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Dashi Diaries #6

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

So in diary #5, I was quite surprised by the flavor of the urume dashi. I decided to keep the dried fish count up but completely see how the flavor compared when I just used katakuchi iwashi.

Ingredients

  • 600ml cold water
  • 5.9g rausu kombu
  • 40g katakuchi niboshi
  • 3g senmoto negi green ends
  • 5g ginger sliced
  • 1 small crushed garlic clove

Method

  • Combined niboshi, kombu, water and soaked for 2 hours
  • Heated contents to 176°F (meant to go to 172°F) over 20 minutes (way too fast!)
  • Added negi, ginger, and garlic and let steep for another 30 minutes around 172°F-176°F (kept letting it go too hot today)
  • Strained through a fine mesh strainer

Tasting Notes

  • Briny, salty, fishy! Delicious.
  • Will try even less negi next time hehe
  • Missing the bitterness from Dashi Diaries #5. So now I know that the urume I have needs to be used differently, and that the katakuchi can be scaled up without adding overwhelming bitterness.

Niban (Second Use)

  • Added ~750mL cold water and heated to 172°F and held for an hour

Niban Tasting Notes

  • This soup in niban form with spent niboshi and spent green onion leaned much more bitter than the ichiban dashi. I find this insight valuable, compared to a smoked fish niban dashi.