Mentsuyu (noodle sauce) is a very versatile sauce that gives many dishes a great Japanese flavor.  This is perfect for dipping cold Soba or Somen noodles, tempura and more. It is so easy to make and keeps well in the refrigerator (at least a couple weeks, stays for a month in my fridge), and comes in handy in a crunch time for dinner.   I actually make a lot of  it at once so that I don’t have to make it frequently (oh, lazy me).  You can cook meat and vegetables with this sauce as seasoning, like a quick teriyaki sauce, or just drizzle over steamed vegetables or tofu.

You could buy noodle sauce or tempura sauce in a bottle at many supermarkets in the US, but this is easy enough to make at home and has no MSG or other chemicals in it.

This is a condensed form of sauce, so dilute with water before using.  One part this sauce and two parts water is good as dipping sauce, but adjust to whatever strength you like.

Multipurpose sauce (for noodles and tempura)

4.75 from 4 votes
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes
Servings 1 cup
Multi-purpose savory sauce used for dipping sauce and seasoning meat and vegetables

Ingredients

Instructions 

  • Put all the ingredients in a pot.
  • Let it boil and remove from heat. Cool completely in the pot.
  • Strain bonito flakes.

Video

Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: Japanese
Keyword: sauce



32 Comments

    • Hi Lisa, you don’t need to boil for long at all. In fact, as soon as it reaches to a boiling point, you can turn off the heat, cover, and let it sit until it cools off. You don’t even need to stir.

  1. Hello Yuko,
    i’m a muslim,so i can’t put mirin or sake in my cooking as it contain alcohol. Could you tell me, what can i subtitute both mirin and sake with?
    It will be so great if you could tell me.
    Thank you Yuko (⌒‐⌒)

    • Lisa,
      it is hard to substitute Mirin and Sake… but if you can’t use them, just omit them. You may add some sugar to compensate the sweetness of Mirin.

    • Lisa, you can boil it some more until you no longer can smell alcohol. Allah surely won’t mind if it won’t have any alcohol anymore, but if alcohol was just used in the process of cooking.

    • I once heard that you can substitute sugar for murin. But I don’t know how much. Google should be able to tell you

    • Hello! I was just looking in the store and saw alcohol free mirin

  2. I am eating vegetarian, what is the substitute for bonito flakes? thank you

      • Nota Bene: Konbu without soy or any other proteins will pose danger to the stomach, which will literally start to digest itself. Use konbu with caution.

    • Hi Frank,

      I’m vegetarian too. I found granulated shiitake mushroom broth at my Asian store. I used about 1/2 tsp and the sauce came out great! The shiitake has a deep umami flavour that is almost smoky. Great substitute for bonito flakes, I highly recommend it.

  3. Hey, I really love the Japanese food, but unfortunately I don’t always have time to make all the recipes. Are there some recipes or dishes on your site I can use to freeze them in and take out when I want to eat?

  4. I’ve made this twice since last week!! It’s delicious w soba or drizzled on steak w green onions! Tonight I’m going to cook scallops w it ^___^

  5. Stephanie Kho Reply

    In all the recipes, when it says soy sauce does it refer to Kikoman or light soy sauce?

  6. Thanks for the great site! Just made the sauce as I couldn’t remember the recipe. It was just what I wanted.

  7. Can I substitute chinese cooking wine (hua tiao wine) for sake?

    • We have not used hua tiao wine before for this recipe, but it may come out OK.

  8. Hi, I recently bought some organic soba noodles and I wanted to use a traditional dipping sauce. When I googled it, I came across your recipe and checked it out. I just made my first batch of Mentsuyu and I can’t wait to try it out.
    Although I am going to use it as a cold dipping sauce, I also read somewhere that it can be used as a hot soup base, maybe for Udon noodles.
    My question is, how can I use it hot and for what noodles would it be good with?

    Arigatou

    • Grge,
      sorry, but no fish sauce. That has a very different flavor.

  9. Walter Bryan Reply

    I just order some yakisoba disk from a Japanese restaurant yesterday and the sauce was amazing. I was wondering what type of sauce it was. I open a future cookie from someone elses order and it said that I receive good news in the mail. 😊 when I turned on my computer today there was this Web site showing me how to make my own Mentsuyu sauce. 😄☺😊😀😁. The universe it an amazing and wonderful place. Thanks to Ms. Noriko

  10. Hi ,

    I’m a vegetarian . So , I can substitute Wakame seaweed for bonito flakes .

    I Would use kombu but it is not found and I try online but its not .

4.75 from 4 votes (4 ratings without comment)

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