Dashi 101: Japanese Cuisine Basics

Dashi is one of if not the most important ingredients in Japanese cuisine. It’s a necessity for anyone cooking Japanese food. In this post, I’ll answer: What is dashi, how to make dashi, how to use dashi, and where to buy dashi, along with other facts, recipes, and answers.

**This post contains affiliate links, I may receive a small commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you**

So let’s get started, shall we?

What is Dashi?

Dashi is a Japanese stock used in everything from miso soup to okonomiyaki.

It’s made from umami-rich ingredients like kombu, kastsuobushi, shiitake mushrooms, and dried anchovies. Some might even say dashi is the soul of Japanese cuisine.

Even when it’s not directly featured as in miso soup, it’s in the background adding a signature je ne sai quoi to a myriad of Japanese dishes.

Dashi’s primary ingredients are kombu and katsuobushi, working in tandem for maximum umami. These two ingredients are briefly simmered to create the most famous dashi.

The first time these ingredients are boiled briefly leave a refined and flavorful stock called ichiban dashi, translating to primary or first dashi.

Japanese culture and cuisine are all about no waste, so after straining the stock the cooks often boil the fish flakes and kelp to make niban (secondary) dashi, a less intense dashi with a more prominent fishy aroma (per the Michelin Guide).

What is Kombu?

Kombu (also spelled konbu) is the Japanese term for a type of edible kelp.

This kelp is cultivated extensively in Japan, and 90% of that is grown in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island, according to Japanese Taste

There’s a few different types of kombu including hidaka, ma, rausu, and rishiri kombu, and all of them are high in glutamic acids. Each has their own qualities, but in general hidaka kombu is sort of an all purpose kombu.

If you want a guide to buying and using traditional Japanese ingredients, check out this post: Japanese Pantry Staples: Everything You Need to Know

What is Katsuobushi?

Katsuobushi is flakes made from dried and fermented bonito fish. Bonito, also called skipjack tuna (katsuo in Japanese, see it all makes sense now), are very small members of the tuna family. 

But that’s not important, what’s important is that these fish are very fast, like little bunny rabbit in the water. To swim upwards of 40 mph, they use an energy-dense molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This molecule breaks down into inosine monophosphate (IMP), which, like glutamic acid, tastes great, and makes us crave more.

During the few months of fermentation, bonito filets turn hard as wood and the ATP in their muscles converts to IMP, giving them an intense smoky and umami-packed aroma.

Katsuobushi makers then use a special mandolin-like box to shave these hard banana-shaped filets into paper-thin flakes ready for human consumption.

If you want to read more about the making of katsuobushi, here is an in-depth post explaining it.

When you boil kombu and katsuobushi together the glutamic acid and inosine monophosphate work together to create one of the most umami-rich liquids on the planet,

I know that was a lot of big words (and English is hard sometimes), so in short, katsuobushi and kombu both have flavorful compounds locked inside them and combining them makes a delicious stock. 

You can learn more about katsuobushi and other Japanese pantry staples in this post.

What Does Dashi Taste Like?

In short, it tastes like umami (the fifth taste) personified.

But with a little more complexity and character. 

Dashi’s flavor is deep, smoky, savory, and briny, but light and delicate at the same time. Its fragrance and aroma are unmistakable.

It is, in essence, umami. MSG (to umami what salt is to salty, and sugar is to sweet) was created by a Japanese scientist who attempted to recreate the flavor of his wife’s dashi.

He isolated glutamic acid found in kombu (Japanese kelp) as the source of the delicious, savory flavor he dubbed “umami,” a Japanese word meaning “delicious flavor”, or “essence of deliciousness.”

So dashi is one of the purest sources of umami out there, and was the original inspiration for MSG (umami powder). But in addition to full of umami (one of the five tastes), dashi contains smoky and lightly fishy aromas from ingredients like katsuobushi and niboshi.

How to Make Dashi

Making dashi is a straightforward process. 

1. Soak the kombu in water for 30 minutes to a 1 hour
2. Bring the water and kombu to a near boil
3. Remove kombu, turn off the heat and stir in the katsuobushi flakes 
4. After about 1 minute, strain through a fine mesh strainer
5. The ichiban dashi is ready to use
6. Cover the ingredients with new water and boil again to make niban dashi.

Vegan Dashi

If you don’t eat animal products and are thinking “Man, I can’t eat the (not secret) secret elixir behind Japanese cuisine,” stop worrying. A traditional alternative already exists! 

You can make dashi with only kombu, it’s called kombu dashi (makes sense doesn’t it), and it’s actually easier.

Just soak the kombu, bring it to a boil, then remove the kombu and your dashi is ready!

You can also add dried shiitake mushrooms for a more intensely savory dashi.

Dashi Granules

Everybody seems to be busy all the time today, so, of course, there is instant dashi. This is called hondashi and comes in a granule form. You can just mix this with water and BOOM!, dashi. 

It comes in a cute bottle like this and it’s super convenient.

As always, however, there is a big but (I hope you didn’t read that with a straight face because I didn’t write it with one).

Ajinomoto is the main producer of hondashi, the same company that invented MSG (or at least mass-produced it). So of course the first two ingredients are salt and good ‘ol monosodium glutamate.

You can take that however you like. I don’t have a problem with MSG, and I think it has its place in the kitchen, but I also think that hondashi doesn’t quite match up to the real thing, so I don’t use it.

But no shame in using it, it works in a pinch, and plenty of Japanese people use it. So it’s up to you; quality or convenience.

Luckily, there is a happy middle.

Dashi Packets

If making dashi sounds like a hassle to you, but you’re not sure about instant dashi, then dashi packets are a great option.

They’re a lot like tea bags. Loose-leaf tea is usually better than teabags, but teabags are preportioned and easier to use. It’s the same with dashi packets, they’re made from ground katsuobushi, kombu, and other ingredients like niboshi, shiitake mushrooms, and sometimes even actual tea.

I use dashi packets for a lot of my Japanese cooking. This is the brand I use; it’s made in Japan, uses high-quality ingredients, and you can buy it on Amazon.

Dashi Packets may seem a little pricey, but if you do the math (and I did) they’re cheaper cup-for-cup than my local store-brand chicken stock.

How to Use Dashi

Dashi is vital to Japanese cuisine, and there are several ways to use it.

1. Miso Soup

If you’ve been to a Japanese restaurant, you’ve probably tried, or at least heard miso soup. Most likely with tofu and wakame (a type of Japanese seaweed). 

It’s a light soup eaten almost daily in Japan and can be made with a variety of ingredients and different kinds of miso (fermented soybean paste).

Miso soup is a mainstay of the traditional “ichiju sansai” meal, meaning one soup, and three dishes.

This style focuses on balance and variety and usually includes a bowl of rice, a soup (often miso), and three side dishes, usually one protein (like grilled fish), and two vegetable sides (simmered dishes, stir-fried vegetables, etc.).

Miso soup also works as a simple breakfast paired with steamed rice and tsukemono (Japanese pickles).

2. Nimono

Nimono means “simmered things” and refers to several dishes using the technique of gently simmering foods in dashi. The dashi is usually seasoned with soy sauce, sake, and mirin.

Nimono dishes are not only an easy way to diversity and balance through color, flavor, and texture, they are usually very healthy, since no oil is involved.

You can prepare meat, vegetables and fish nimono style. Popular ingredients include yellowtail, daikon, hijiki and carrots, and shiitake mushrooms. 

3. Cooking Rice 

Japanese people usually cook rice in plain water after thoroughly rinsing the rice, however this is not always the case.

For example, in takikomigohan, rice is cooked in dashi with meat, fish, and/or vegetables like kombu, daikon, mushroom, and carrot, as well as seasonings.

4. Sauces

Dashi is a traditional base for several Japanese sauces. It gives an umami base to dipping sauces for noodle dishes like zaru soba and nagashi somen. In both of the following cold noodles are dipped in a sauce made with dashi, soy sauce, mirin, and sake.

Dashi also plays a small (but still important roll) in sauces like goma miso (sesame miso sauce), negi miso (leek miso sauce), and ponzu (citrus-soy sauce).

5. Soups 

Although miso shiru may be the most well known Japanese soup, it’s definitely not the only one that utilizes dashi’s umami flavor and smoky aroma.

Suimono are clear, soups, often containing assorted vegetables lightly simmered. Suimono can be served both in formal settings like a nice sushi restaurant or a kaiseki meal, and in casual home-cooked meals starring seasonal vegetables.

Surinagashi are soups made by combining pureed ingredients such as edamame, seaweed, tofu, etc. with dashi and garnishing with a range of toppings. In the old Japanese kitchen ingredients were pounded and run through a sieve by hand, however, modern technology (blenders) make this much easier (thank God).

6. Noodles

You can’t talk about Japanese food without mentioning noodles. Rice is the staple carb, but ignoring Japan’s plethora of noodle dishes is a crime. 

Ramen has made its way into American pop culture, and although tonkotsu (pork bone broth) ramen might be the most famous, there are also multiple ramen that use dashi broths.

In addition to ramen, soba and udon are popular in soups that almost exclusively use dashi based broths.

These are just a few of the ways dashi is used in Japanese cooking. The amount of dishes that use dashi in Japanese cuisine alone are innumerable, let alone all the ways dashi can be integrated into other cuisines.

Where to Buy Dashi

There are three main ways of making delicious Japanese soup stock.

• Dashi Powder
• Dashi Packets
• Traditional (Kombu + Katsuobushi (and other ingredients))

All of these ingredients will likely be hard to find at your local supermarket. If you have an Asian grocery store it’s likely you can find at least one of these ingredients, and you’re sure to find them in a Japanese grocery store.

But the easiest option is to order dashi ingredients online. Here are links to the ingredients I reccomend:

Hondashi – Buy the Ajinomoto Brand on Amazon ($7) or Weee ($5).

Dashi Packets – I use the Yamasan Brand from Amazon, and I’ve heard the Kayanoya Brand is good

Traditional – I use the Kaneso Hanakatsuo Bonito Flakes, they’re 7$ from Weee and 12$ from Amazon.

For kombu, I buy Hsu’s Hokkaido Kombu from Weee.

Weee is the largest online Asian supermarket in America, and it’s my go to place for not just Japanese ingredients, but also Thai, Chinese, Korean, and more.

They have a wider selection (and better prices) than Amazon, and there is always some sort of sale going on. Plus there’s always free shipping on orders over 50$, so stock up on pantry staples to save more even more money.

If you’ve never bought anything from Weee before, I suggest you start, and you can get 10$ off your first order (and 20$ off the first 2 if you buy at the time I’m writing this).

Dashi Recipe

Ingredients

• 1200 ml of water (5 cups)
• 14 grams of kombu (one 1.5″ x 10″ piece of Hsu’s Hokkaido Kombu)
• 15 grams of Hanakatsuo Bonito Flakes (about 1 1/4 cups)

Directions

1. Soak 1 strip of kombu in a pot with water for at least 30 minutes, up to overnight.

2. Once the kombu has rehydrated bring the water to a gentle boil.

3. Right before the water starts to boil remove the kombu, cut the heat, and add the katsuobushi flakes. Simmer briefly, about 1-2 minutes, then strain through a fine mesh strainer lined with a cheesecloth or a double thickness of paper towels

4. Use the ichiban dashi immediately or allow it to cool to room temperature before storing in the fridge for up to a week.

1. Cover the leftover kombu and katsuobushi in water, bring to a boil, and strain again to make niban dashi.