Hello! I'm trying to learn how to make more Japanese dishes. I have tried making miso soup from scratch, making my own dashi specifically, and I had a question.
I bought bonito flakes and I have used them but I never seam to get all of them out of the broth. If I were to blend therm into a powder would that dramatically change the flavor or nutritional value? I looked it up and they seem edible and I have a machine that can make different flours/powdered ingredients.
I'd still have to use Kombu and mushrooms but I wouldn't need to strain the flakes. Is this… A thing? Or does it just waste them? Wanted to ask before trying it.
by LadyAlleta
4 Comments
Bonito flakes are edible.
If you blend them into a powder, 2 things will happen:
– there will be more surface contact with the water, making your dashi a lot stronger, but you won’t be able to strain it.
– your dashi will be cloudy
Can’t you just use a fine sieve or mesh strainer? Or you could strain it through a clean cloth (even a clean old t-shirt or kitchen towel. A fine sieve is a very useful kitchen utensil that you can use for many things, including dashi, and they’re not expensive. 100% worth getting one.
You can put them in a disposable loose tea leaf pouch and extract the dashi that way
Based on my experience in eating kaiseki or omakases, the chef would let the katsuobushi infused first in a bowl, then pour it onto another bowl with paper strainer on top to trap the flakes, and what left is the dashi
>I bought bonito flakes and I have used them but I never seam to get all of them out of the broth.
Do you not use a strainer? I mean, my dashi is a little cloudy because there’s some tiny flakes and fragments that make it through the strainer, but that doesn’t hurt anything. The strainer gets probably 95%+ of the katsuobushi.