Air Fryer Teriyaki Salmon

Teriyaki salmon can be baked or pan-fried but it can be air-fried too! Air frying gives the salmon a good amount of browning, making it oh-so oishii!

When you think of teriyaki, you would probably think of teriyaki chicken at first. Let’s break down the word teriyaki.

The “teri” part comes from the Japanese word “teru”, meaning to shine. The “yaki” refers to the Japanese word “yaku”, meaning to fry.

So “teriyaki” refers to food that is fried and is shiny. This salmon is indeed air fried and is pretty shiny in the end.

The main ingredients in traditional Japanese cooking that make something “teriyaki” are sake, mirin, soy sauce, and sugar. The shininess comes from the melting of sugar on the surface of a food.

To make the salmon extra tasty, we’ll be adding some other ingredients like lemon juice, garlic, onion, and ginger.

Ingredients

• Salmon- Look for a good fillet of salmon that looks bright orange and the flesh is relatively intact. The filleting process of the manufacturer can make a lot of tears in the flesh that cause it to break more easily when you flip the salmon in the air fryer basket.
• Soy sauce – A main ingredient in teriyaki flavoured foods.
• Ginger – Use fresh ginger instead of the ground kind. Fresh ginger has a stronger kick to it.
• Garlic – This adds more of a toasty, savoury flavour to the teriyaki salmon.
• Sugar – An important ingredient for teriyaki foods. Becomes a bit caramelized after air frying.
• Sake – I use cooking sake, which has a higher salt content than drinking sake and is a lot cheaper to buy. Sake is a main ingredient for all things teriyaki.
• Mirin – A type of rice wine. It has a different flavour profile than sake though, as it’s high in sugar.
• Lemon – This adds a bit of brightness to the fish and especially makes salmon taste good since it’s higher in fat content than some other fishes.
• Onion – Gives the salmon a boost of umami (a.k.a. savoury) flavour.
• Salt – I used table salt for this recipe, but you can use other types of salt.
• Cornstarch – This thickens the teriyaki sauce so it can coat the pieces of salmon well.

How to Make Air Fryer Teriyaki Salmon

To make the salmon absolutely delicious, we’ll be letting the salmon absorb a bunch of flavours. We’ll mix the main ingredients that make a food teriyaki-flavoured: soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar. We’ll also be adding minced ginger, garlic and onions as well as lemon juice to the mix to add more flavour. Then, let the flavours seep into the salmon for about an hour in the fridge.

To grease the air fryer basket, I like to brush it with vegetable oil. You can also just spray it with some oil spray.

When placing the pieces of salmon fillet into the basket, make sure it’s not overcrowded so that the heat can circulate around all the pieces so that the pieces can brown more easily and develop smoky flavours.

Set the air fryer to fry at 400 ºF (204 ºC) for 4 minutes.

Then, gently flip the salmon and air-fry for 3 minutes at the same temperature. The salmon fillet pieces should be nicely browned now. 

You can make the teriyaki sauce while air frying the salmon. Mix cornstarch and cold water in a small bowl to make a cornstarch slurry to thicken the sauce. Add soy sauce, mirin, sake, sugar, and salt to a small saucepan.

Heat the mixture over medium high heat until it starts to boil.

Give the cornstarch slurry a stir before adding it. Sometimes the cornstarch will settle to the bottom. Add the slurry to the saucepan while constantly stirring.

Keep stirring until you see the sauce thicken. Remove the teriyaki sauce from the heat.

Spoon over some teriyaki sauce over the pieces of salmon and air-fry it for 1 minute. Repeat with another layer of teriyaki sauce.

Remove the pieces of salmon and place them on a plate. If you’d like, you may garnish them with roasted sesame seeds and chopped green onions for visual appeal.