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Kombu and Shiitake Dashi

A pot of kombu seaweed and dried shiitake mushrooms in water to make dashi the essential Japanese stock.
Photo by Yuki Sugiura

This vegetarian dashi is useful in any dish that you want to make free of meat or seafood. The dried shiitake mushrooms add an extra earthy depth of flavor to the broth. The magic, umami-rich combination of both kombu and shiitake really enhances the flavor of any ingredient it pairs with. You can keep both the rehydrated shiitake mushrooms and kombu for use in other recipes.

This recipe was excerpted from 'Atsuko's Japanese Kitchen' by Atsuko Ikeda. Buy the full book on Amazon.

What you’ll need

Cooks' Note

I wouldn’t recommend freezing any dashi, it is easy to make and the flavors would not survive.

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