Japanese Konbu and Katsuo Dashi
By: Ginza Foodie
Published: Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 3:27pm

Ingredients




8 inches kombu (dried kelp)
2/3 ounce katsuobushi (dried bonito) flakes
4 cups and ¼  water

Preparation

1 Wipe the kombu with clean cloth. Put water in a deep pot and soak kombu in the water for 10 minutes.
*makes 4 Cups
 2 Put the pot on low heat and remove the kombu just before the water boils. When it boils, add katsuobushi flakes. 3 Remove any foam that rise to the surface, and turn off the heat. Let it set until bonito flakes sink. 4 Strain the stock through a paper towel. This stock is called ichiban-dashi (first stock). Ichiban-dashi is often used for cooking clear soups or noodle soups.

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:
Ginza Foodie

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.