I started seeing ads for Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce in my various feeds several weeks ago. Makes sense. Food guy, demonstrably likes sauces, and so forth. The ads certainly did a fine job of making it sound wonderful, so I ordered some, and we marinated and grilled some chicken with it last night.
Much is made of this being a family recipe that uses high-quality ingredients. What do we have here?
Ingredients (see graphic for qualifiers): Soy sauce, sugar, mirin, tomato paste, ginger, green onion, rice vinegar, garlic, salt, and toasted sesame oil.
So, we probably need to be thinking in a teriyaki direction here, but it’s a lengthy and interesting list that reasonably generates some expectations of novelty.
I bought boneless skinless chicken breasts at Publix, cut them into thirds, and marinated them in Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce for eight hours. (Recommendations on the site are from two hours to a day.) I then grilled them until done, basting with a bit more sauce over the top until just caramelized at the end. I seasoned the chicken with nothing but Bachan’s.
This chicken was universally praised at my house, with superlatives flying. The boys loved it. Lea said it tasted like the chicken she gets at I Love Sushi. I have to say, it was pretty doggone tasty. And there were no leftovers.
The best way I know how to put it is that it’s teriyaki turbo. It’s definitely got a familiar vibe, and though it is sweet, it’s not cloyingly so. There are so many stimulating gustatory undercurrents happening, and you’re left with a more that, please. (Perhaps that is the heart of umami, yes?) The sauce is much thinner than we Yanks might expect a “barbecue sauce” to be, but it’s not nearly as thin as soy sauce. It’s about as viscous as Italian salad dressing, I would say.
Nate wants to take a bottle with him to college to add to ramen. Yeah, it’d be good at that. I want to do some steaks with it next. I also want to try substituting it wholesale for the soy sauce mixture (soy sauce, brown sugar, red pepper, ginger, and garlic) I prepare for stir-fry and see how it does.
Updated October 12, 2020: Bachan’s as Steak Marinade
I reordered some Bachan’s and got it in time this past weekend to try it with some New York strips. I marinated them for about six hours, and then grilled Lea’s to well-done and the boys’ and mine to medium-rare.
The resulting steaks were delicious, but with a bit less impact than the chicken we tried earlier. I think this is simply because chicken is more of a gustatory blank slate, so essentially all of the sauce’s subtleties come with it. With the steak, the sauce tasted good, but there is much more baseline flavor, so some of those minor notes are lost.
Updated July 13, 2021: Hot and Spicy Bachan’s!
I got a ping on Hot and Spicy Bachan’s a few weeks ago and have been looking forward to trying it. The recipe is rather similar to original Bachan’s, but with a goodly shot of red jalapeno in the ingredients. I went back to the chicken we loved so much for a first taste of the new sauce.
This is an appealing addition to the Bachan’s stable of products. It’s not so hot Lea couldn’t enjoy it, but it’s not a trivial tweak either. The piquancy is an excellent complement to the other flavors in the sauce, and the heat even builds a little bit as you eat. I think this will be an even better base for my stir-fry recipe when I try that.
Bachan’s positions this sauce as a gourmet, small-batch product, and as a result it is not cheap. If you buy six 17-oz. bottles, they’re $10 apiece. You can have one shipped to you for $14, and there are a couple of intermediate price breaks as well for quantities >1 and <6. A bit of an extravagance, perhaps, but really in the same neighborhood as a craft hot sauce.
It’s a fine sauce, and I plan to keep it around for a while. If I make it sound good to you above, then I’m confident you’ll enjoy it.
9/10
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The sauce is quite high in sodium content. Food is too salty. They have a no return policy so do not buy too many bottles, out of the gate until you try it. Personally, i feel it is too salty and would not recommend or repurchase this product.
Thanks for your input, John. I guess, yeah, it’s salty. I would expect a barbecue sauce, a marinade, or anything else similar intended for meat to be salty the same way I’d expect ice cream to be sweet. I don’t find it excessive. As I said in the review, it’s firmly in that teriyaki sort of space.
Put it on steak as a dipping sauce, after they’re cooked. Not as a marinade.
Paleo lunch that rocks? Leftover steak, broccoli, and this sauce
Interesting…I did not find it too salty at all. In fact I find the salt balance just about right.
I found these locally at Publix and Kroger. Very tasty with chicken and pork.
I’m glad they’re more widely available now! Yeah, they’re great sauces.