Your Vegetables’ New Best Friend

This all-purpose seasoning sauce will make all your plant-based dishes say “Ooh-mami.”
Your Vegetables New Best Friend
Nitzan Keynan

Pare down the pantry and rev up the flavor with a versatile, new, plant-based umami product showing up around the country.

All-natural Yondu sauce gives cooks a shortcut to unlocking maximum flavor, punches up the power of soups, and makes stir-fries sing.

Already an established hit in Europe and Asia, Yondu is arriving on shelves in the U.S. and you need to discover for yourself how clutch it is to have a single, go-to staple that brings a potent boost to any vegetable dish –– especially as we’re all into a more plant-based diet.

So...What is Yondu?

Yondu is a plant-based umami sauce that boosts the flavor of any dish. It's made from slowly fermented organic soybeans and a long-simmered broth of various vegetables and aromatics, which combine to create a revolutionary natural flavor.

The delicate seasoning elevates a wide variety of dishes without overpowering the main ingredient. Instead, Yondu boosts the inherent flavors of your favorite soups, sauces, and sautés. It makes a dramatic difference in the richness and depth of flavor in all types of vegetable dishes: easy enough for home cooks to drop into everyday dinners while boasting flavor that’s earned Yondu a spot in the arsenal of chefs at the best restaurants around the globe.

Nitzan Keynan

How to Use Yondu

Good news: you can add Yondu to your dish at any stage of the cooking process.

Use it as a seamless one-to-one plant-based substitute for the savory umami of fish sauce or as a quick way to create a rich, vegetarian stock by simply mixing two teaspoons of it with one cup of warm water. It can anchor a pasta recipe, jump-start your salad dressing, or add that “secret-something” to your tacos. If a dish has vegetables in it, Yondu’s rich umami flavor will instantly improve it.

Yondu works wonders on weeknights when you want to make simple, quick recipes with minimal prep time and a non-complicated list of ingredients — keep it by the stove so you can easily reach for this all-in-one pantry staple while preparing ingredients or cooking.

Yondu is the perfect plant-based alternative to meaty and umami-rich flavors such as dashi or oyster sauce. If you just want a quick extra burst of umami but not the dark notes of soy sauce or dominating flavors of amino, Yondu makes a great substitute, melding perfectly with your ingredients.

In fact, famed chef Quique Dacosta uses Yondu to quick-cure at his three-Michelin star restaurant in Alicante, Spain and José Andrés goes through it by the bucketful at his fast-casual restaurant, Beefsteak. Flynn McGarry likes Yondu for gluten-free dishes at Gem, and Juice Press employs it in their broths.

Other professional chefs find Yondu creates a strong backbone for light vegetables in cabbage rolls, makes a mouthwatering mushroom pad Thai, and enhances layers of flavor in a barley risotto.

The beauty of Yondu’s simplicity creates endless opportunities to weave it into nearly any dish, meaning the same ingredients that power world-class kitchens can turn your quick Tuesday night stir-fry of whatever's in the crisper drawer into an instant classic.

RECIPE

Yondu Stir-Fry

Serves 2 | Total cook time: 15 minutes

4 cups seasonal vegetables, chopped (e.g., onion, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts,

squash, snow peas)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon Yondu

1 teaspoon ginger, grated

1 clove garlic, minced

Instructions

  1. Heat a large pan on high, add oil and vegetables and sauté until browned, about 2–5 minutes.
  2. Combine Yondu, ginger, and garlic in a small bowl and set aside.
  3. Remove pan from heat, add Yondu mixture immediately, and stir to incorporate and glaze.

Tip: Serve as a side or combine with rice, couscous, or pasta for a delicious veg-forward dinner.

Nitzan Keynan

Benefits of Yondu

Yondu unlocks the natural flavors of vegetables for you to use as a versatile substitute for the complex flavors typically derived from added salt, oil, butter, and sugar.Nearly one third of the U.S. population is trying to eat less meat. Helping people do just that is woven into Yondu’s mission. By reducing the amount of time and extra ingredients, Yondu offers a welcome solution for people looking to cook and eat dishes that are better for their health and that of the planet, but who relish the chance to do it in a way that doesn’t require sacrificing flavor.

Give Yondu a Go!

Whether looking to spark new ideas for grilled eggplant, serve up a more savory pasta, or add depth to your beans, Yondu makes it easy to invigorate your recipes with umami. Check out yondu.us or @yondu.usa on Instagram for more information on how to use it, why it works such magic on vegetables, and see plant-based recipes that will make you say ooh-mami. Try Yondu and discover a new depth of flavor by grabbing a bottle on Amazon or at grocery stores all over the country.

Nitzan Keynan