My Morning Chocolate

Dashi stock is made with Kombu and bonito flakes.

If you watch Top Chef, you may have heard Leah or Michael explain their dishes by saying they made a little dashi, as nonchalantly as if they had made a peanut butter sandwich.  Was dashi a type of fish?  The name of a dish?  A flavoring?  I’ll admit it; I didn’t know.

So I turned to my Food Lover’s Companion, which says that dashi, the backbone of many Japanese dishes, is a stock:  “Used extensively in Japanese cooking, dashi is a soup stock made with bonito flakes (katsuobushi), Kombu, and water.”  It sounded easy enough so I went to my local Whole Foods, where I found both Kombu - long and coarse strips of dark green seaweed - and bonito flakes.

Kombu and Bonito Flakes, as sold at Whole Foods

Now I was pretty sure I knew what bonito flakes were before I bought them, but I knew for sure when I opened the bag to inhale a mild but unmistakable fishy scent.  Bonito is actually a kind of tuna, the most strongly flavored with a moderate to high-fat content.

If you decide to make dashi, you should know that the hardest part of making this stock happens before you turn on your stove.  You must first decide on a recipe.  There are many versions that use varying amounts of bonito flakes and water.  I started with The Asian Kitchen cookbook, which suggests a ratio of 4 cups water to 4 cups bonito flakes, more than I had.

Then I turned to the recipe on the back of the bonito flakes package.  It used 4 cups of water to ½ cup of bonito flakes.  But after reading the other recipe, I worried that such a small amount of bonito flakes would lead to a weak flavor in the dashi.

Turning to the Food Network website, I found this dashi recipe from Mind Tsai that seemed perfect.  (The ingredient ratios are very different from The Asian Kitchen version, a book in which Ming Tsai wrote the foreword.)  He uses 1 piece of Kombu, 5 cups of cold water, and 1 cup of bonito flakes.

Dashi
First, add the Kombu and cold water to a pot, and place over medium heat.  Let it sit until just before the boiling point.  This is very important; it seems you never want this stock to boil. Take the pot off the heat for 5 minutes.

No, that's not a fish in the dashi. That's the Kombu, expanded by the hot water.

Then remove the Kombu and return to medium heat.  Once again, don’t let the stock boil – remove the pot just before it reaches that point.

Now add the bonito flakes.  I looked at a handful of recipes that said to leave the flakes in the water until they sink to the bottom.  But after an hour and a half, my bonito flakes were still floating, pulsating gently like seaweed in a calm ocean.

So I did a taste test, chomping on a then chewy and flavorless bonito flake.  Assuming this meant all the flavor had been sucked into the water, I discarded the flakes using the spoon with the big holes that you see in the picture below instead of the fine sieve or cheesecloth that Ming Tsai suggests.  (All three tools should work just fine.)  Now you have dashi stock.

The finished dashi stock

Use it in soups or with soba noodles, or check back next week for a soba noodle and tempura recipe.  Enjoy!