Easy Honey Garlic Sauce

This honey garlic sauce recipe is simple to make and works with anything! Try it on salmon, chicken, stir fries, and more.

Need a simple, homemade sauce that will dress up any meal? Try this Honey Garlic Sauce recipe! It comes together with just 8 ingredients in less than 10 minutes, making it an easy, no-hassle sauce for quick meals. You’ll want to paint a swath of this sticky, flavor-popping sauce on just about anything! It’s great for salmon, chicken, stir fries, and more. We first made it for our Honey Garlic Salmon, which was so good we’ve been making the sauce ever since.

Ingredients in honey garlic sauce

This honey garlic sauce has a short ingredient list of mostly pantry ingredients, which magically come together into a sticky, thick glaze. It’s great for stir fries, though we love it best painted on a lovely fillet of salmon. Even our 5 year old son loves it, which is a big win in our book! Here are the ingredients you’ll need for this simple recipe:

• Soy sauce (regular, not low sodium)
• Honey
• Rice vinegar
• Olive oil
• Garlic powder
• Garlic
• Fresh ginger root
• Cornstarch

Tips for making honey garlic sauce (basic steps)

This honey garlic sauce is so quick and simple to make: it will take you longer to read about it than actually make the recipe itself! Here are a few notes to keep in mind:

• Fresh ginger is not required, but it adds depth in flavor. Ginger root packs in a lot of spicy, zingy flavor to this sauce. You can leave it out since it might not be a refrigerator staple for you, but it adds a depth that we think is absolutely worth the purchase.
• Use a microplane for easy grating. You can use it for both the garlic and ginger: you don’t even need to peel the ginger!

On using a cornstarch slurry

This honey garlic sauce recipe uses a cornstarch slurry, which is a mix of cornstarch and water (or another room temperature liquid). Here are a few notes about working with cornstarch:

• If dry cornstarch is added directly to heated foods, it clumps up. So it’s best to add it to sauces and stir fries mixed with a little liquid first.
• Cornstarch must be heated to around 203°F for the thickening to occur. It’s called “starch gelatinization”: the process where the the particles of cornstarch absorb water. You’ll notice that once you add the cornstarch slurry to the warm sauce, it immediately starts to thicken: the starch gelatinization has been activated!

Ways to use honey garlic sauce

How do you plan to use your honey garlic sauce? This recipe is extremely versatile and works with many different types of foods. Here are a few ideas:

• Salmon: Paint on Honey Garlic Salmon, Grilled Salmon, Broiled Salmon or Pan Fried Salmon before and after cooking
• Chicken: Use for baked chicken, grilled chicken or wings
• Tofu: Try it with Easy Baked Tofu or Pan Fried Tofu
• Stir fries: Try in Quick Shrimp Stir Fry, Cauliflower Stir Fry or Go-To Tofu Stir Fry
• Vegetables: Add it to Pan Fried Broccoli or Sauteed Carrots

Storage info

This recipe is quick to whip up and stores well. Store homemade honey garlic sauce refrigerated for up to 2 weeks. After 2 weeks, it starts to lose some of the potency in flavor.

More sauce recipes

Love making homemade sauces? Here are a few sauce recipes to try:

• Go for Pomodoro Sauce or Arrabiata Sauce
• Grab zingy Spanish Romesco Sauce
• Opt for fresh Chimichurri Sauce
• Try fan-favorite Pizza Sauce!

01

Romesco Sauce

02

Pomodoro Sauce

03

Chimichurri Sauce

04

Pizza Sauce Recipe

This honey garlic sauce recipe is…

Vegetarian, plant-based, dairy-free and gluten-free. For vegan, use maple syrup or agave syrup instead of honey.

Print