Do you ever go to a restaurant and enjoy some wonderful sauce, and then find yourself craving it a few days later? You go to the grocery store to purchase said sauce, only to find it’s not available commercially. So you become a scientist of sorts in your kitchen lab, mixing and stirring and tasting – trying to mimic that wonderful sauce your taste buds fell in love with.

I do this all the time, and I must say that I’ve become pretty darn good at matching the dishes and sauces I’ve enjoyed in restaurants. Maybe I just a well developed sense of taste and smell. That’s probably why I’m such a good cook and why I love food.

Anyway, I remember the first time I dined at a Japanese Steak House. I had the grilled shrimp and fried rice, and the meal was served with this pale pink sauce concoction our chef referred to as “yum yum sauce.” At the time, I thought he was just being cutesy, but every Japanese Steak House I’ve ever been to calls it the same thing – yum yum sauce. I’m sure somewhere there’s an official name for the stuff, but for now, that’s the best moniker I have.

After my first meeting with yum yum, I went home and began my experiments. I was sure the base was mayonnaise. At first, I thought the pink color came from ketchup, but through trial and error, I figured out it came from ground paprika. After I cleared that hurdle, the rest was fairly easy.

Here’s what I discovered:

ingredients

1 quart good quality mayonnaise

1 scant cup white granulated sugar or granulated Splenda

¼ stick butter, melted

4 tsp paprika

¾ cup rice vinegar

1 teaspoon onion powder

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

1 tablespoon finely minced garlic (I like garlic – you might want to use less)

Add all ingredients together and mix well. You might want to use a blender. Place the sauce in a storage container with a lid. Let it refrigerate for at least 24 hours so that the flavors can mingle. When you’re ready to serve the sauce, check the consistency. If it’s too thick to pour, add a little more rice vinegar. Stir well before serving.

This sauce is great on white or fried rice. It also makes a wonderful dipping sauce for shrimp, chicken, fish fillets, and scallops. Heck, I even like to dip grilled squash and zucchini in it! And believe it or not, it makes an awesome coleslaw when mixed with chopped cabbage.

You can cut the fat and calories by substituting fat-free or reduced-fat mayonnaise, and it’s still tasty. If you use fat-free mayo and Splenda, you’ll have a great low-calorie sauce that will add lots of taste and interest to otherwise bland foods.

If kept tightly covered, your yum yum sauce will keep for two weeks in the fridge.

Try this sauce on bacon-wrapped grilled shrimp! Click the article link below for the recipe: