Teriyaki Vegetable Stir Fry

The best vegetable stir-fry ever! This vegetable stir-fry with homemade teriyaki sauce is a tasty and easy veggie favorite.

Ready for the best vegetable stir-fry? This is of course our humble opinion! But these sautéed veggies turned out so easy and so good that Alex and I give them the “Best” label too. This sautéed veggies recipe uses our homemade teriyaki sauce: it’s only 4 ingredients and ready in 5 minutes! Oh, and it’s sweetened with maple syrup, of course. The use of homemade teriyaki sauce gives this skillet a natural, delicious flavor: instead of the overly salty and sweet teriyaki skillet you might be used to.

Since this is a vegetarian and vegan stir-fry recipe, we added one of our favorite plant-based proteins: tempeh! While we don’t eat a lot of tofu, we’re fine with a tempeh stir-fry. It’s extremely tasty and worth finding for this recipe. Of course, you can also simply leave it out and fry the sautéed vegetables directly. Read on for the recipe!

Related: Easy vegan recipes for beginners | The best recipes for a healthy dinner

Creating this recipe for sautéed vegetables

Alex and I specialize in Mediterranean cuisine, so we often prepare vegan and vegetarian Italian recipes. However, we sometimes forget how delicious sautéed vegetables are as a quick weeknight meal. Maybe you think you don’t need a recipe for sautéed vegetables, just toss them in a pan? It’s also true. But we’ve found in our experiments that it’s just as easy to make really bad sautéed vegetables without a recipe. There is an art form in preparing the best sautéed vegetables that are well cooked and well seasoned.

For our best sautéed veggies recipe, we used our homemade teriyaki sauce recipe to add big flavor to humble veggies. If you read our article about teriyaki sauce, you will see that teriyaki sauce is inspired by Japanese tradition but is actually an American invention. It goes without saying that these sautéed vegetables are not an authentic Asian recipe. In our sautéed veggies, we used broccoli and tri-color peppers, which we sautéed with fresh ginger root and spring onions. As a plant-based protein, we used our favorite: tempeh! If you’ve never used tempeh before, read on to find out why a tempeh pan is where it belongs.

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What is Tempe?

What is Tempe? This plant-based protein is becoming increasingly popular here in the United States. Tempeh is a pressed cake made from whole soybeans (and sometimes grains like wheat or barley). To make tempeh, soybeans are soaked, boiled, and lightly fermented before being formed into a firm patty or block. Because tempeh is made from whole soybeans, it has a savory texture and slightly nutty flavor, making it an ideal meat substitute.

We prefer tempeh over tofu because it’s firmer and has a more interesting flavor. You can find tempeh in many traditional grocery stores here in the United States. We hope you try it in this tempeh vegetable stir-fry – let us know what you think!

Related: What is Tempe? or tempeh versus tofu.

Our homemade teriyaki sauce

For these sautéed veggies, we seasoned them with our homemade teriyaki sauce. It literally takes 5 minutes to make and is definitely worth making at home! We will never buy store bought teriyaki sauce again. It’s perfectly salty and also contains no refined sugar thanks to maple syrup.

Using homemade sauce for this teriyaki vegetable gives it a perfectly flavored taste: neither too salty nor too sweet! Compared to takeout Chinese teriyaki veggies, Homemade Teriyaki Sauce takes it to a new level! No preservatives, MSG and no refined sugar: just natural, delicious taste.

Other option: Try our go-to stir-fry sauce! It would work with the amount of veggies in this recipe.

How to sauté veggies with teriyaki sauce

Making this veggie stir fry couldn’t be easier! First you need to prepare the rice according to the instructions on the package. Then make the homemade teriyaki sauce (we’ve linked our favorite recipe in the recipe card below). Once prepared, thinly slice the tempeh and prepare the veggies – floret the broccoli, dice the peppers, peel and chop the ginger, and slice the spring onion.

Next, heat the sesame oil in a large skillet and fry the tempeh in a single layer until browned on both sides. Remove the tempeh from the pan and sauté the veggies until tender (you don’t want a soggy pan!). Once cooked, add the tempeh and homemade teriyaki sauce to the pan and stir until well coated in the sauce.

We like to serve our vegetarian stir fry over rice, and a sprinkling of sesame seeds on top adds a nice crunch. The taste is really outstanding: we think this might be one of our best vegetarian recipes yet. (Another tasty stir-fry? These sautéed veggies.)

Looking for quicker and easier dinner recipes?

In addition to our best teriyaki stir-fries, here are a few more of our favorite quick and easy dinner recipes:

This recipe is…

This Sauteed Teriyaki Vegetables recipe is vegetarian, gluten-free, vegan, plant-based, and dairy-free.