The commonly known Japanese stock, dashi uses kombu (seaweed) and bonito flakes (fish), to make either the delicate very clear stock ichiban dashi, or the stronger fuller body flavoured niban dashi. It’s seriously worth making dashi from scratch, so simple and the flavour is beautifully clean, you can not compare it to instant dashi sachets for sale.
This version using shiitake mushrooms and kombu is less well known but a great one to have for vegetarian and vegan dishes, or as in my case for allergy sufferers. In the Japanese Buddhist cuisine vegetarian dashi can be made from a variety of dried vegetables but this combination is apparently a popular one. Shiitake and kombu are excellent together because both ingredients are super rich in compounds that make up the umami flavour.
Dried Shiitake Mushrooms
I can’t buy whole dried shiitake mushrooms needed for this stock in the supermarkets, I’ve only seen sliced dried shiitake, for whole ones I have to visit a Japanese or Chinese grocery shops or buy online. Once I unfortunately used the sliced shiitake and created the most horrid bitter stinky over-powering stock that went straight down the sink. Too strong.
If sliced shiitake is the only type you can get hold of, then my advice would be to play around with tiny amounts, start out by using 10-15 grams (half an ounce) and see if it will provide the mild mushroom flavour the stock should have.
While in the middle of writing this post realised I have someone on twitter selling organic shiitake mushrooms, fresh and dried Maesyffin Mushrooms here.
Don’t Use Fresh Shiitake
Fresh shiitake mushroom do not have the depth of flavour as the dried ones. It’s in the drying process of the mushroom which makes dried shiitake an excellent source of umami. In the dehydration of the mushroom the substance riboucleotides is broken down and the enzymes release guanylate. Guanylate is a major component in the flavour of umami.
Water Temperature
When soaking shiitake mushrooms it matters the temperature they’re soak at. If the water is too hot it will stop any further enzyme activity continuing the process of producing guanylate from the ribonucleotides.
The drying process doesn’t provide fully the whole transformation into guanylate, therefore on hydrating the mushrooms the enzymes can continue that process in warm water. If the water is too hot the enzymes will be killed, thus stopping the maximum release of the guanylic acid.
The optimum temperature for hydrating the mushrooms is at 30-40˚C / 86-104 F.
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