Eel sauce is our new favorite cooking hack for making any dish sweet and savory with zero hassle

Here are five app-eel-ing side dishes, rice bowls, and sweets for using up your leftover eel sauce.

Unagi no tare (うなぎのたれ), literally “eel sauce,” has become our favorite all-around sauce. While the product may or may not contain small amounts of eel extract itself, it’s intended to be a perfectly thick, glossy accompaniment for grilled eel made from a simmered blend of soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar. Many commercially prepared versions exist, such as the one from Japanese brand Nihon Shokken, pictured below.

▼ Nihon Shokken’s eel sauce

This particular one does contain a tiny amount of eel extract but it’s not one of the top three ingredients. From the top those are soy sauce, mizuame (a Japanese sweetener), high-fructose corn syrup, and mirin, all ahead of the extract.

It was one of these bottles that we had purchased for use in one recipe but ended up having a decent amount of leftover sauce. Not wanting to waste it, we began experimenting with what we could use it on besides eel. It turns out that the sky is the limit when it comes to eel sauce’s potential–here are five ways to add it to easy Japanese homestyle dishes and snacks.

1. Grilled onigiri (rice balls)

First up is an easy and satisfying snack. Simply mix the eel sauce into the rice before shapjng the onigiri. We also threw in some leftover green onions and roasted sesame seeds for extra flavor.

Grill the onigiri in a pan or air fryer until you start to see faint scorch marks on the rice. The resulting snack has a deeper and richer taste than if using soy sauce alone.

2. Oyakodon (chicken and egg rice bowl)

Oyakodon is a hearty and delicious homestyle meal packed with protein and flavor. Begin by boiling the eel sauce with some water before adding chunks of chicken and onions. Let simmer until mostly cooked, then add in the beaten egg. Lay the mixture over a bed of rice to complete the dish.

The resulting eel sauce version was amazing, and involved less hassle than measuring out the individual ingredients for the simmering stock alone. We may always just use eel sauce from here on out.

3. Japanese amberjack

We actually picked this recipe up from food company Yamada Suisan’s YouTube channel. Grill the fish in a pan for a bit before adding equal amounts of eel sauce and water. Let simmer until the liquid is reduced.

It was an extremely simple dish involving hardly any prep. The cooked appearance was shiny and enticing, and while we enjoyed it very much, we also wished there was just a tiny bit more added sweetness. We’ll just make a mental note for next time.

4. Hard-boiled eggs

If you’re looking for a way to liven up your eggs, this is an easy hack for doing so. Let hard-boiled eggs with the shells removed soak in a closed bag with some eel sauce for about half a day. The resulting salty-sweet edge it provides is a perfect accompaniment for the eggs.

5. Mitarashi dango (glazed rice dumplings, usually skewered)

Add a small amount of water to some eel sauce in a pan and turn on the heat. We also added a tiny bit of potato starch to thicken it. When the sauce becomes viscous, add in some boiled-then-chilled shiratama dango (rice flour dumplings).

A quick taste test of the resulting mitarashi dango led us to add some kuromitsu (brown sugar syrup) to enhance the sweetness. That seemed to do the trick, so we recommend adding nearly equal amounts of eel sauce and either kuromitsu or sugar to make for a sweetly tantalizing dessert.

There you have it–five simple dishes to make using your leftover eel sauce. In fact, you probably wouldn’t even know they contained eel sauce if no one told you, since the overall ingredients are commonly represented in a variety of Japanese simmered and teriyaki dishes. Nihon Shokken’s eel sauce did leave us personally wanting to add a bit more sugar to the dishes at times, but this may not be the case with other brands or based on personal preferences.

We love finding novel ways to turn leftover ingredients into yummy new creations. Here are some of our top picks, from the weird to the wonderful.

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