This popular Benihana ginger Salad dressing that is featured at Benihana and other Japanese steakhouses is super easy to make at home! It’s a delightfully light, creamy, refreshing salad dressing with a strong fresh ginger taste!
If you love Benihana, you’ll love my Hibachi Mustard Sauce and Ginger Dipping Sauce!
Amazingly flavorful ginger salad dressing just like the dressing available at Benihana Japanese Steakhouse hibachi restaurants!
Benihana Ginger Salad Dressing Recipe
Being from the West coast originally, my husband and I have always been fans of Benihana hibachi grill restaurants and their tantalizing flavors. One of our favorite things to enjoy on a more regular basis than say, surf n’ turf every night, is a salad served up with the tangy signature, house ginger salad dressing recipe that Benihana is known for ( and that’s available for purchase at their restaurant locations ).
Honestly, I think my husband enjoys eating dinner at Benihana’s just so he can have the salad dressing and dipping sauces! It’s a good thing that he noticed the days when the Benihana website had their actual recipes shared.
I ended up making this creamy ginger salad dressing frequently, which is a great thing! Otherwise I would have spent a fortune buying the dressing whenever I passed by a Benihana location!! Seriously, for a time I wondered how long until we would have this orange dressing running in our veins!
If you have never had this dressing, do yourself a favor and make it as soon as possible. You need this dressing! You also need to find a great Japanese steakhouse just to watch their chefs put on a show of flying knives, exploding volcano onion towers, and one of our recent treats was to have our daughters eggs ( for the hibachi fried rice ) shaped as a rooster!!
If you love Benihana, Kyoto, or Kobe’s Japanese steakhouse hibachi ( teppanyaki ) grilled foods, you’ll love my hibachi steak and shrimp dinner, hibachi vegetables, hibachi noodles, hibachi fried rice, and yum yum sauce!!
Benihana Ginger Salad Dressing Ingredients
The ingredients needed for this easy dressing recipe include: peanut oil, onion, rice wine vinegar, water, ginger, celery, soy sauce, ketchup, sugar, lemon juice, and salt & pepper to taste.
Be sure to use a good Asian rice wine vinegar that is clear in appearance. Substituting white vinegar is not suggested. You’ll need the new bottle of rice wine vinegar anyway, so you can make this at home all the time 🙂
To Make Your Ginger Salad Dressing
Add all of the ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth, then refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.
*The flavors combine better after refrigerating, and the dressing is best on the second and third day after being mixed.
**Keep refrigerated and stored in an airtight container. The dressing will keep refrigerated for up to one week.
2004 – my printed copy of the Benihana Salad Dressing recipe, authentic version.
(Updated!) Here I share a very close approximation to the recipe that was available on the Benihana website at one point in time. I am making it from memory and it very well may be the correct version as shared by Benihana webmasters themselves. If I can ever find the saved recipe in all of my old files, I can verify the version later.
(noted below 1/2020).
*Note that the original recipe calls for tomato paste, but in such a small quantity it is much easier to use ketchup rather than open a can of tomato paste. The difference is negligible, but this officially notes my modification to the original recipe from Benihana.
Either way, this salad dressing is addictive and delicious!
Enjoy!
Benihana Ginger Salad Dressing
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup peanut oil
- 1/2 cup onion (chopped)
- 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup water
- 2 Tbsp ginger (chopped fresh ginger)
- 2 Tbsp celery (chopped)
- 2 Tbsp soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp ketchup
- 2 tsp sugar
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- salt & pepper (to taste)
Instructions
- Add all ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth, about 45 seconds to 1 minute.
- Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving and keep stored in an airtight container.
Notes
*Note that the original recipe calls for tomato paste, but in such a small quantity it is much easier to use ketchup rather than open a can of tomato paste. The difference is negligible, but this officially notes my modification to the original recipe from Benihana.
Nutrition
Angela is an at home chef that developed a passion for all things cooking and baking at a young age in her Grandma’s kitchen. After many years in the food service industry, she now enjoys sharing all of her family favorite recipes and creating tasty dinner and amazing dessert recipes here at Bake It With Love!
It’s been years since I ate at Benihana’s here in Chicago, but as soon as I tasted this dressing, it all came back. I loved their salads. In fact, after making this for dinner last night I’m having a salad for breakfast right now! If it doesn’t sound too melodramatic, thank you for bringing this back into my life ❤
Aw, Carol, I love reading this! And I absolutely love the salads at Benihana too, which of course led to this recipe being a long time staple in our home. I was also lucky enough to have caught all of the Benihana recipes when they had them posted on their website.
Thank you so much for sharing (no melodrama here, I get it!) and here’s to many more tasty salads!
In response to the query about the dressing being a watery consistency you mention to possibly add MORE carrot. The recipe you published seems like it doesn’t contain any carrot at all. Is there carrot missing from your recipe?
No, it’s not missing. The bulk in the dressing is celery and onion, which is what I meant. Thanks for catching that!
Mine came out watery. how do I fix this?
The dressing is a semi-thin salad dressing anyway, but sometimes it’s hard to get an exact measurement on your ‘bulk’ ingredients. I would add a bit more of celery or onion, depending on your dressing flavor. Taste and adjust until you have your desired consistency. I always have to stir mine before using, as the liquid will settle to the bottom overnight when refrigerated. Hope that helps!
Delicious!!! But Mine is much darker than yours!!! I wonder why! This will be a staple in our house from now on!
Gad you like it! It’s a staple here too!!
The only thing I can think of with yours being darker, is a different brand of soy sauce. Otherwise, it could just be from the lighting of the photo.
I had the same issue as well with the color being darker! But it still tastes wonderful!
It may be the type of blender used. I use my Nutribullet for most blending, rarely use my food processor (other than for pastry making), and use my actual blender even less than either of those. Glad you like it (no matter the color we all end up with)!!