What to Do With Dashi (2024)

Not long ago, we learned how to make dashi — the quintessential flavor of Japanese cooking.

This week, we take a quick look at just what you can do with it. Whether you use it for a soup, turn it into a sauce, or just drink it with a pinch of salt, you’ll find that dashi is a flexible ingredient.

So let’s dive deep into dashi, and look at three great ways to use it!

Suimono literally means “sipping thing,” and refers to a light soup with minimal filler. At its core, it’s a cup of broth. With but a pinch of salt, dashi is transformed into a filling, nourishing soup of the sea.

But even though it’s called “clear soup,” you can still add things to it! Mushrooms — enoki and matsutake — are classic additions to suimono, as are asari clams. A dash of soy sauce and sake is okay, too. My rule of thumb is that if you can see the bottom of the bowl through the broth, and it has few ingredients, it counts as suimono!

And for fellow word nerds: Suimono is a catch-all term, encompassing the whole category of clear soups. You’d refer to an actual cup of soup as o-suimono, using the honorific Japaneseo- prefix. Showing such a humble food this kind of reverence makes you realize how important it has been throughout history.

Of course, if we’re talking about soups with dashi, miso soup is the celebrity.

Miso soup, or miso shiru, has an identity that transcends mere food. It’s a tradition. Miso soup is a daily meal, with almost 3/4 the Japanese population eating it every day. And there are two good reasons for this frequent feasting: Miso soup is easy to make, and miso soup is extremely healthy.

Every home has its own miso soup recipe. My grandma would add chopped daikon into hers, for some crunch. And personally, I stick with tofu, wakame seaweed, and scallions.

But I recommend experimenting to find your own style of miso soup! There are different miso paste varieties, for example. I like stronger-flavored red miso, while some prefer slightly sweeter awase miso.

At its core, miso soup is just two cups of hot dashi, and a tablespoon of miso. Go from there and see what you like!

Ah, sweet happo dashi. This is truly the do-it-all sauce of Japanese cooking. To give you an idea of its range, the restaurant I apprenticed at used happo dashi in probably half the menu.

First off, it’s very easy to make. Just take dashi, light soy sauce, sake, and mirin at a respective 10:1:1:1 ratio, and bring to a simmer. From there, you can tinker with the flavor — we used a little bit more dashi in our recipe, for example.

And like I said earlier, this sauce is versatile. That’s even how it got its name! Happo dashi comes from the phrase “shihou-happo,” which means “in all directions.” An apt description of this ingredient’s width!

Just off the top of my head, here are three ways you can use it:

• As a dipping sauce: Believe it or not, happo dashi is the go-to dip for tempura. But it fits. As tempura is all about balancing delicate flavors, it needs a light condiment. You could even use this for steamed dumplings!
• As a gravy: Ankake is gravy-covered food; and the most popular gravy is happo dashi thickened with a little potato starch. A rustic ankake dish is sliced carrot, onion, mushroom, and bits of whitefish served over rice — perfect for a winter day!
• As a soup: Udon noodles go hand-in-hand (or is that noodle-in-bowl…?) with happo dashi. Usually they’re served in the aforementioned ankake sauce; but there’s nothing stopping you from eating udon with a lighter broth, either!

Dashi is truly a wonderful ingredient, and you can do a lot of things with it. If you’d like to explore its potential even more, I highly recommend Just One Cookbook and Pickled Plum for even more ideas. Hopefully I’ve sparked your curiosity, so give dashi a try!

Stay healthy, and stay safe. 🙏