5x the tastiest Japanese sauces (that you may not know yet)
Sometimes it doesn’t have to be more complicated than drizzling a bottle of Kewpie sesame dressing over your salad (and then try not to overdo it). But there are also incredibly delicious Japanese sauces in the less ready-made category, which you can easily make yourself with a few basic ingredients from Asian cuisine.
And that way, you steadily expand your dipping and dunking options, because so many dishes benefit from a delicious sauce. Steamed broccoli with sesame seeds, a fried egg and perfectly cooked white rice, for example: add one of the sauces below and you have a super-easy and, above all, incredibly tasty meal.
Karashi
Kone karashi is Japanese mustard powder, which you mix with a little water into a paste. It has a spicy flavor and can be eaten as is, like mustard. Also delicious: mixed with miso for a sharp miso variation, or stirred into (Kewpie) mayonnaise. You’ll want that on your chicken katsu sandwich!
Gomadare
Gomadare is somewhat similar to tahini: you make it by mixing roasted sesame paste (nerigoma) with soy sauce or tamari, rice vinegar and sugar. Extremely delicious with vegetables, meat, crispy tofu and salads.
Warishita
Warishita is generally eaten with soups and gives them a savory, rich flavor. Mix sake, mirin, soy sauce, sugar and dashi stock to add an even more complex layer of flavor to your soup.
Tsuyu
Perfect umami: this sauce is used for soups and noodles. Dashi stock with soy sauce, mirin and sugar: that’s all you need to flavor a bowl of soba noodles—perfection in simplicity. Use high-quality versions of these products; they may be slightly more expensive, but you generally get a lot of use out of them, and they’re absolutely worth it for their pure flavors.
Ponzu
In Japan, ponzu is used with tataki (briefly seared fish) and nabemono dishes (a hot-pot style of cooking, with a pot of stock in the middle of the table in which everyone cooks ingredients). It is made by cooking mirin, rice vinegar, bonito flakes and kombu seaweed into a reduction, then mixing it, once cooled, with the juice of the yuzu fruit. Delicious!
Read also:
- My husband ordered a cheese board in Japan (and it was a bad idea)
- Want to go: Rouhi, the Rituals restaurant (yes, the one from that shower foam)
- Big mouth? Go eat burgers in Japan!
