Shiitake Dashi

by @mizuyabu

About

A dashi made out of dried shiitake mushrooms. If you only have fresh shiitake mushrooms you can dry them by baking them at 175 degress fahrenheit for 2 hours (flipping half way through) then leaving them out to air dry in a colander for 3-5 days.

I think you can also do this with fresh shiitake but dried ones are better.

Not a recipe in the sense that you get a meal out of this, just makes a broth you can then use to make things like Udon, Oden, etc

Ingredients

• 3 Dried Shiitake Mushrooms
• 2 Cups of Water

Instructions

1. Brush debris off mushrooms

   • Dried Shiitake Mushroom

   Using a pastry brush, brush off any dirt or debris on the mushroom. Do not wash them. Don't worry if you can't get all the dirt off we will be straining the broth later to filter it out

2. Soak the mushrooms

   • Dried Shiitake Mushroom
   • Water

   Soak the mushrooms in 2 cups of water. You can either soak them in the fridge overnight (this method is preffered), or soak them in warm water for 15 minutes until softened.

   While soaking put a boal or something heavy on top of the mushrooms to make sure they get completely submerged in the water.

3. Squeeze and filter liquid

   Once the mushrooms are tender squeeze and drain the liquid absorbed by the mushrooms into the water and run the water through a fine meshed sieve to filter out any dirt in the liquid. The filtered liquid can be stored in the fridge for 2-3 days or frozen for a month.

   You can use the rehydrated mushrooms for cooking, just remember to chop off the tough part of the stem.

Nutritional Information

Based on a 100g portion ¹

References