro in a small saucepan and heating for a few minutes on the stove. Meanwhile, I hacked away at the skin of the salmon fillet, completely unsure of what the hell I was even supposed to do. I think I was using a knife intended for fruit peeling? I ultimately succeeded, though, even if one side of my fillet was now looking rather haggard and unappetizing.

Once the teriyaki had cooled a bit, I poured it over the salmon fillet in a bowl, covered it with plastic wrap, and let it marinate for at least an hour in the fridge, which gave me the perfect amount of time to watch some TV! Loving this recipe already.

Marination. Beautiful.

An hour later, I got my rice cooking by throwing the jasmine rice in a pot of boiling water, along with Gwyneth’s touches: some salt, a whole star anise, and a few cardamom seeds. How delightfully Asian! Meanwhile, I broiled the marinated salmon, and reduced the leftover teriyaki sauce on the stove. A few short minutes later, I had a nicely broiled fillet of teriyaki salmon, a pot of extremely fragrant rice, and some teriyaki sauce to drizzle over the whole mess.

Rice. I know, I know, this is Picture of the Year.

A very Spartan dinner, which immediately made me thin and perfect.

Let’s touch on the good first: The salmon was great. Perfectly sweet and salty and, well, you probably know what good teriyaki sauce tastes like. Imagine that on some broiled salmon. Because, when it comes down to it, this was an extremely basic recipe. Does Gwyneth think she invented teriyaki sauce? There’s nothing that original or unique in this recipe, which, admittedly, does make a delicious dish, but also doesn’t really deserve its own page in a cookbook published in the 21st century. Maybe teriyaki was revolutionary in the 1950s, but I’m pretty sure anyone with Google can figure out how to make the stuff.

And the rice? Ugghhhh. Hated it. It was less “fragrant” and more “soap-flavored.” The anise and cardamom just overpowered the rice completely. It tasted like 1,000 black licorice jellybeans. Gross. No thank you. I would have preferred plain jasmine rice, which is what I’ll make next time. And, honestly, I’m fairly surprised there isn’t a recipe in this book that just tells you how to make plain rice.