Japanese Konbu and Katsuo Dashi
Ingredients
Preparation
Tools
About
Dashi is Japanese stock, which becomes the base of many Japanese dishes, such as soup, dipping sauce, and nimono (simmered dishes). Since dashi is often used in Japanese cooking, it's useful to know how to make it. There are different kinds of dashi. It can be made from kombu (dried kelp), katsuo-bushi (dried bonito) flakes, niboshi (dried small sardines), hoshi-shiitake(dried shiitake mushrooms), and more. Kombu dashi and dried shiitake mushroom dashi are known as good vegetarian stocks. It might take extra effort to make dashi, but good dashi makes your Japanese dishes taste much better. Let's learn to make different kinds of dashi.
*To make niban-dashi (second dashi), put back the katsuobushi flakes and kombu used to make the first dashi in the deep pot. Add 2 and 1/2 cups of water and heat on low heat. When it starts to boil, add 1/3 oz. of extra katsuobushi flakes. Let it simmer for a few minutes, removing any foam that rise to the surface. Stop the heat. Strain the broth through a paper towel. Nibandashi is often used to make nimono (simmered dishes).
Comments
May 5, 2009
The bottle with red cap is a granule of Japanese Dashi, and it is useful when you don't have ingredients and enough time to cook conventional Dashi. However, conventional Dashi makes any Japanese dishes much better than Dashi granule.