DIY Benihana Recipes You Can Make at Home (2024)

FAQs

Why is Benihana rice so good? ›

Once the rice is mature, each grain is harvested and carefully dried to maintain an ideal moisture level. This ensures perfect, tender and fluffy Benihana rice once it's cooked by our master teppanyaki chefs. At Benihana, creating classic flavors that guests crave means using quality ingredients for each recipe.

What sauce do hibachi chefs use on rice? If you've been to a hibachi restaurant, you've no doubt seen the unlabeled plastic squirt bottles they use to season all the food. These bottles contain a variety of oils and a soy sauce or soy sauce blend that gives hibachi food its distinct flavor.

Hibachi brown sauce typically contains soy sauce, sugar, mirin (a sweet rice wine), garlic, ginger, and sometimes a touch of sesame oil. These ingredients come together to create a savory, slightly sweet, and umami-rich sauce that complements hibachi-style dishes.

What Kind of Cooking Oil Do They Use at Benihana? At Benihana, they use safflower oil. Safflower oil has no taste and a very high smoke point, an ideal combination for cooking fried rice.

Because of that heat, the rice is stirred and tossed constantly. That keeps it away from the center of the wok, which is where exuded moisture congregates. That ensures the rice is fried rather than simmered.

Butter – Hibachi fried rice recipe gets most of its flavor from the butter; therefore, a lot of butter is added. Butter gives it a nice savory flavor that makes it irresistible.

Soy Sauce- if you avoid soy you can use liquid aminos or coconut aminos and still get that umami flavor. Butter- this will come as a shock but the infamous benihana garlic butter is actually a butter blend margarine. They use it in restaurants because it has a higher smoke point than butter.

Hibachi chicken is cooked in soy sauce, while teriyaki chicken is cooked with a sweet glaze made from soy sauce and other ingredients. Teriyaki chicken is also typically marinated before cooking, while hibachi chicken is not.

Whether sourcing chicken breast for Benihana's popular Rocky's Choice or filet mignon for our Emperor's Feast entrée, we carefully select each piece of meat to make sure we receive the highest quality, most flavorful options possible and all cuts of beef are USDA Choice.

By bringing Japanese food into the mainstream and pioneering its entertaining style of presentation, Benihana has also paved the way in America and abroad for the popularity of other Japanese cooking styles and food products.

What gives hibachi its flavor? ›

What gives hibachi unique flavor? If truly being cooked with fire, the coals or wood, but in the US, sesame oil, good quality dark soy sauce and butter with salt give it flavor.

The ABCs of Japanese Seasonings

The basic flavor enhancers are satō (sugar), shio (salt), su (vinegar), shōyu (soy sauce), and miso.

1. Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese Seven Spice Blend) Perhaps the most essential Japanese spice, the shichimi togarashi spice blend is commonly used to enhance the flavor of countless Japanese dishes, from udon to grilled meat to onigiri rice balls.

In Japanese cooking, popular spices are wasabi, togarashi and shoga. Herbs and spices can sometimes come from the same plant. For example, cilantro, the herb, produces coriander, the spice made from its seeds. And shiso leaf (top photo), the herb, produces shiso seeds, the spice.