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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 that you can use yakisoba sauce for those, too.
How I Developed This Recipe
In Japan, it’s common to use store-bought yakisoba sauce or the seasoning powder that comes with pre-packaged yakisoba noodles for convenience. But you can create authentic-tasting yakisoba without these products, and the ingredients needed are surprisingly simple!
This homemade sauce adds a depth of flavor that elevates the dish, making it taste just like the yakisoba you’d find at a street festival. The beauty of this sauce is its versatility – it can be tweaked to suit your taste preferences or what you have on hand.
It’s a fun and satisfying way to add a 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!
Ingredients & Substitution Ideas
- Soy Sauce: Kikkoman soy sauce is a budget-friendly choice. Check our soy sauce guide for more options in Japanese cooking.
- Oyster Sauce: Adds a deep flavor to the dish.
- Worcestershire Sauce: Regular Worcestershire sauce works well and is essential for its vegetable and fruit flavors in yakisoba.
- Tomato Ketchup: Regular ketchup is fine; I prefer Heinz tomato ketchup.
- Sake: If unavailable, substitute with white wine or dry sherry.
- Sugar: Regular sugar works, though I’ve been using light brown cane sugar lately.
- Black Pepper: Optional, but recommended for a bit of kick.
- Sesame Oil: Kadoya’s sesame oil is my recommendation for adding subtle flavor.
One of the beauties of making the sauce yourself is that you can adjust the ingredient quantities to suit your preference! Would you prefer it sweet? Add more sugar or ketchup! Like a sour kick? Then more Worcestershire sauce! It’s totally up to you.
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Jump to Full Recipe Measurements
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.
You can buy the Japanese brand Otafuku yakisoba sauce on Amazon. You might also be able to find it in Japanese or Asian supermarkets.
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
Quick & Easy Homemade Yakisoba Sauce
Ingredients
Instructions
- Add 1 tbsp oyster sauce, 1 tbsp soy sauce, ½ tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp tomato ketchup, ½ tbsp sake, ½ tsp sugar, 1 pinch ground black pepper 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.
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