It’s so simple to prepare Yum Yum Sauce, and it tastes just like your favorite Japanese hibachi restaurant! Any meat will taste great with this acidic, salty, and sweet sauce!
Delicious sauce! Of course, to complement our previously this week posted Hibachi Chicken! This is essential to hibachi since it is so delicious! The majority of the components needed to make this sauce are probably already in your cupboard. I’m delighted to tell that this tastes just as excellent as the restaurant, despite the fact that it required several tries and experiments. Mayonnaise, ketchup, vinegar, garlic, sugar, paprika, and water are the main ingredients of Yum Yum Sauce. I’m done now! To achieve the desired flavor, all you need to do is combine the components in the proper proportions. Alternatively, you may serve this with baked chicken breast, crispy baked chicken thighs, or even London broil!
I believe that this is the shortest post I’ve ever written for this site. The recipe, though, is essentially self-explanatory. All you have to do is combine everything in a bowl or jar! Use rice vinegar if you can; it’s what I like when it comes to vinegar. If not, apple cider vinegar will work very well. I frequently use approximately 3 Tablespoons of water to thin up our sauce somewhat. I accomplish this so that we can drizzle it on the meat. Additionally, you may make it thicker and use it more as a dipping sauce. It really is preferable to chill this sauce for a few hours after everything has been combined so the flavors can meld. I would recommend at least an hour, and ideally up to 24 hours. For up to 7 days, yum yum sauce can be kept in the refrigerator.
What ingredients are in the white sauce at Hibachi?
This well-liked sauce has a sweet flavor and a faint acidity. The basic components of yum yum sauce are universal, yet each Japanese chef utilizes their own ratios and adds their own unique touches. Our neighborhood Japanese steakhouse recently had the BEST hibachi sauce we’ve ever eaten. When I questioned the chef, he revealed his special ingredient: mirin. We are incorporating it into our recipe because it enhances flavor and complexity.
Mirin is a sweet rice wine used in Japanese cuisine. It is comparable to sake but sweeter and less alcoholic. If mirin is unavailable, you can use a dry sherry or white wine blended with 1 teaspoon of sugar as a substitute.
Mayonnaise, sugar, butter, paprika, ketchup, rice vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder, and mirin are some of the ingredients in our yum yum sauce. You can add a tiny bit of smoked paprika for a smokier variation. Add some hot sauce or cayenne pepper if you want things a little spicy. Because this sauce should be a very pale pink color (hint: it’s also sometimes called white sauce), go gentle with the ketchup and paprika.
This sauce is available in stores, like other condiments, but let me tell you: nothing compares to the flavor of homemade!
Before using, put all the ingredients in a small bowl, thoroughly stir, then cover and chill for at least two hours. Allow it to chill for at least an entire night to achieve the greatest flavor results. It will last for up to a week in the refrigerator if stored in an airtight jar.
Which two sauces are available at hibachi?
Recipe for Benihaha Ginger Sauce (Copycat) With this tangy and fresh homemade ginger sauce, you can recreate your favorite Japanese steakhouse experience at home!
The deliciousness of ginger sauce is probably well known to you if you’ve ever eaten at a Japanese steakhouse. Otherwise, you’re in for a real treat. When I prepare a hibachi-style meal at home, I cover almost everything in this delectable sauce. The ideal hibachi bite, in my opinion, consists of 50% meat and 50% ginger sauce. Okay, so perhaps the ratio is a little off, but you get the point—THAT it’s wonderful!
The first contemporary hibachi restaurant established in Japan in the 1940s, where bachi cooking initially gained popularity. Hibachi arrived in the United States a few decades later, in the 1960s, and has been enormously popular ever since, occupying a key position in American restaurant culture. The most well-liked Japanese hibachi sauces are ginger sauce and yum yum sauce. You probably already know that the ginger sauce at the well-known Japanese steakhouse business Benihana is the most frequently requested condiment.
The ingredients in this homemade version of Benihana ginger sauce are straightforward and delicious when combined. It may be quickly prepared with just six simple ingredients that you probably already have on hand. When you prepare some at home, you’ll understand why I’m praising this sauce!
This recipe for ginger dipping sauce is also suitable for vegans. Additionally, you don’t need shrimp or steak to dip into it. You may use this sauce as a dipping sauce for your vegetarian egg rolls or incorporate it into your fried rice, noodles, hibachi grilled vegetables, etc.
Is Yum Yum sauce really made in Japan?
No, despite being a well-known Japanese steakhouse sauce, this sauce did not originate in Japan, nor would you be able to find it in Japanese restaurants. It was created in America and is now a standard feature in all Japanese eateries and hibachi grills in the United States and Canada.
You can substitute ketchup for tomato paste if you don’t have any on hand. Although it might not give you the ideal outcome, it comes near enough.
Never add sugar when using ketchup because ketchup already contains sugar.
To prepare a vegan version of this sauce, substitute vegan mayo for regular mayo and coconut oil for butter.
What is the official name of yum yum sauce?
Japanese steakhouses frequently accompany a sizzling dish with a creamy orange-pink sauce. One proprietor of a teppanyaki restaurant, Terry Ho, began bulk-bottling the sauce under the name Yum Yum Sauce due to its ubiquity and mystery.
The scene is well known. Around a rectangular table, which is largely occupied by a cooktop made of smooth iron, people are seated. Underneath, gas flames flicker. A man wheeling a cart loaded with cold food, sizable cooking tools, and numerous sauce bottles enters the scene wearing a tall red hat and a white chef’s suit. He has a metal fork and a spatula in his hand. They clatter together as he draws them together. He scans the table with bright eyes. Greetings from Benihana.
Japanese teppanyaki cooking, more popularly known as hibachi, has permeated the American eating scene. Customers are drawn to these eateries as much for the combination of noodles, rice, vegetables, and meat that are fried up on a griddle as for the boisterous and flamboyant flair of the cooks preparing at the table.
A creamy orange-pink sauce that is served alongside your steaming food is one of the more subdued peculiarities of teppanyaki restaurants, beyond the piled onion rings of fire and the behind-the-back toss of metal utensils. It is almost always available at teppanyaki restaurants, albeit the name varies depending on who you ask. Shrimp sauce, wonderful sauce, yum yum sauce, and white sauce (a misleading name) are all used interchangeably.
The sweet, slightly tangy flavor of the sauce varies between restaurants and regions as much as its name does. It is widely regarded as a Japanese classic in America (one Reddit user called it “infamous”; a blogger hypothesized that there are really only “two types of folk that dine at a hibachi restaurant, those that get double white sauce and those that don’t know you can get double white sauce”). Somewhere with a little more sweetness. Add some additional tang to the other. Some of the variations are similar to the South’s beloved fried sauce. With such variability, we have to wonder if the sauce served at our neighborhood teppanyaki restaurants is even remotely Japanese.
When I initially enquired about the sauce, Nancy Singleton Hachisu, the author of three publications on both conventional and contemporary Japanese food, was perplexed. She was hostile to my initial question regarding hibachi restaurants since she had never heard of it being utilized in Japan. She explained to me that since a hibachi is a traditional charcoal heater for the room, she didn’t believe that Japan would have knowledge on the subject.
After I provided her a description of the sauce—which I referred to as shrimp sauce and she described as being “essentially pink mayo”—she informed me that there is no proof that it is used in Japanese cuisine.
Elizabeth Andoh, the director of the Japanese culinary education program A Taste of Culture and a resident of Japan for half a century, was perplexed as well. She remarked, “I’m not aware of any white sauce or shrimp sauce being offered with Japanese steak. She said, “This sort of mayo-based… tomato sauce is not part of any Japanese restaurant repertoire I know of,” when I asked for a more thorough description.
The sauce’s origins are unclear, but Polly Adema, director of the food studies program at California’s College of the Pacific, noted that they are probably not well ingrained in Japanese society. She suggested that the sauce might have developed as a result of shared modern Japanese and American interests for mayonnaise.
Andoh did claim that the Japanese are generally “mayo nuts.” However, such conjecture doesn’t lead to very far.
Which came first, a fondness for mayonnaise or a food containing mayonnaise? Asked Adema. It’s one of those queries that might never have an answer.
Finding the sauce’s recipe is equally challenging. I contacted 15 different eateries—both huge chains and independently owned places—all around the United States, but they all declined. A manager at a Benihana restaurant in Maryland told me, “We cannot share that information.” A Sakura in New Jersey, an Edohana in Texas, and a Flame in New York all responded with similar information.
When Chuck Cutler first tried what he calls “white sauce” in a teppanyaki restaurant 25 years ago, he had a very identical issue. “I tried it because I saw that everyone else at the table was requesting two bowls of white sauce. I became smitten right away.”
Cutler unsuccessfully sought the recipe from numerous restaurants for a decade. Chefs would tell him, “It’s a Japanese secret.” But one day he found a sauce made by a teppanyaki restaurant at a Florida grocery shop. He recalls that it was referred to as veggie sauce. Darned if it didn’t taste just like what he had been looking for, so he bought a bottle.
One teppanyaki restaurant owner, Terry Ho, began bulk bottling the sauce due to its ubiquity and mystery. Ho owns more than 20 eateries in the South, including some Chinese and teppanyaki. Since his grandfather moved to Albany, Georgia, in the 1970s after leaving Taiwan, he has lived there.
Does Yum Yum sauce resemble hot mayo?
Not exactly. Both yum-yum sauce and spicy sriracha mayo have a mayonnaise basis, however most yum-yum sauces are less spicy than sriracha mayo.
While the cornerstone for yum-yum sauce is mayonnaise and tomato paste with just a trace of heat, spicy mayo is a combination of mayonnaise and hot sauce plus a few more components.
Both are excellent and can be substituted for one another in the majority of dishes, but if you don’t like a lot of spice, you’ll probably prefer the mellower yum-yum sauce.
Is yum yum sauce healthy?
Has Negative Food Additives Modified starch and sodium benzoate, which are on our list of food additives to stay away from while on a ketogenic diet, are also included in Yum Yum Sauce. Food additives should be avoided as much as possible because they may be unhealthy for your body.
What complements yum yum sauce?
This sauce has a number of uses and is comparable to what some people refer to as “Fry Sauce” but is different. It ought to be a constant in your refrigerator because it is so useful.
- When used as a dipping sauce for shrimp
- poured over noodles and fried rice
- with grilled meat, poultry, and seafood
- used to the buns of hamburger and hot dog
- with both sweet potato and French fries
- used as a dipping sauce for wontons and potstickers
- as a dip for vegetables
- With sushi and rice balls
- In salads with pasta
- To make potato salads
- salad dressing
- on roasted potatoes
What is contained in the hibachi’s bottles?
The savory-sweet charm of a Japanese steakhouse dinner is fully captured in our recipe.
I’m going out for my birthday dinner because I turn 12 today. A wisecracking daredevil with a hip holster full of blades is standing across from me at the counter. On a scorching hot flat-top grill, he is juggling squeeze bottles, creating fireballs, and then creating a fiery volcano out of a sliced onion. He eventually uses a shrimp to strike my mother in the arm. He then puts a plate of wonderful, buttery steak, caramelized stir-fried vegetables, zingy white sauce, and fried rice in front of me as I sob uncontrollably. Years later, the taste of a “hibachi supper” (a more correct phrase would be “teppanyaki”) can still transport me back to that life-changing experience from my youth.
Could I make the ingredients for this exquisite dish at home? Without much success, I created and sampled every copycat dish I could find. Undaunted, I persuaded my editor to have lunch with me at the neighborhood Japanese steakhouse while we attempted to figure out how the pros did it. The legendary fireballs were created by the chef using a squeeze bottle of sake, and he then grabbed a bottle of seasoned soy sauce to squirt it all over. Most of the meals on the flattop also contained a heap of garlic butter. The dinner was flavored with garlic, soy sauce, butter, and sake.
The professionals use the flattop’s large cooking surface to simultaneously prepare meat, veggies, and fried rice while whirling knives and spatulas. But I was aware that my own version would require some modifications. I would prepare food in a huge cast-iron pan to simulate the flattop’s intense heat. I’d also need to divide the cooking into phases, starting with the steaks and moving on to the vegetables. This strategy would also give the meat time to rest while the vegetables cooked. I chose to make an all-in-one condiment by combining soy sauce, garlic, and melted butter instead of the restaurant’s method of cutting the steak on the flattop and topping it with a generous squirt of seasoned soy sauce and a knob of garlic butter. I grilled my steaks whole (tasters preferred rib eye’s rich, meaty flavor to sirloin and filet), sliced them, and then poured this special sauce over them. Delicious.
I went with the usual suspects for the vegetables: shiitake caps, onions, and zucchini, all of which were sliced to cook at the same time. I patted them into a single layer and resisted the impulse to stir for a few minutes to guarantee beautiful browning. I added them to the drippings my rib eyes had left in the still-hot cast-iron skillet for a superflavorful start. I added more soy-garlic butter and a squirt of mirina-sweetened rice wine for the traditional finishing touch after stirring and another pause for more browning.
The outcomes? Slices of juicy, expertly cooked rib eye and gorgeously browned, caramelized vegetables were exactly as excellent as the ones I remembered from so many years earlier. The dish was perfect when combined with the dipping sauces and my straightforward fried rice recipe!
