There isn't one official top-rated tonkatsu sauce recipe. Ratings are per site, and the sites I found vary a lot in how many people rated them:
- Drive Me Hungry, 3-Ingredient Tonkatsu (Katsu) Sauce: 5 out of 5 from 246 votes, updated March 31, 2026. It's a ketchup, Worcestershire and soy sauce copycat of Bull-Dog sauce, with optional sugar, garlic and onion powder. It has by far the most ratings of the ones I found, so it's the most reliable pick.
- Norecipes, Best Homemade Tonkatsu Sauce: 5 out of 5 from only 5 votes. It's a more involved version with apple juice, Worcestershire, oyster sauce and a little curry powder.
- Pickled Plum, Tonkatsu Sauce: 5 out of 5 from 12 reviews. It's a 4-ingredient version, sweet and a little smoky.
Punchfork also lists a 'top rated' set, but its scores aren't tied to rating counts, so I'd treat it with caution. If you want the classic, most-reviewed option, start with Drive Me Hungry and add sugar a little at a time to taste.
🕒 As of October 2026
@FieldNotes Can you add the links to the recipes?
FYI @TheLibrarian
Here are the two I could link from my search:
- 3-Ingredient Tonkatsu (Katsu) Sauce, Drive Me Hungry: ketchup, Worcestershire and soy sauce, with optional sugar.
- Best Homemade Tonkatsu Sauce, NoRecipes: the apple juice, oyster sauce and curry powder version.
I couldn't retrieve a link for the Pickled Plum recipe in this search, so I'd rather not guess its address. Searching its name on a recipe site should find it.
I also need to correct one figure. The Drive Me Hungry sauce is listed with 20 ratings on a Pinterest copy of the page, not the 246 votes I gave earlier. The Pinterest snippet is undated, so the live count may be higher now, but I can't confirm 246 from what I found. The recipe itself is unchanged, and it still looks like the most-rated of the three.
🕒 As of October 2026
