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Every yum yum sauce recipe on the internet tells you to mix mayonnaise and water in a bowl. They’re all wrong. The real Benihana yum yum sauce uses heavy whipping cream instead of water and is prepared in a double boiler, not stirred together cold. Those two details are why your homemade version has never tasted like the restaurant’s.
I spent months trying to reverse-engineer this sauce before I finally got the original recipe. Once I had it, I made a batch side by side with sauce I bought directly from Benihana. The color, consistency, and flavor were identical. I also came up with a version using Kewpie mayonnaise and a few extra spices that I think is even better than the original.
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Hellman’s mayonnaise. Benihana uses Hellman’s specifically. Different mayonnaises have different ratios of oil to egg, and that changes the body of the finished sauce. If you want an exact match to the restaurant, use Hellman’s. If you want to upgrade the recipe, I cover a Kewpie swap further down.
Heavy whipping cream. This is the ingredient every recipe online gets wrong. Most call for water, but at Benihana, the creaminess comes from using both mayonnaise and heavy cream together. There’s no substitute that gives you the same result.
Unsalted butter. Two tablespoons of butter melted in the double boiler form the base that everything gets whisked into. Use unsalted so you can control the seasoning with the kosher salt in the spice blend.
Ketchup. Just two teaspoons. It gives the sauce its pale pink color and a touch of sweetness and acidity. Not enough to taste like ketchup, but enough to affect the color and balance.
The spice blend. White sugar, kosher salt, garlic powder, sweet paprika, and coarse ground black pepper. All common pantry spices. The paprika contributes more to the color than the flavor at this amount.
1. Set up a double boiler. Take a small pot and find a metal bowl that fits snugly on top but doesn’t touch the bottom. Add an inch or two of water to the pot and bring it to a boil, then turn it down to a light simmer. If you’ve made hollandaise before, same setup.
2. Mix the wet ingredients. In a small bowl, combine the mayonnaise, heavy cream, and ketchup. Set this aside.
3. Mix the spices. In a separate bowl, stir together the sugar, salt, garlic powder, paprika, and black pepper. Set this aside too.
4. Melt the butter. Add the unsalted butter to the bowl sitting on the double boiler and whisk until it’s fully melted.
5. Combine everything. Add the mayonnaise mixture and the spice blend to the melted butter. Whisk until the sauce is smooth and the spices are fully incorporated.
6. Cool and refrigerate. Transfer the sauce to a container, let it cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for several hours or overnight before serving.
You’re not actually cooking the sauce in the double boiler. You’re warming it just enough for the butter to melt and everything to combine smoothly. If the sauce starts to look like it’s separating or getting too hot, pull the bowl off the pot immediately and keep whisking. You can set it back on whenever you need more heat.
Before I had the original Benihana recipe, I spent months experimenting with my own version. I ended up with something I think is better, and it only takes two changes.
First, swap the Hellman’s mayonnaise for Kewpie. Kewpie is a Japanese mayonnaise made with egg yolks instead of whole eggs, and the result is creamier and more custardy. It changes the base of the sauce in a good way.
Second, add three spices to the blend: dry mustard powder (½ teaspoon / 1 gram), white pepper (¼ teaspoon / ½ gram), and onion powder (¼ teaspoon / ½ gram). Everything else stays the same, including the amounts, the double boiler method, and the overnight rest.
The full ingredient list for my version is in the recipe card notes below.
Don’t rush the refrigeration. The sauce is ready to eat after a few hours in the fridge, but overnight is better. The spices are slightly sharp right after you make the sauce. After sitting in the fridge, they mellow and the flavors come together.
Watch the heat. The double boiler is there to prevent the sauce from breaking. If the bowl gets too hot or the water underneath is boiling too aggressively, the mayo emulsion can separate. Keep the water at a gentle simmer and whisk continuously.
Lift the bowl to control temperature. If things are getting too warm, just pick up the bowl and keep whisking off the heat. Set it back on when you need more warmth. This is the same technique you’d use for hollandaise.
Yum yum sauce is the condiment that ties a hibachi dinner together. It goes on practically everything you’d serve at a teppanyaki table.
For proteins, try it with hibachi chicken, hibachi steak, or hibachi shrimp. For sides, it pairs well with Benihana fried rice and hibachi vegetables. And if you want a full spread of sauces, make a batch of Benihana teriyaki sauce and Benihana garlic butter to go alongside it.
Yum yum sauce keeps well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days in a sealed container. It will thicken slightly as it sits, which is normal. If it gets too thick after a few days, stir in a small splash of heavy cream to loosen it.
This sauce does not freeze well. Mayo-based sauces tend to separate when thawed, so make it fresh when you need it.
Serve it cold or at room temperature. It does not need to be reheated.
Yum yum sauce is the creamy, pale pink condiment served at Japanese teppanyaki steakhouses like Benihana. It goes by a lot of names depending on where you are: shrimp sauce, Japanese steakhouse white sauce, pink sauce, sakura sauce, hibachi sauce. They’re all the same thing.
Yes. Every recipe online tells you to just mix everything in a bowl, but that’s not how it’s made at the restaurant. The double boiler gently warms the butter so it melts into the sauce without breaking the mayonnaise emulsion. If you melt butter directly and stir it into cold mayo, the fat separates and the texture is greasy instead of smooth.
Yes. If you want an exact replica of Benihana’s sauce, use Hellman’s. If you want what I think is a better version, use Kewpie and add dry mustard powder, white pepper, and onion powder to the spice blend. Full measurements are in the recipe card notes.
You can, but the sauce will taste different and the texture will be thinner. Full-fat mayonnaise is what gives the sauce its body. Reduced-fat versions have different ratios of oil and added stabilizers that change the finished product.
