Benihana Spicy Sauce Recipe
Benihana’s spicy sauce takes less than a minute to make. It’s three ingredients mixed together cold, and that’s the whole recipe. The combination is sriracha, sambal oelek, and chili oil…
I’ve made Benihana’s fried rice at home hundreds of times over the past several years. The thing that took the longest to figure out is that how much moisture is left in the cooked rice matters more than how sticky the rice is. Calrose is naturally sticky, and no amount of rinsing or refrigerating is going to change that completely. What you can control is how dry the grains are before they hit the hot pan.
The other thing most hibachi fried rice recipes overlook is the garlic butter. Benihana’s version is a compound butter made with Kikkoman soy sauce and fresh garlic. It’s the ingredient that gives their fried rice its distinctive taste, and it’s absurdly easy to make at home.
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Calrose rice. This is the specific type of rice Benihana uses. Botan is the exact brand they serve, but Nishiki and Kokuho Rose work just as well. Any medium-grain calrose rice will give you the right texture. If you can’t find calrose, jasmine rice works fine. The dish will taste slightly different since jasmine is a long-grain rice that’s naturally less sticky, but it’s a solid substitute.
Kikkoman soy sauce. Benihana uses Kikkoman, which is a Japanese-style soy sauce. It’s lighter and less salty than Chinese light soy sauce. If you substitute Chinese soy sauce, use a little less.
Unsalted butter. You’ll need this for the hibachi garlic butter. Unsalted lets you control the seasoning, since the soy sauce in the compound butter already adds salt.
Safflower oil. This is what Benihana uses at the restaurant, but any neutral oil works: vegetable, canola, avocado. You’ll need less oil than you think. About a teaspoon per cup of rice for the frying step, plus small amounts for cooking the chicken, eggs, and vegetables.
Sesame seeds. Added at the very end for nuttiness and texture. You can toast them first in a dry pan if you want a stronger sesame flavor.
This section matters more than the actual frying. Get the rice right and the rest of the recipe is straightforward.
Wash your rice first. Put it in a strainer inside a bowl, fill with water, swirl 5-10 times, drain, and repeat 3-5 times until the water is a bit clearer than when you started. You’re removing surface starch to get slightly less sticky, slightly drier grains after cooking. Don’t overdo it. If you leave the rice in water too long, you can overhydrate it and end up with soggy fried rice. For the record, Benihana doesn’t wash their rice at the restaurant because they’re cooking such large volumes that the labor isn’t worth it. At home, washed rice gives you a noticeably drier final product.
Method 1: Rice cooker (best). Follow your machine’s instructions. If it has a “harder rice” setting, use it. Harder rice means slightly less moisture, which is ideal for frying. Rice from a cooker can go straight into the fried rice after letting the surface moisture evaporate at room temperature for 10-15 minutes.
Method 2: Steaming (second best). Weigh your rice in grams, then use the exact same number in milliliters of water. So 180g of rice gets 180ml of water. Put a steamer insert or colander in a pot with about an inch of water at the bottom. Place the rice and measured water in a bowl on top of the insert. Bring the pot water to a boil, put the lid on, lower to a simmer, and cook for 20 minutes. Kill the heat and let it steam for 10 more minutes with the lid on. The result is virtually the same quality as a several-hundred-dollar rice cooker. Let the surface moisture evaporate at room temperature for 10-15 minutes before using.
Method 3: Traditional stovetop (third best). Use a 1:1 ratio of rice to water by volume, plus one extra tablespoon (14ml) of water to account for evaporation. So one cup of rice gets one cup plus one tablespoon of water. Bring to a boil, lid on, lower to medium-low, cook for 10 minutes. Kill the heat and steam with the lid on for 10 more minutes. Transfer to a baking sheet and fluff the grains. With this method, you really want to refrigerate the rice uncovered for 12-24 hours before using. The dry circulating air in your fridge dehydrates the surface of each grain. If you can’t wait that long, at least let it sit uncovered at room temperature for several hours.
This recipe goes fast once you start cooking. Have everything weighed, measured, and within arm’s reach before you turn on the heat. You can do the entire recipe in one pan, but you need to cook each ingredient separately and wipe the pan clean between steps.
1. Cook the chicken. Heat a bit of oil in your largest cast iron or nonstick skillet over medium heat. Season the chicken cutlets with salt and pepper and cook on both sides until done, about 1-2 minutes total since they’re so thin. Remove to a cutting board. Make slices about ¼ inch thick, then turn them perpendicular and cut into small cubes. Return the cubed chicken to the pan, add 1 teaspoon of garlic butter and a bit more salt and pepper, and toss until the butter melts and coats the chicken. Transfer to a bowl.
2. Cook the eggs. Wipe out the pan with a wet paper towel. Return to medium heat with a bit of oil. Add the beaten eggs, season with salt and pepper, and break them up as they cook. You don’t want large pieces of scrambled egg in the final dish. Once set, add to the bowl with the chicken.
3. Cook the vegetables. Wipe the pan again. Medium heat, a bit of oil. Add the onion and carrot, season with salt and pepper, and cook until slightly softened, about 2 minutes. The fine dice means they cook fast. Add the green onion, stir to combine, and kill the heat. Transfer to the bowl with the chicken and eggs.
4. Fry the rice. Wipe the pan one more time. Medium heat, about 2 teaspoons of oil (a teaspoon per cup of rice). If you use too much oil, the dish ends up greasy because you’re also adding garlic butter later. Spread the rice out and let it cook for 2-3 minutes, gently breaking up any clumps and turning it over. Give the rice room in the pan. If you crowd it, the moisture can’t evaporate, and you end up steaming the rice instead of frying it.
5. Combine and add garlic butter. Add the bowl of cooked chicken, eggs, and vegetables to the rice. Stir until everything is well combined. Add 1 tablespoon of hibachi garlic butter plus salt and pepper to taste. Stir until the butter melts and coats everything evenly. Cook for about 1 minute.
6. Add the soy sauce. Push the rice to one side of the pan. Add the soy sauce directly to the exposed pan surface. Once it sizzles, immediately stir the rice into the soy sauce. Keep stirring with a cutting motion until all the white chunks of rice are gone and the color is uniform.
7. Finish with sesame seeds. Kill the heat, toss in the sesame seeds, stir to distribute, and serve. Garnish with extra sesame seeds or sliced green onion.
Cut your vegetables and chicken small. The most common mistake is cutting the carrot and onion too large. You’re going for a brunoise: 2-3mm cubes. The carrot gets peeled, squared off, cut into thin sheets, then julienned, then diced across. The onion just needs a very fine dice. Green onion gets sliced as thin as you can manage. Same with the chicken: thin cutlets sliced about ¼ inch thick, then cubed. If any ingredient is too large, it dominates the bite instead of blending in.
Cook in batches if you’re feeding more than two people. You need the rice to have direct contact with the hot pan so the moisture evaporates. A pan full of rice just steams, and you end up with exactly the mushy texture you were trying to avoid. The recipe below scales to 4 and 8 servings, but always cook 2 servings at a time in the pan.
Season at every step. Salt and pepper go on the chicken, the eggs, the vegetables, and the rice. Seasoning once at the end doesn’t layer the flavor the same way. Do a final taste test before serving and adjust.
Make the hibachi garlic butter ahead. Take 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter at room temperature and mix in ½ teaspoon of minced garlic and ½ teaspoon of Kikkoman soy sauce. Stir until completely combined with no liquid pooling at the bottom. This keeps in the fridge for a few days and scales up easily if you want to keep a batch on hand.
Wipe the pan between each step. A wet paper towel between cooking the chicken, eggs, vegetables, and rice gives each ingredient a fresh cooking surface. Leftover bits from the previous step can burn and stick to the next one.
Fried rice at Benihana is served alongside the main teppanyaki proteins. If you’re putting together a full hibachi dinner at home, pair it with Japanese Teriyaki Chicken for the most traditional combination. You can also swap the chicken in the fried rice for steak, shrimp, or leave the protein out entirely for a vegetarian egg-only version.
If you want to try a different style of fried rice, my Chinese Takeout Fried Rice uses a similar technique with a different seasoning approach. For a restaurant-specific variation, Din Tai Fung Shrimp Fried Rice uses a different rice type and flavor profile.
Leftover fried rice keeps in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-4 days. Reheat in a skillet over medium heat with a small amount of oil. Microwave works but the stovetop gives you a better texture since it re-crisps the rice a bit. Fried rice freezes well for up to 2 months in a freezer bag with the air pressed out. Thaw overnight in the fridge before reheating.
Not always. With a rice cooker or the steaming method, rice can go straight into the fried rice after letting the surface moisture evaporate at room temperature for 10-15 minutes. The traditional stovetop method produces a wetter grain that benefits from 12-24 hours uncovered in the fridge. The dry circulating air dehydrates the surface of each grain, which is exactly what you want before frying.
Yes. Jasmine rice is the most common substitute and it works well. The flavor and texture will be slightly different since jasmine is a long-grain rice with less amylopectin (the starch that makes rice grains cling together), so it won’t be as sticky. Really any rice you have on hand will work as a base for this technique.
Any neutral oil works. Vegetable, canola, avocado. There’s no meaningful flavor difference between neutral oils at the amounts used here.
Yes. Replace the chicken with steak cut into small cubes, or shrimp that’s been peeled, deveined, and cut into small pieces. Or leave the protein out entirely for an egg-only vegetarian version. The fried rice technique is identical regardless of protein.
Zojirushi makes the best consumer rice cookers. They have models at every price point, from entry-level to high-end. Any Zojirushi with a “harder rice” setting is ideal for fried rice. Links to three recommended models are in the recipe card equipment section below.
