Homemade Yakisoba Sauce Recipe

Homemade yakisoba sauce recipe to make this stir-fry sauce at home from scratch.

It's an inexpensive solution to make your own yakisoba stir-fry sauce. In the style of the popular Otafuku yakisoba sauce brand.

Jump to:

• 📕 What is it?
• 🍶 Ingredients
• 🔪 How to make it?
• 🍱 Storing
• 💡 More Uses
• 💭 FAQs
• 👁️ Condiments Japanese Recipes:
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

📕 What is it?

Yakisoba sauce is used as a stir-fry sauce in a popular Japanese noodle dish called Yakisoba.

The sauce is the flavoring and makes it a true yakisoba noodle dish.

Yakisoba noodles are stir-fried in a wok or large pan with other ingredients such as vegetables and a protein or two.

We used this sauce to make a chicken yakisoba meal, for example, but truthfully, you can make your own yakisoba if you have this super useful sauce at hand.

You could add tofu, eggs, various veggies, pork, and seafoods such as shrimp and squids.

Yakisoba noodle dishes appeared increasingly in Japan in the 60s. The inspiration came from Chinese Chow Mein meals and other stir-fried noodle recipes.

Yaki means to fry or grill and soba are specific buckwheat noodles. BUT yakisoba noodles are not buckwheat noodles but rather Chinese style egg noodles. The name soba was meant to mean noodles in general in Japanese when this dish took off and soba noodles are not used to make yakisoba.

In Japan, the sauce tends to be thicker, milder, sweeter with a touch more umami. The Western version of a yakisoba sauce is more liquid and perhaps a bit more sour.

🍶 Ingredients

Momoko shared her homemade yakisoba sauce recipe, which is the one that her family uses in Japan. The sauce is packed with flavor and, as it's a Japanese recipe and not a Western recipe, it doesn't include vinegar.

The recipe is for a small jar so that you can keep and store it in the fridge to use it in the coming weeks and months.

US and metric measurements are located further below in the recipe card with the how-to video. This is just a quick overview to help you get organized.

You will need the following ingredients to make this:

• Sugar – can be regular sugar or brown sugar.
• Soy Sauce – Liquid basic Kikkoman style soy sauce if you want this to be gluten-free, use gluten-free soy sauce.
• Oyster Sauce – good quality thick variation.
• Worcestershire Sauce – for that extra delicious touch.
• Ketchup – to make the sauce thicker and add acidity.

A similar and simplified version of this is my 3 ingredient stir-fry sauce.

🔪 How to make it?

Take a look at how this sauce recipe comes together. You will find all the detailed instructions in the recipe card further below.

Step 1

Place all the sauce ingredients into a bowl or tall mixing container.

Step 2

Mix all the ingredients well together to a well combined sauce.

🍱 Storing

You can use the sauce as it right after mixing it together to prepare a yakisoba noodle dish, or you can store it.

To store, keep in a small clean jar and place it in a cool place such as your fridge. It will be good for at least 4-6 weeks in your fridge.

You can also choose to freeze it in small batches. You will need about 6 tablespoon of yakisoba sauce for a noodle dish that serves 2 to 3.

If you want to freeze it, pour the sauce into clean ice cube trays and freeze hard. Once that is done, place the yakisoba sauce ice cubes into a zip lock bag and store in your freezer.

You can take out the sauce ice cubes that you require and thaw them overnight in the fridge. Alternatively, they can be thrown into the stir-frying process in their frozen state, but that's going to sizzle a lot and might mess up the sauce flavors. The slow thawing option is better!

💡 More Uses

Think outside the box, this sauce can be used in a modern setting by adding it to various meals to add flavour.

Just add a few Tablespoons of the sauce during the stir-frying process.

• Fried rice – as in chicken fried rice, shrimp fried rice and even fried rice with pineapple. Just switch the regular stir-frying sauce used in the recipe with the yakisoba sauce.
• Vegetable stir fries – Stir fry vegetables such as green cabbage, broccoli, bok choy, carrots, mini corn, snap peas in a wok or large skillet and add a few tablespoons of your yakisoba sauce.
• Other egg noodle or rice noodle dishes – Prepare your usual stir-fry noodles such as chow mein and add the sauce during the stir-frying process.
• Okonomiyaki (wheat flour pancake) – Add some of the sauce during the cooking process or as a topping.
• Takoyaki (Octopus balls) – Normally served with takoyaki sauce but you can go wild by adding some yakisoba sauce.
• Beef Steak - Think hibachi style steak toppings.

💭 FAQs

👁️ Condiments Japanese Recipes:

• Japanese Style Teriyaki Sauce
• Rayu Chili Oil
• Citrus Ponzu Sauce Dip for seafood and sushi
• dash of toasted Sesame Oil
• Salmon Furikake Seasoning Rice Topping

📖 Recipe