Back to basic: how to make Japanese broth, dashi

I hope everyone is having a good start to 2022 so far.

As mentioned in my last week’s blog, we celebrated New Years back in Tokyo. To make the most of staying at home, we decided to go back to basic and made Japanese broth, 出汁 (dashi) for the first time.

Here are the ingredients and a tool we collected for the occasion: quality soysauce on the left hand side, dried kelp in the bottom package, dried bonito on the right hand side and the bonito shaver on the top right:

For New Years Day, we splurged on a special ‘raw’ soy sauce from ヤマロク (Yamaroku) that is created following a traditional soy sauce making method. No heat is applied but instead uses a gigantic cedar barrel with natural bacteria that frements the quality soybean. Slowly with time, rich flavourful soy sauce is created.

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Dashi is the basis for many Japanese food including miso soup and any noodle dishes including udon and soba noodles and nabe (hot pot) amongst many other.

There are a range of dashi varieties and for our first dashi making experience, we selected 昆布 (Konbu or kelp) mixed with 鰹節 (Katsuobushi or dried bonito flakes).

How to make Konbu and Katsuobushi dashi

1. Shave 30g of dried bonito using a dried bonito shaver

Note: some dried bonito can be covered in mould so the surface should be first wiped off with a wet cloth before shaving.

Another note: as we’re a dried bonito shaver novice, our shaving was too thick and short. Store bought ones are shaved so fine you can see through it. According to my parents who grew up shaving dried boniton a daily basis, the trick is in how much the blade is out in the dried bonito shaver tool.
2. Cook 1 piece of konbu by placing it in 1L of water. Turn off the heat once bubbles appear but not boiled.

3. Add the freshly shaved bonito and let it sit for 2min.

Wait until all dried bonito sinks down to the bottom.

4. Drain the dried bonito (don’t squeeze!) and voila, dashi is made!

We added for flavoring 1 tablespoon of soy sauce and 1 tablespoon of cooking sake as the broth to cook our 鯛めし (Taimeshi or snapper rice).

The day before, we chargrilled this whole snapper on a BBQ:

Combining the washed rice, freshly made dashi and chargrilled snapper, cook it like a normal rice.

The eyes looked a little scary but voila, our snapper rice was made as our first meal of 2022!

We sprinkled coriander on top for freshness (we wanted to use 三つ葉 or mitsuba which sometimes are called Japanese parsley) but we couldn’t find any.
The flavor was delicate and comforting.

This was the first time to eat and prepare snapper rice so I had nothing to compare it with. However, the miso soup was distinctly more flavorsome and delicious compared to the usual at-home miso soup using the same miso but with store-bought powder dashi.

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Nothing is wasted in Japanese cooking! The dried bonito and kelp can be cooked again to draw a second dashi (this time cooking the dried bonito for 5 minutes or so) but we fried off the dried bonito with some sesame oil and soy sauce:

After it cooled, ふれかけ(furikake) was made which can be used as rice topping or as rice ball fillings.

The day after New Years Day, I made a rice ball with the filling in it and it was smokey from the dried bonito with a hint of marine taste from the kelp:

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Selecting quality ingredients and preparing food allowed me to understand how food should taste and gave me an opportunity to appreciate the food we eat.

I hope I can carry through this mindfulness to other parts of my life this year by seeking out new experiences, understand things better and to appreciate things more.

I hope you have a safe weekend.