Vegan Dashi (Soup Stock)
4 cups cold water
5 inch piece kombu (kelp, find in Asian market)
3 whole shiitake mushroom
pinch dried wakame (kelp, similar to kombu)
2 tablespoon sake
2 tablespoon mirin (sweet rice wine)
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 1/2 tablespoon shoyu (Japanese soy sauce)
Dust off kombu and cut with scissors 3/4 of the way though.
In a pan, add water, kombu and shiitake and soak for about 1 hour.
Then, bring the pot nearly to the boil, and remove kombu, add wakame and bring to boil, simmer for 5 min.
Add remaining ingredients and simmer for 2 mins, drain out shiitake and wakame.
I found this makes a lot so I freeze into ice cubes to use for later (when I want to make miso soup or udon oshiru (udon noodle soup).
I find many dried "instant" dashi always contain fish or seafood. This is not "instant" but tastes just as good.
SO HOW'D IT GO?
I have been making this recipe for years and it is just perfect. I just wanted to comment and say that I have made it both with shittake like the recipe states and also with black fungus as a replacement for shittakes, and I much prefer the black fungus version. The shittake taste too bitter to me, that's just my personal preference! Thank you for a wonderful recipe that I will use forever!
I used 3 slices but the flavor didn't come out right. Any suggestion?
The recipe calls for 3 whole mushrooms, so that might be about 3 handfuls or 2 cups of sliced shitake.
I bought a bag of dried chopped Shiitake mushrooms slices, how many should I use to cook with? I used 3 slices but the flavor didn't come out right. Any suggestion?
I followed the recipe exactly as written, and the result was a very good vegan alternative to dashi made with bonito. Nice, full flavor and wonderful aroma.
This is by far the best vegan dashi recipe I have found in years of searching and experimenting. Dashi was one of the last things I gave up, and was definitely one of the things I missed most. This recipe works perfectly for all miso soup variations and lots of other Japanese-inspired deliciousness. Thanks very much for sharing.
It's really really really really gooooood. smells amazing! it's missing the distinctive bitter taste that bonito gives but MAN, how i've missed dashi.
i didn't have any mirin so i added another tbspn of nigori sake. the mirin prolly would've given more fullness but meh. :-\
thank you sooooo much for this recipe : )