Japanese Cooking 101, Lesson 6: Putting It All Together

Welcome to the last lesson in Japanese 101: The Fundamentals of Washoku. I hope you’ve enjoyed the course and learned a few things along the way. In this last lesson we’ll take a look back at what we’ve learned, and also see how to put it all together to great an authentic traditional Japanese meal at home.

First we looked at the basic pantry ingredients for the course, which are also the basic pantry ingredients for a traditional Japanese kitchen.

Then learned how to make proper dashi stock, which is the foundation of many savory dishes in Japanese cooking. We also learned how to make miso soup and clear soup using that good dashi stock.

Next, we took a good hard look at how to prep and cook Japanese style rice. Rice is central to Japanese life, not to mention most Japanese meals. We also learned how to make sushi rice.

Then we got to the dishes that go with the rice and soup, starting with nimono or simmered dishes (even without dashi). We went on to sunomono and aemono - basically prepped or precooked vegetables with some kind of sauce.

We then ended by looking in-depth at arguably the most important protein used in Japanese cooking, fish, from a simple teriyaki to whole fish opened up to breaking down whole small fish and using every part of it.

If you missed the course by the way, just follow the links in the paragraph above in sequence! Or, just start at the very beginning intro, then go to the first article linked below that, required ingredients. After that just keep clicking on the ‘next’ article link below each article.

There’s a reason why I presented the parts of the course in the order I did:

Dashi is so fundamental to traditional Japanese cuisine that it’s important to know how to make it and how to use it. This way of thinking - flavoring something with a little umami - permeates other types of cooking in Japan too. Soup also is a part of most meals, even breakfast. Rice forms the center of most Japanese meals. Sure, sometimes we deviate and have some noodles or something else, But we keep going back to rice. The word for cooked rice, gohan (??)is also used to indicate the whole meal. When mom called out “gohan dayo-” when we were out playing, we knew she meant “it’s dinner time”, not just “it’s rice”. Even if that bowl of rice was not always 100% - poor people often had to mix in other grains like barley or millet - the ideal was always that plain bowl of white rice. (Ironicly of course these days people mix in these zakkoku (??), the ‘other grains’ formerly looked down upon, into rice for their nutritious benefits. See more about zakkoku-mai or mixed grains with rice.)

A balanced Japanese meal is supposed to have__ ???? - ichijuu sannsai - 1 soup, 3 side dishes, to go with the rice. It may sound like a lot, but it’s not that much more than many western style meals if you think about it. A typical western meal might have a soup as a starter, then a main dish with steak, potatoes, and some side vegetable like steamed broccoli, followed by a sweet dessert. A traditional Japanese meal doesn’t have separate courses - everything is served at once. (This differs at top end Japanese ryoutei or kaiseki restaurants, who often serve single dishes one at a time in multiple course.) Having more than 3 sides is extravagant, although in the olden days people avoided having 4 sides since the number 4 is unlucky in Japanese culture. (4 can be read as “yon” or “shi”, and “shi is synonymous with ?, or death. Most Japanese buildings don’t have a 4th floor, just like most Western buildings don’t have a 13th floor.)

The bare basic Japanese meal is ???? - ichijuu issai - 1 soup, 1 side dish, plus the bowl of rice.

(Incidentally, there’s also no tradition of having dessert with a meal, which may be why many Japanese main dishes have a bit of sugar in them. Sweets are eaten separately during the day, not with a meal. This is changing, and many people have some fruit or a light dessert after a meal, but that is a recent thing influenced by western style eating.)

Traditional Japanese meals are served in multiple serving containers, one for each item. And there are some basic rules to follow as to how to line them up.

Here’s how to line up a basic ???? - ichijuu issai - 1 soup, 1 side dish, bowl of rice meal.

As you can see, the rice goes on the left, the soup on the right, and the side dish is behind that. The rice always goes on the left, even for lefties. That left corner closest to the diner is considered to be the most ‘honorable’ position (don’t ask me why it’s honorable…) so that’s where it goes. If you think about it it it’s not the most convenient way to arrange things for a right handes person, who’d have to reach over the soup to get to the rice. Maybe this is why you usually lift up your rice bowl and your soup bowl to eat from them. (You don’t life up the other serving dishes though.)

This is how the full ???? - ichijuu sannsai - 1 soup, 3 side dishes and rice meal is arranged.

There are no rules really to dictate where the side dishes go in relation to each other. But again, the rice and soup are closest to the diner, with the rice on the left. Plus, the main fukusai or side dish is in the most prominent position.

I arranged the dishes we made during the course for dinner one day following these rules. (Click on the photo to see a larger version.)

The little dish of umeboshi is not really considered to be a proper side dish so you can ignore that, but as you can see the rice is on the left, soup on the right, and the side dishes beyond that. As I mentioned in the salmon teriyaki chapter for fish, the skin side goes on the top or the far side; the same goes for a piece of skin-on chicken for example. If you are serving a whole fish the head goes to the left.

When you put a Japanese meal together, pay attention to the balance of flavors and cooking methods. Ideally you should aim for 1 yakimono (???), something cooked with dry heat - grilled, pan-fried, or deep fried; 1 nimono (??), something simmered, and 1 aemono (???) or sunomono (???) - a cold dish with a sauce, dashi based or vinegar based. This gives a good balance of flavors and textures. While the yakimono is usually a protein, the two other sides can be all-vegetable, or contain a little protein (e.g. a little seafood), and so forth.

In practice, on an everyday basis most families would have maybe 2 side dishes plus some pickles or something. But this is the ideal anyway. And it’s not impossible to achieve since many dishes can be prepared in some bulk in advance, especially the nimono. What makes things a little easier for the cook when preparing Japanese food is that not everything has to be piping hot. The soup certainly should be, and the rice should be freshly cooked and hot too. And some yakimono or protein dishes should be too. But the side dishes to round out the meal don’t need to be.

There are a lot of recipes on the site that you can use for any of these categories. Take a look!

So how was that walk through the basics of washoku, traditional Japanese cuisine? I hope it was interesting.

For people who were looking forward to more fish lessons, I’ve decided to hold off on them for a bit and possibly put them in a more advanced course down the line. Stay tuned!

I’m also planning at least one more ‘course’ series like this this year, but I’m still open to ideas about what it should be about. If you have some ideas please tell me in the comments.

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Japanese Cooking 101, Lesson 5 extra: Fish bone crackers (hone-senbei) with shoestring potatoes

There's no need to throw away the bits of fish that you cut off when you filet them and so forth. Fish bones and heads can be kept for making soup. Or, if the bones are tender enough they can be made into delicious fish-bone crackers.

At the sushi restaurant in New York I worked at many years ago, the chefs used to serve these as extra treats to customers who sat at the counter. One of those was a lovely little girl, who used to come regularly with her father. She just loved those fish bone crackers. One year the chefs made a big batch of them and gave her a takeout box full for her birthday. She was so happy I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head.

I've paired these with shoestring potatoes, which taste surprisingly sweet next to the umami-rich fish bones. The type of potato is important - choose a nice firm waxy type, not a floury type like Idaho baking potatoes. Alternatively you can use sweet potatoes.

A frugal way to deal with the bones taken out of small fish like sardines. Tip: Always fry the potatoes before you fry the bones, or the potatoes will take on the flavor of the fish.

Prep time: 15 min :: Cook time: 10 min :: Total time: 25 min

Yield: 2 servings

16 to 20 fish bones from fresh sardines 2 Yukon Gold or Bintje potatoes, or similar firm potatoes, medium sized salt, to taste flour or cornstarch, to dust the fish bones oil, for frying These are the fish bones taken out of the fish. Wash them off, and pat them dry with paper towel. Leave to dry out a bit on a plate for an hour. (Do this in the refrigerator if the weather is hot, or if you have some feline overlords about.)
Peel the potatoes and cut them into small matchsticks. Rinse them and then pat them dry, and leave on a sieve to dry out some more until you're ready to fry everything. When you are ready to cook and while the oil is heating up, coat the fish lightly with flour or cornstarch. Heat up some oil for frying. Heat the oil to a low cooking heat, about 170°C / 340°F (see this for how to gauge frying oil temperature with wooden chopsticks). Fry the potatoes until cooked but not browning yet. Take them out and drain. Heat up the oil until it reaches the high range, about 180°C / 355°F. Put in the pre-cooked potatoes and fry until a golden brown. Take out and drain. Put the fish bones in and fry until golden brown and crispy. Take out and drain. Lightly salt the fish and the potatoes. Serve as a snack or appetizer. It goes very well with beer.

(Below is for search engine purposes)

By Makiko Itoh

Published: April 26, 2013

Type: Japanese, fish, washoku, appetizer

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Japanese Cooking 101, Lesson 5 - Fish, Part 3: How to break down small fish

We are entering the home stretch here for both Lesson 5, Fish and the whole Japanese Cooking 101: The Fundamentals of Washoku course. I hope you’ve been enjoying it so far!

In this lesson we are going to get very intimate with fish. Basically all fish needed to be prepped the same way: the head taken off (sometimes the head is cooked with the fish or separately); de-scaled if it has prominent scales; gutted, and then usually fileted and/or boned. And usually you need a sharp knife for these operations.

However, with small fish like sprats, sardines and anchovies, you don’t even need a knife at all, except to take the heads off. They are tender enough that you can just prep them with your hands. This is a great way to really get to know a fish, and it’s kind of fun too.

This is a plate of fresh sardines, popular around the world, especially in the two places I spend the most time - Japan and southern France. Beautiful, aren’t they? They have nice clear eyes.

The one thing you do need a knife for is taking the heads off. You could pull them off, but that’s a bit messy. So, here are the beheaded sardines, with some of the ingredients we’ll be using with them later to make the plate look prettier.

To deal with the sardines, position yourself at your sink and have a thin stream of water running out of the tap.

Take one of the sardines, and just run your thumb down the belly and pull it open. You’ll see a bit of guts there; just pull it out and wash it off with the running water. (If you don’t have access to running water, just use a bowl filled with clean water and swish the fish in it.)

The next thing is to take out the bone. This comes off easily in one go. Pry it off at the head end, and just pull. Don’t be hesitant. Give it a tug and it’s gone, tail and all.

Don’t throw away the bones by the way! Put them on a plate to deal with later.

Here’s the gutted and boned sardine - so easy! At this point, run your finger carefully down the surface of the fish. If you feel any little bones left in there (which you shouldn’t if you ripped out the backbone properly) take them out with your fingernails or a pair of fish bone tweezers.

Here it is on the other side.

Wash each filet again to get rid of any stray bits of guts and stuff.

This next step is somewhat optional, but does improve the texture of your fish. The skin of the sardine peels off quite easily. Just pry up a corner with your thumbnail, and pull it off in one go. As with the bone, don’t hesitate here or the skin will rip and it becomes harder to take it off.

Here are the skinned filets. Put them on absorbent paper towels to drain off the excess water.

At this point you can pan-fry them in a bit of olive oil or butter (maybe coat them with flour or cornstarch first), or marinate them, or whatever you like to do with such fish. You can even turn it into sushi!

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Japanese Cooking 101, Lesson 4, Part 2: Prepping Vegetables For Sunomono

Now that we know how to make the vinegar sauces for sunomono, let’s turn our attention to the prepping of the vegetables. The key to good sunomono, and all aemono (mixed-vegetable dishes), is to use vegetables that have had the excess moisture removed. The way to do this is to either drain them well, salt them lightly to draw out the moisture, or to blanch them briefly.

Here are some ways to prep vegetables for sunomono. The recipes for the the vinegar sauces (—su or —zu) mentioned are in Part 1.

Wakame is one of the easiest sea vegetables or seaweed to work with. I’ve been trying to eat more wakame recently since it is packed with minerals, so I’m just going to include it in all the sunomono variations below. It can also be used in miso soup, as I showed in Lesson 1a.

Wakame comes either in dehydrated form or ‘raw’ and preserved in salt. If you have the latter kind, simply rinse it well in running water, then soak for a few minutes in a bowl of fresh water. If you have the dehydrated kind, soak in plenty of water to cover until it’s rehydrated. Either way, it should look like this after a while.

The dehydrated kind usually comes pre-cut into pieces but the salted kind comes in long pieces like so.

Just cut it up into small, bitesize pieces.

Here’s about 1/2 cup of ready to go wakame, which can be used in sunomono, soups, salads and so forth.

Cucumber is one of the most versatile vegetables for sunomono. It’s available year-round (although its real season is summer), and its crunchy-crisp texture lends itself well to vinegar sauce. Japanese cucumbers are quite small and narrow, but just about impossible to get outside of Japan, so I usually use the type of cucumber that’s called an English cucumber - long, and sometimes sold individually shrinkwrapped. Since cucumbers have a high water content we need to remove some of that.

Cut the cucumber in half lengthwise, and rub the surface with a little salt. This adds salt flavor, draws out excess moisture, and also makes the dark green skin really pop in color. Plus, if you have very fresh cucumbers with sharp little thorns, the salt will rub those off.

Scoop out the seeds with a spoon.

Be sure to be thorough and remove all the seeds, like so. (Tip: Don’t throw away the seeds and pulp! Chill it in the refrigerator, then use it to give yourself a cool cucumber-skin treatment; apply it over your face, lie down for about 30 minutes, and wash off. Your skin will feel super-smooth and refreshed.)

Cut up the cucumber into fairly thin slices. Sometimes I like to slice it paper-thin, and sometimes I slice it a bit thicker as I have here. Massage the cucumber to distribute the salt, then squeeze out as much excess moisture as you can.

Cucumber sunomono lends itself to any kind of awase-zu, but I especially like it with the citrusy flavor of ponzu. I used the Ultra Simple version of ponzu here and it was great. Use 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons of sauce per cup of vegetables, or to taste.

Not all turnips are suitable for using uncooked like this, but small turnips work very well. These little white turnips are perfect.

If you can get turnips with their green tops still on, cut the greens off to leave a little bit on the root. (Use the greens for making homemade furikake.) Carefully peel the turnips so you leave that little green topknot intact.

Tip: The outer part of some kinds of turnips (like these white ones) is rather tough and fibrous, so you should peel them rather thickly. I know it seems wasteful, but the turnips will be a lot more edible.

Then slice the turnips lengthwise, so you have a bit of that green with each slice (except for the sides). Sprinkle the slices with a tiny bit of salt, massage as with the cucumber, and squeeze out tightly to express any extra moisture.

The sweetness of sanbai-zu brings out the sweetness in the turnips. This is just as good without the wakame. Use 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons of sauce per cup of vegetables, or to taste.

Tip: cutting the turnips with the green tops on makes the slices very attractive in miso soup too.

This is a very frugal dish, making use of a part of broccoli that most people just throw away. To prep the broccoli stems, cut off the florets (to use for another dish). Peel the tough green outer parts of the stems, and cut them into bitesize pieces. Blanch the pieces in boiling water for about 2-3 minutes until crisp-tender, drain and cool. The umami-rich flavor of tosa-zu goes very well with broccoli and wakame. You can add one broccoli floret as a green accent, or use another green accent like the snap pea piece I’ve used here. Use 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons of sauce per cup of vegetables, or to taste.

Many vegetables work as sunomono. As I wrote above, you just need to make sure that you get rid of any excess moisture. For instance:

Daikon radish: Slice thinly, salt and squeeze out.Radishes: Slice thinly or into halves or quarters, salt and squeeze out.Cabbage: Cut up roughly, salt and squeeze out.Tomatoes: De-seed and get rid of the pulp. Drain in a sieve to let any excess moisture run off. Lettuce: Make sure to pat away any water on the leaves. Rip up the leaves with your hands to avoid the browninng you get when you cut lettuce with a steel knife, or use a stainless steel or ceramic knife to chop up the leaves. Serve immediately after mixing with the vinegar sauce. (Lettuce and wakame with nihai-zu works very well, as does ponzu.) Celery: Peel off the tough outer fibers of the stalks. Slice very thinly, and sprinkle with a tiny of salt and squeeze out. Celery works well with sanbai-zu or ama-zu. Mizuna: Blanch in plenty of boiling water, cool in cold water and squeeze out tightly. Cut into short lengths. Mizuna goes well with any of the sauces, but I like it best with simple nihai-zu or ponzu.Edible chrysanthemum flowers: Blanch briefly in boiling water and drain. This is used most often together with other vegetables, such as daikon radish, and is really pretty.

A few vegetables may not be so suited to vinegar flavor (brussel sprouts come to mind for one) but that’s really a matter of taste. I hope you’ll try out your favorite vegetables as sunomono and see how they turn out.

Boiled seafood such as boiled shrimp, octopus and squid are often used in sunomono. Boiled shrimp is easy to do at home. If you want to try octopus, buy a piece of sashimi-ready octopus at a Japanese grocery store. (Raw octopus needs to be massaged and beaten up to make it tender enough before boiling.) Poached chicken also works well, especially with nanban-su.

You can find dehydrated seaweed salad mixes at Japanese or Korean grocery stores. To use these just soak in water as for the wakame until they are rehydrated and pliable. Use any of the vinegar sauces - for a Korean twist, add a bit of sesame oil and grated garlic.

Harusame is a noodle made from potato starch that is used in sunomono. It requires special treatment so I’ll post a separate recipe with it at a later date.

If you think about it, sunomono sauces are rather like oil-free dressings, so they can be used with any number of salad-like combinations. The oil-free dressings sold in Japan are actually just variations on sunomono sauces.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip through sourness. In the next lesson we’ll finally get to the main protein dish of a Japanese meal.

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Japanese Cooking 101, Lesson 5 - Fish, Part 2: Fish buying tips, plus how to "open" a fish

Welcome back to Japanese Cooking 101: The Fundamentals of Washoku Lesson 5 - Fish! This is Part 2 of the Fish lesson; in Part 1 we started with an easy salmon teriyaki.

While many Japanese meat dishes are known around the world these days, such as tonkatsu and the gyuudon (beef on rice), many such meat dishes are in fact part of a different branch of cooking called yoshoku (yohshoku), or western-influenced Japanese cuisine. For a very long time eating meat was either actively discouraged or outright banned in Japan, so that most people who either lived near water or could afford it ate a lot of fish as their main source of protein.

So, learning how to deal with fish is quite important if you want to become a Japanese cooking whiz. Let’s start at the fishmonger….

You will need to start by looking for a good fishmonger. If you’re very lucky your local supermarket has a decent fish department (in the U.S. Whole Foods usually has a pretty good one), but otherwise you may have to ask around or do some research to find one that consistently stocks fresh fish.

A good fish seller should not smell ‘fishy’. There will be some smell, but it should be like the ocean. If the place stinks, do not trust them.

A good fish seller should have a rapid turnover, and only stock what they normally sell. Just because there are tons of fish on display doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all good! Smaller fish shops may only sell locally caught fish. That’s great, because it means that fish is fresh, in season, and all that you desire. If you live near the sea, you’ll also want to see some locally caught fish, not just shipped in stuff. In addition, a good fishmonger will do things for you such as taking off the heads and removing the guts.

Let’s talk about fish heads for a moment. I know some people are squeamish about seeing eyes on the food they eat, but in the case of fish the eyes really say a lot. Fish generally start to go bad from the head down, and if the eyes look sunken or dull, that’s bad news.

This is a nice, bright-eyed fish.

And how about this guy?

Anyway: when you are looking at fish, if they have their heads on, make sure they are as clear as glass. If the fish you want has already had its head removed, look at the fish that’s on the shelf or in the case that do have heads - do they look nice and clear? If yes, your headless fish is probably good too.

Another way to gauge the freshness of fish, besides it smell (it should not smell ‘fishy’) and the eyes is if it’s nice and firm and has a moist looking skin. You have to gauge this with your eyes only most of the time since fishmongers will not let you touch the merchandise. So, use what you can readily see and smell first.

There are several ways to cut a fish - fileting it for instance, or cutting it across the body into ‘steaks’, and so on. One way that’s pretty common in Japan is to simply open it up, leaving the head on and the backbone in the fish. This method of cutting a fish is called ?? - hiraki (noun) or ?? - hiraku (verb, to open). It’s like butterflying but a bit easier. It’s also a good way to become familiar with handling a whole fish. If you fish, this is a great way to cook your catch on a campfire grill on the spot, since the opened up fish cooks quickly and evenly.

The easiest kind of fish to use for this - indeed the easiest kind of fish to cut up on your own, is a medium sized round-bodied fish like mackerel, herring, trout and so on. Flat fish like plaice or sole are not suited for this treatment. Here I have used a fish that looked nice at our local fish shop - I think it’s called a smelt whiting or whiting in English; it looks a lot like a fish called kisu in Japanese.

If you can, get your fishmonger to take the guts out for you. It’s less messy that way.

You will need a sharpt kitchen knife and a cutting board. If you chose a fish with proment plasticky scales, you’ll also need a de-scaler. Tip: if you don’t have a de-scaling tool, try a used by clean credit card-type card. Run it up the fish skin from the tail repeatedly until all the scales are loosened, and rinse off. In any case, always de-scale befor cutting up the fish.

Put your knife in right behind the gills…

…and firmly cut through until you feel the bone. Don’t go all the way through. (Tip: If you’re removing the head, just keep going.)

Start cutting the belly side of the fish, starting with where you made your head cut. If you didn’t get the guts removed at the fish shop, this is the time to remove them. Pause to rinse out the guts and pat dry before proceeding.

Cut through the belly side all the way to the tail….

…then pull gently on the top half of the fish while slicing through right on top of where the bone is.

Once the top half of the fish is separated from the bottom half and only connected at the back side, wash the fish out thoroughly inside and out. Make sure that all the scales are rinsed away, as well as any residual bits of the innards. (Tip: If you are fileting the fish you’d keep going and cut all the way through the back part.)

Pat the fish dry with paper towels. Isn’t he a fine looking thing?

Put some salt in and round both of the eyes. This helps to keep them fresh a bit longer.

Lightly salt both sides of the fish. A good way to lightly salt something is to sprinkle on the salt from a high above; you get more even coverage that way.

At this point you can just grill the fish or pan-fry it, with no added seasoning if you want the flavor of the fish to shine through, or with a teriyaki sauce brushed on it (see Part 1 for the basic teriyaki formula.)

Or, you can make a sort of homemade himono or semi-dried fish, but leaving it on a rack for a day or two. (If you are not sure about leaving out fish in the open, and/or have some furry feline creatures around, do this drying bit in the refrigerator.)

Here is the fish after it’s been air-drying for 2 days, simply grilled. It was delicious, in the way only really fresh fish can be. We had it with grated daikon radish and some soy sauce drizzled on top.

You can also pan-fry it in olive oil or butter, maybe with some herbs piled on for a great light meal.

A good fish shop should smell fresh, and have a carefully selected array of fish, at least a good percentage of it of it locally caught if you live near the sea.A good fishmonger will know how to recommend fish to you and to do some basic processing such as gutting it. Look at the eyes of a fish! If they are nice and clear, the fish is fresh. Also trust your nose. Try cutting open a fish!

Not too complicated or scary, right? Next time we’ll look at how to deal with tiny fish like sprats and sardines.

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Japanese Cooking 101, Lesson 5 extra: Iwashi no Tsumire-jiru (イワシのつみれ汁) - Sardine balls in clear soup

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Japanese Cooking 101, Lesson 1: It's All About the Dashi

Welcome to the first lesson of Japanese Cooking 101! Throughout this course I hope to teach you about the foundations of traditional Japanese cooking or washoku (??), as well as how to cook some Japanese dishes. So let’s get started!

Dashi or stock (often called dashi stock, which is kind of redundant) is the foundation of all savory washoku. It’s not just used in soups; it’s used in everything, from sauces, dressings, as a liquid when stewing vegetables, and more. Without dashi, your Japanese dishes simply aren’t right. If anything, dashi is more critical to Japanese cooking than meat, vegetable and fish stocks are to French cooking.

So what is dashi? Basically it is a liquid that is packed with umami, or glutamates. Umami is an essential part of any savory cuisine, but particularly so in Japanese cooking. It’s not at all surprising that it was a Japanese scientist who invented the purest chemical form of umami, monosodium glutamate (MSG).

While using MSG or a instant dashi powder or granules is very handy, and although the quality of dashi powders have have improved in recent years, dashi made from time-tested, natural ingredients is more rounded and better tasting. The difference between dashi made from instant powder and one made from scratch is like the difference between a bouillon you make with a stock cube and one you make by simmering bones and vegetables for hours.

Luckily for us, the Japanese of yore came up with ways to make whipping up a batch of dashi very easy. Various dried ingredients, mostly from the sea, which can be kept without refrigeration, are used to make dashi quite easily - so much easier than making a meat stock. (I mean, dealing with those icky greasy bones after making chicken or beef stock is not nice.)

Dashi is made from one or two of these ingredients:

kombu seaweed is a slightly leathery seaweed. It may come in wide sheets, or long ropey strands. kombu is the most widely used dashi ingredient, and has the most neutral flavor of them all. If you are a vegan, a pure kombu dashi is an all-purpose, neutral tasting dashi.

Good kombu is covered on the surface with a fine white powdery substance. Do not wash this off - it’s not caked on salt or dust! It’s full of that umami we want to extract.

(Note: Many Japanese cookbooks instruct you to wipe the dirt off the surface of kombu with a tightly wrung out kitchen towel. The truth is, this really isn’t necessary in most cases these days, since the kombu we get has already been cleaned very well. If you happen to get a batch with some gritty stuff on the surface you’ll need to wipe it off, but make sure you’re not getting rid of that powdery white stuff in the meantime. If a tiny bit of grit does make it into your dashi you can always strain it off later.)

Also called kezuribushi or okaka.

Katsuobushi is a bonito fish (katsuo) that has been dried and fermenented to develop a lot of umami. The fish shrinks down and hardens until it’s like a block of wood. This is then grated or shaved into thin flakes, rather like wood shavings. The shavings are used in cooking. Good, fresh pre-shaved katsuobushi is fluffy and yellowish-beige in color with a hint of blush pink. Katsuobushi is the second most common dashi ingredient after kombu. Most of the dashi used around the country in restaurants uses a combination of kombu and katsuobushi.

Katsuobushi is usually available in flaked form, although you can get a whole katsuobushi and a special box grater and grate your own. While freshly shaved or grated katsuobushi is very flavorful, it’s a pain in the ass to grate manually, so most people, including professional cooks, use the pre-shaved stuff. (I’ve seen some electric katsuobushi-shavers sold in Japan, but they’re pretty expensive.)

We won’t be using these ingredients for this lesson, but these items are used in dashi too.

Small dried fish such as nishin or iwashi (???, ???: herrings and sardines) are often used instead of katsuobushi. Some regions of the country prefer them over katsuobushi, and some people just use them because they are cheaper. The dashi made with these don’t taste overly fishy, but are a bit more fishy than katsuobushi. Dried shiitake mushrooms (????) are used for dashi on occasion. The soaking liquid from reconstituting dried mushrooms makes a very strong tasting dashi, which can be used on its own or with kombu dashi.

Simply put, ichiban dashi or first dashi is the dashi you make from fresh (as in previously unused) ingredients kombu and katsuobushi. Niban dashi or second dashi is dashi made from the kombu, katsuobushi and so on that has previously been used for making ichiban dashi. Ichiban dashi is used for things like soups, or when you want the maximum amount of umami possible. Niban dashi is used for things like stewed dishes, when other ingredients like meat and vegetables will add more umami to the dish so a subtler dashi is adequate. Niban dashi is really a way of being frugal with your dashi ingredients.

In this lesson we will be making a standard ichiban (first) kombu and katsuobushi dashi, but I’ll also show you how kombu-only dashi is made.

Long time readers of the site may know that I’ve given you a couple of different ways of making dashi in the past. They all work well, but here I’ll walk you through the method that I think makes the best tasting dashi.

We will making 1 litre, or about 4 U.S. cups of dashi. For this you will need:

10 to 15 grams (1/3 to 1/2 ounce) of kombu10 to 15 grams (1/3 to 1/2 ounce) of katsuobushi 1 litre or 1000 ml / 4 U.S. cups of water plus a bit of extra water (about 100ml or 1/3 cup) to allow for evaporation during cooking

The ratio of water to ingredients: Allow for a minimum of 10 grams of kombu, and 10 to 15 grams of katsuobushi, per 1000 ml(1l) or 4 U.S. sized cups of water. If you’re making a kombu-only dashi, you’ll want to use at least 15 grams. If you don’t have a fairly precise scale, 10 grams of kombu is about a 4 inch square piece - which is the advice I’ve given you previously, and 19-15 grams of katsuobushi is a good handful. Here I used 15 grams of each. If you don’t get the amounts precise don’t worry; since these are all-natural ingredients, you can’t really use too much of it.

Here’s 15 grams of kombu. - about 1 1/2 4-inch / 10 cm squares.

And here’s 15 grams of katuobushi - a generous handful:

Set aside the katsuobushi. Put the kombu and water in a pan and leave it to soak for at least 30 minutes. You can leave it in the water for up to a day in the refrigerator, if you want to do the soaking step in advance.

If you want to track how the dashi progresses, take a small sip of the liquid after the kombu has been soaking in it for a while. You should taste just a hint of the sea already. The surface of the kombu will have turned a bit slippery.

Put the pan on the hob and turn up the heat. Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat.

If you are making a kombu-only dashi, keep the pan on a barely-there low simmer for 30 minutes. Check the water level and add a bit more if it seems to be evaporating too fast.

IF you are making a kombu-katsuobushi combination dashi, simmer the kombu for 10 minutes, then turn off the heat.

Again, if you want to track the progress of the dashi, taste it at the 5, 10 and (if you’re going for kombu-only dashi) the 30 minute stages. You’ll notice that the dashi is getting gradually stronger in flavor, tasting like the sea. You should notice the umami even at the 5 minute mark. Kombu-only dashi barely has any color.

To make a kombu-katsuobushi combo dashi: After 10 minutes of simmering, add the katsuobushi, and turn the heat off.

Let the pan sit for a few minutes (about 10 minutes) until the katsuobushi sinks to the bottom of the pan.

Strain off the liquid, using a fine-mesh sieve.

Don’t throw away the used kombu and katsuobushi! We’ll be using that in a later lesson, so put it in a plastic bag and store it in the freezer.

The dashi will have a pale golden color. Give it a taste - you’ll notice the katuobushi, but it won’t be unpleasantly ‘fishy’; it will be like a very light bouillon without the salt.

At this point the dashi can be used right away, or stored well covered for a few day in the refrigerator. You can also freeze it - putting it in ice cube trays is a handy way of doing this.

Tomorrow I’ll show you how to turn this dashi into two kinds of soup: clear soup called osumashi or osuimono, and misoshiru or miso soup.

While dashi made from natural ingredients tastes the best, it may be difficult of not impossible to get the raw ingredients like kombu seaweed and katsuobushi in some parts of the world. In that case using instant dashi stock granules is fine, and certainly better than using straight MSG or nothing at all. And to be brutal, most Japanese restaurants around the world do not make dashi from scratch; they use the granules, (Once you know the taste of ‘real’ dashi, you’ll soon be able to tell when a restaurant isn’t using it.)

A complaint I hear sometimes about dashi made from dashi granules is that it is ‘fishy’. While they do have some fish flavor (and the granules themselves, especially certain brands, can smell rather fishy) since they are made from katuobushi extract and such, I suspect that one problem is that people are using far too much of it. You only need to use about 1 teaspoon per 4 cups (1 liter) of water, or 1/4 teaspoon per cup.

Dashi, whether made from granules or from scratch, is not meant to be used on its own; it is meant to be a flavor enhancer, not the entire flavor. You add other ingredients like salt, soy sauce, sake and so on to the dashi to “complete” the flavors. So trying to make add enough dashi granules to water or other liquid to make it ‘strong’ will not turn out well at all.

When you use dashi granules start with a small amount, add the other flavors and then add a bit more if you think it really needs it. Tasting as you go along is the best way to cook something you’re unfamiliar with.

Dashi granules that come in pre-portioned packages like these are handy if you can’t remember the dosage. These little sealed packages tend to keep better too.

But again, if you can get the real ingredients, please try to make dashi the proper way at least once, so you can know what it’s supposed to taste like.

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