The dashi broth recipe is essential to make many other dishes of Japanese cuisine. This broth is the basis of many Japanese recipes, where it is used as a flavor enhancer.
The dashi broth that we propose today is a broth made with konbu seaweed and dried katsuobushi flakes. It is a very light and light-colored fish broth. It is used as a base in many recipes. Such as the famous miso soup, but also in meats, stews and even to make the tamagoyaki rolled tortilla.
How to Make Dashi Broth?
Ingredients:
- 1 l. of water
- 20 gr. of dried konbu seaweed
- 30 gr. of katsuobushi or dried bonito flakes
Step by step instructions
- Clean the dried konbu seaweed with a damp cloth to remove the white layer that usually has on the surface.
- Then, let the seaweed soak until it is completely rehydrated (usually it takes between 10 and 20 minutes).
- When the seaweed has already recovered its shape, we add it together with the water in a saucepan over medium heat.
- When small bubbles appear in the water (just before boiling), we take out the konbu seaweed.
- Next, we add the katsuobushi dried bonito flakes. We lower the heat a pinch and with a skimmer we clean the foam that will appear on the surface.
- A few minutes later, we put out the fire and let it rest.
- When the katsuobushi sinks in the saucepan, we strain the water with the help of a thin cloth.
- The broth, strained and clean, is now ready to be used as a base for many recipes.
Recipe Notes:
The dashi broth can be stored in the fridge for two days or frozen like any traditional fish broth. Both konbu seaweed and katsuobushi dried we can reuse bonito flakes for second cooking. It is what we call niban-dashi. This helps us to give the ingredients some more performance, although naturally the broth that will come out will not be as potent nor as nutritious as the ichiban-dashi or first cooking broth.
Difficulty: Low
Time: 25 minutes
Diners: 4 servings
The dashi broth is very simple to make and my recommendation is to make a significant amount and freeze it later as we do with other broths. In small portions or bags of ice cubes. So, it is very easy to thaw only small quantities when we need it.
Mix 4 grams (that is, one tablespoon and three quarters) of powders in 600ml of water and we already have our dashi ready to be used. As with the western broth tablets, neither the taste nor the nutrients will be the same, but at least we will have something similar to the dashi. In case of not having either dashi or dashi powder, we can substitute the broth for water in preparing our recipes.
