The Umami Foundation, by the Kilo

Almost every savoury dish in the Japanese kitchen starts here. Kombu is dried kelp, and it is the single richest natural source of umami, the deep savoury note that underpins dashi and, through it, miso soup, simmered dishes, sauces and broths. This 1kg pack of Kōmi Classic Kombu is the catering format for kitchens that make dashi daily and do not want to keep reordering. It is the kombu we supply to some of the most demanding kitchens in the country, the Waterside Inn, Trivet and Plates among them.

昆布 — Kombu, and the discovery of umami

Kombu (昆布) is edible kelp, dried and matured, and it has anchored Japanese cooking for centuries, traded the length of the country along the old kelp road from the cold northern waters where it grows best. Its importance is not just culinary history: in 1908 the chemist Kikunae Ikeda set out to identify the savoury taste in a bowl of kombu dashi and isolated glutamate, naming the fifth taste umami. Kombu remains the clearest expression of it. A good kombu dashi is the quiet foundation under a huge range of dishes, which is why a serious Japanese kitchen treats it as a staple rather than a speciality.

Learn more: What is Kombu?

How do you make dashi from kombu?

The gentlest and most reliable method is cold extraction: put a piece of kombu in cold water and leave it in the fridge overnight, then lift it out. That alone gives a clean vegan dashi. For a fuller first stock (ichiban dashi), heat the kombu and water slowly to just below a simmer, remove the kombu before it boils, then add a handful of bonito flakes off the heat and strain after a minute. The two rules that matter most: do not let kombu boil hard, and do not scrub off the fine white bloom on its surface, that powder is umami, not dirt. Wipe it lightly if at all.

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