Miso with kombu and bonito dashi

Miso is fermented bean paste, kombu is dried seaweed, bonito is dried and smoked skipjack fish.

Credit where it is due, Japanese have their seafood act down.

Years ago I ran a bouillabaisse experiment over several days. Basically, fish and shellfish soup with saffron, using four different bases; 1) fish bones and head simmered for ten minutes, 2) clam juice purchased in jars 3) plain water flavored from boiling the combined seafood, 4) Japanese dashi from dried seaweed and dried fish flakes.

Hands down, Japanese dashi wins. My version of Japanese dashi is better than my version of French style seafood broth. Japanese are better at household preparation of seafood than French are.

For decades I made miso using only heated water and I was satisfied with that, but I wondered why the miso at every Japanese restaurant is better than mine. Even crumby little Japanese restaurants. Finally, I realized they're starting with dashi fish broth, fish tea actually, and I'm starting with water. Once I copied them my miso improved dramatically. Now mine matches theirs.

And it's a wonder to behold, from an ordinary kitchen to come up with something so fantastic.

They jazz it up beautifully with tiny cubes of tofu, probably a teaspoonful or possibly a tablespoonful. Then scallion green sliced on the sharp diagonal, and a few paltry thin slices of fresh white mushroom floating on top cooked by the heat of the both in the bowl. It's a lovely elegant little starter for the meal.

But it also makes a great full meal if you load it up with with chicken, shrimp, substantial tofu cubes, noodles, Napa cabbage, daikon radish, whatever you like. Even an egg swirled in is nice.

Miso is also probiotic.

If you cooked noodles then added a tablespoon of miso as sauce like a plate of spaghetti, you must eat it right away or the miso will turn the noodles to mush. It's alive.

Did you ever see those packages of mixed beans with a chunk of beef or pork jerky inside, marketed as bean soup? Kombu and bonito and dried shrimp are the same idea. The flavor is concentrated by drying then released when soaked. That's why the Japanese dashi tastes like breathing seashore air. The broth puts you at the ocean. It's a remarkable emotional transportation.

There are a million dashi videos onYouTube (possibly only a hundred) It's hard to pick one that is best. If we bought this guy a new pot he'd probably be saddened because his handle-less old pot has years left of service. It's not completely destroyed.

I wonder why they soak the kombu overnight. It's a thing with them. I bring it to a boil and speed up the process considerably. But they insist it go softly and slowly. They're making tea, not broth. Their water doesn't actually boil. I think their aim is a clear broth and I don't care about that. I'm clouding it all up with miso afterward.

Kombu comes in large flat sheets that you break up and wipe off, (msg collects as white powder) or processed into dried strips.

What they don't say in the videos is the used kombu and used bonito can be used twice or even up to three times, there is that much flavor in them, like re-using tea bags. The have words for these passes; ichiban and niban dashi.

Kombu sheets
Kombu strips (top quality)

Bonito flakes

The flakes are graded also. They sell large flakes, and various intensities and lengths of drying and smoking.

Bonito is awesome. The fish is dried and smoked repeatedly over months so that it veritably petrifies. It denatures and turns into a different material. The thin flakes are intensely flavorful and they can be used different ways, sprinkled on salads, for example, or just added to other seafood dishes.

You can buy the whole smoked and dried fish and the wooden box used to scrape off the flakes, very similar to a carpenter's plane used to smooth wood, except with a box and shelf to collect the flakes. Like everything Japanese, both the fish drying and smoking and the wooden boxes are art forms taken to extremes.

Best miso available in America.

You can buy regular mass manufactured miso anywhere. The stuff has a refrigerated shelf-life of eternity. Apparently. They found some in King Tut's tomb right next to jars of honey and it was still good. (<--- Possibly apocryphal)  So far, nothing else has grown on it stored inside the refrigerator for several months, over a year.