The Best Store-Bought Teriyaki Sauce Comes From A Trusted Japanese Brand

If your mouth waters at the thought of succulent teriyaki chicken or wok-tossed teriyaki tofu, you'll be glad to hear that there are quite a few perfectly delicious store-bought teriyaki sauce choices available. The Japanese-influenced sauce can be both a marinade and a finishing sauce for many foods. While it's not hard to craft a quick two-ingredient version in a pinch, having a convenient bottle of teriyaki sauce in your pantry ensures you get all the nuanced flavors you'd expect from teriyaki without hunting down all the ingredients yourself. And, as you might expect, a Japanese company, Kikkoman, came out on top when we tasted bottled sauces side by side.

Kikkoman's Takumi Teriyaki sauce took top honors in our ranking thanks to a complex layering of flavors that balance umami with sweet and salty and still allow the garlic, sesame, and onion background tastes to shine. And, speaking of shine, the texture of Kikkoman Takumi Teriyaki is also just right for clinging to your food, giving the grill-kissed bronze shine that makes a teriyaki plate so appealing.

We noticed a lot of extraneous tastes and ingredients in our comparison of 13 teriyaki sauces, like molasses and coconut aminos. Kikkoman's Takumi Teriyaki stays with the basics — soy sauce and traditional mirin, a sweetened form of fermented rice wine. Both of these ingredients add umami, savory depth of flavor that you expect in teriyaki without being cloying or overly salty. One translation of the word takumi is artisan, and it's the use of the more artisanal product mirin that differentiates Kikkoman's Takumi from its original teriyaki sauce, which is sweetened with sugar instead.

The consistency of Kikkoman Takumi Teriyaki is also a key feature in creating the glossy finish that is literally the definition of teriyaki: teri means shiny, and yaki refers to grilled foods. The sweetness of teriyaki sauce is what creates the finished shine as sugars begin to caramelize from the heat of the grill or sizzling hot pan. Kikkoman has found the balance between being thick enough to stay on the food while it cooks, but not sticky or overly thick, as some of the other brands proved to be.