Super Quick Gyoza Sauce (Just 4 Ingredients!)

A quick and easy dumpling dipping sauce you can serve with Japanese gyoza or potstickers. Just 4 ingredients, with extra ideas to make it your own. Use it with your favourite homemade or store-bought dumplings.

Why We Love This

This is a super quick homemade gyoza sauce with simple ingredients that work together to bring out the flavour in your dumplings. 

No cooking or chopping required – you can whip it up in less than a minute! 

We love mixing together a small bowl per person so everyone can enjoy the perfect balance of flavour for them. 

Store-bought dumpling dipping sauces can be pretty expensive to buy. Once you master this recipe, you’ll always have fresh dipping sauce when you need it at a fraction of the cost!

What is Gyoza Sauce? 

Traditionally, gyoza sauce it is half soy sauce and half vinegar, with optional chilli. Our version adds a touch of sesame oil, which pairs perfectly with the acidic tang of vinegar and salty soy. It’s so easy to play with the ratios and adapt to your own personal taste. Once ready, just dip, drip off the excess and enjoy. 

This dipping sauce is not just amazing for dumplings, splash it over almost anything. Try it over noodles or even swap out the ponzu in your homemade shabu shabu hot pot.

What You’ll Need

The 4 basic ingredients in this simplified dumpling sauce are listed below along with variations. This recipe uses basic Asian pantry staples that you may already have. While some brands or styles might give you better flavour than others, we encourage you to use whatever is available in your pantry so you can get dipping as quick as possible!

• Soy Sauce – Regular soy sauce (rather than light or dark soy) works best for this sauce, it has the perfect intensity of flavour. No stress if you need to use one of the other varieties, you just may need to add more or less to get the right balance. Tamari is also fine for a gluten-free option.
• Rice Wine Vinegar – For a more traditional flavour, make this with rice vinegar, which is a little sweeter than regular vinegar. You can substitute with apple cider vinegar, black vinegar or white wine vinegar if you need, but if you only have simple white vinegar on hand that will also do the trick. You may like to add a sprinkling of sugar for a hint of sweetness if you do. 
• Sesame Oil – This is essential for its rich, nutty flavour. Choose a high quality brand for the best flavour as some sesame oils can have less flavour than others. Make your own homemade sesame oil in a pinch, or for an extra chilli kick, replace this with sesame based rayu chilli oil.
• Chilli Powder – You can use any kind of chilli powder, red pepper flakes, chilli paste, sambal or chilli oil. We’ll often use shichimi togarashi (Japanese 7 spice) because it has an even heat and a hint of citrus. You could always use slices of fresh chilli if you prefer – deseed them first if you think they might be too hot.

Wandercook’s Tips

• Individual Dipping Bowls – Our gyoza sauce recipe is for one small dipping bowl. You can double, triple, quadruple etc to have some now and keep some for later. Better yet, get each person to make their own batch in a separate dipping bowl and get the flavours just right for them. Some may like extra chilli, while others will want to leave it out completely. 
• Only Keep ‘Clean’ Sauce – If you decide to make a bigger batch to keep for later, we recommend only pouring out what you need, and store the rest in an airtight container in the fridge. Discard any sauce that has been dipped in.

FAQs

Variations

• Flavour Upgrades – Grate fresh ginger and/or garlic straight into the bowls – it’s quicker and easier than slicing or chopping. You could also add a little sugar to sweeten the sauce if you like. 
• Add Ponzu – For a citrus umami hit, add ponzu to the existing sauce, or use it instead of the regular soy sauce.
• Extra Heat – Add fresh chillies or your favourite hot chilli oil. Try Sichuan peppercorn oil for its delicious ‘numbing’ effect. 
• Optional Garnish – Top with slices of fresh spring onion, crispy fried shallots, sesame seeds (toasted or regular) or a sprinkling of shichimi togarashi.
• Too Spicy? – Leave out the chilli.
• Too Salty? – Water down with a little warm water, use less soy sauce, or swap for a low sodium soy sauce. 
• Too Intense? Add a splash of hot water to thin it out a bit. 
• Different sauce? Try these other Japanese Sauces.

Serve your gyoza up with these popular Japanese bites:

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