Amazon Choice's Number One BBQ Sauce Is Good For One Basic Thing

Amazon's top-selling barbecue sauce isn't (Mark Zuckerberg's favorite) Sweet Baby Ray's, nor is it Kraft, KC Masterpiece, or Open Pit. In fact, it's not an American style at all, but rather, a teriyaki sauce. And as much as we've gushed about Bachan's Japanese Barbecue Sauce in the past, it's not that, either (as of now, Bachan's comes in second and isn't quite a teriyaki sauce, though they share a lot of sensibilities). It's a brand of teriyaki sauce called Mr. Yoshida's Original Japanese Barbecue Gourmet Sweet Teriyaki Marinade & Cooking Sauce. Let's just call it Mr. Yoshida's for short.

You know I'm a big fan of testing flavorful shortcuts in the kitchen, especially sauces, because they add a ton of flavor to your cooking with zero added effort. So I wanted to see if the sales demand for Mr. Yoshida's teriyaki sauce meant that it's worth your money, especially if you're a fan of teriyaki-style cooking.

First off, a little about the brand — Mr. Yoshida is indeed a real person. His full name is Junki Yoshida and he explained the origin story of his sauce to KITV earlier this year, telling the station that he created it during the Christmas season of 1982. There was a severe economic recession going on, and he'd run out of money for proper gifts — so he made and gave out the sauce as a DIY version. He told KITV that the positive reception he received for it was unexpected. "I was shocked. People want to pay me for that stupid sauce?" he said.

He turned it into a business, and soon stores in Oregon began carrying his sauce. But in 1986, the sauce landed in Costco and became a hit. The brand was eventually purchased by Heinz in 2000, but Heinz fumbled the ball and eventually let the brand's marketing and retail presence lapse in North America. As of this year, Yoshida has repurchased the brand back from Heinz in order to breathe new life back into it and it's reappeared at limited grocery stores, Costco, and Amazon.

There's a lot of nostalgia attached to Mr. Yoshida's teriyaki sauce, too. I'd put up a quick photo of the bottle on one of my social media accounts shortly after my Amazon package arrived, and I was immediately met with responses from friends telling me how much they loved that stuff during their childhoods.

In terms of viscosity, Mr. Yoshida's teriyaki sauce is syrupy, but thankfully not gloppy at all (which is a problem I have with a lot of mass-manufactured sauces). Upon tasting it by itself, it's almost overwhelmingly sweet, straightforward with the soy sauce, and you can taste the mirin, or rice wine, coming in through the back end. Though there's no pineapple juice listed in the ingredients, there's definitely some pineapple-like overtones to it, along with a peppery, ginger flavor (ginger's also not specifically listed, though "spices" are), and a tiny bit of garlic as well.

The classic use for teriyaki sauce (homemade or store-bought) is with boneless and skinless chicken thighs, so I used a fair quantity of Mr. Yoshida's to marinate a batch, which I let sit in the refrigerator for two hours prior to grilling them. Yes, it's November. Yes, I live in Chicago. And yes, it's incredible I somehow did it comfortably wearing shorts, because it's been unseasonably warm here. 

I was a little afraid that Mr. Yoshida's teriyaki sauce would prove to be too sweet for the chicken as a marinade, but fortunately that wasn't the case. The thighs grilled up well with some decent char to them, thanks to the sugar in the sauce, and the overall result was a textbook version of teriyaki chicken without any frills. Next time I use the sauce I'll probably grate some fresh ginger and garlic into it, along with some onion, just to give it a bit of a livelier touch. Because otherwise it was basically a shellac of relatively plain sweet soy sauce, perfectly fine as a general crowd-pleaser, but nothing you haven't had before.

I have mixed feelings about using Mr. Yoshida's as a primary dipping or finishing sauce, however, since the sugary component is very apparent when it's used in its plain state. Don't get me wrong, I love teriyaki sauce, this just verges on prohibitively sweet on its own. Based off the overwhelming love I've seen for this product, that might just be a me thing, but it's pretty dang sweet to the point where I'm uncomfortable using it to douse just about anything with. 

As a product, Mr. Yoshida's Original Japanese Barbecue Gourmet Sweet Teriyaki Marinade & Cooking Sauce makes for a perfectly good run-of-the-mill chicken teriyaki sauce. If that's your jam, by all means, go for it. Though you'll have to initially shell out $20 for two 48-ounce bottles, that is a somewhat hilarious amount of sauce, so price-wise, it's not a bad deal. But in terms of flavor, I still prefer Bachan's, which is thicker, admittedly still very sweet, but much more intense and complex in terms of flavor (and yes, it's much more expensive, at $0.71 per ounce versus Mr. Yoshida's $0.21 per ounce).

I'd say go for Mr. Yoshida's if you're pining for that nostalgic version of chicken teriyaki in the back of your mind, since it hits the chord of salty, savory, and sweet all at once. It's considered a classic in many households for a reason, and that's because it's regular old teriyaki sauce. This one just comes with a good comeback story, because it's not often that a small brand is bought by a huge conglomerate — only to be bought back by its original founder and turned back into a success.