Dashi

Adapted from Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors by Sonoko Sakai, which we reviewed in June 2020. The recipe for bonito and kombu dashi — the broth that’s the basis for much of Japanese cooking — varies little from cook to cook. The ingredients are always the same: kombu (a type of dried seaweed), katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and water. What not every recipe tells you is that after you strain the kombu and bonito flakes out of the broth, you can use them again for a secondary dashi; Sakai provides instructions for both. In Japanese, Sakai tells us in her headnote, primary dashi is ichiban dashi, literally “number one dashi.” The recipe for the secondary dashi (niban dashi) follows the first.

READ: Katsuobushi (bonito flakes) will put a spring in your step and umami on your plate

We love keeping dashi around; if you have miso, you can make miso soup in a flash. Just heat the dashi and whisk in miso. The Ichiban Dashi keeps about five days in the fridge, or you can freeze it (we freeze it in ice cube trays, then pop out the cubes and store in a zipper bag) and keep it frozen a month, or even a couple. The Niban Dashi keeps for a week in the fridge, or a month or two in the freezer.

Makes about 4 cups.

Ingredients

5 cups filtered water

1 piece kombu, about 3 X 3 inches

3 to 4 cups (20 to 30 g) bonito flakes (see recipe notes below)