What is Yakisoba Sauce?
Yakisoba sauce has it all! It’s sweet, savory, tangy, and packed with umami; no wonder yakisoba is one of Japan’s most popular street food dishes.
As you can probably guess from the name, yakisoba sauce is mostly used to flavor yakisoba, a popular fried noodle dish made with pork, onions, and cabbage. You can check out my recipe here!
Other than yakisoba, you can also use this sauce in stir-fries or as a marinade. Okonomiyaki and takoyaki also use quite similar sauces so you can use yakisoba sauce for those, too.
How I Developed This Recipe
In Japan, it’s pretty common to use store-bought yakisoba sauce or the seasoning powder that comes with pre-packaged yakisoba noodles because it’s convenient.
The good news is that you can make authentic-tasting yakisoba without these products. The ingredients you need are surprisingly simple! It can also be adapted to suit your taste or what you have available!
It’s a great way to add your own personal touch to your cooking, and you might be surprised at how much of a difference it makes in the overall flavor of the dish!
FAQ
When a recipe calls for “sake,” it can be confusing to choose the right type, as some specify regular or cooking sake. On Sudachi, “sake” refers to pure sake without added salt (in short, not cooking sake), so if you use cooking sake with salt, adjust the recipe’s salt content accordingly. All dishes on Sudachi are created using drinking sake.
If you want to know more about sake in Japanese cooking, please refer to Sake 101 post written by a professional chef with 30+ years of experience in the industry for the right selection and substitutes.
The ingredients are a little different, and Japanese Worcestershire sauce contains more fruits, so it’s a little sweeter. But overall, they taste quite similar and can be used interchangeably.
I hope you enjoy this Yakisoba Sauce recipe! If you try it out, I’d really appreciate it if you could spare a moment to let me know what you thought by giving a review and star rating in the comments below. It’s also helpful to share any adjustments you made to the recipe with our other readers. Thank you!
More Japanese Sti-fry Recipes
Easy Homemade Yakisoba Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tbsp Japanese soy sauce (koikuchi shoyu)
- ½ tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- ½ tbsp sake or white wine
- 1 tsp tomato ketchup
- 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
- ½ tsp sugar
- ¼ tsp curry powder
- 1 pinch ground black pepper
My recommended brands of ingredients and seasonings can be found in my Japanese pantry guide.
Can’t find certain Japanese ingredients? See my substitution guide here.
Instructions
- Add 1 tbsp oyster sauce, 1 tbsp Japanese soy sauce (koikuchi shoyu), ½ tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp tomato ketchup, ½ tbsp sake, ½ tsp sugar, 1 pinch ground black pepper¼ tsp curry powder, and 1 tsp toasted sesame oil to a small bowl and mix thoroughly.
- Feel free to adjust ingredient quantities to suit your preference. Use to stir fry with noodles, vegetables and meat. You can see the full yakisobe recipe here.
Notes
- Adjust ingredient ratios to suit your taste: for example, more soy sauce makes it thinner and saltier; more ketchup makes it sweeter and thicker.
- Cook this sauce together with noodles, meat, and vegetables; avoid using it cold/uncooked.
- I like this rich modern yakisoba flavor, but for a more traditional flavor, reduce oyster sauce and soy sauce ratios while increasing Worcestershire sauce ratio.
- Use curry powder only as a secret ingredient for depth and subtle spice (maximum ¼ teaspoon) It’s not meant to create a curry flavor.
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