Kombu Dashi Braised Chicken and Celeriac
Master making kombu dashi at home. Use it as a fresh flavour enhancer to boost subtle ingredients. Here's an ideal dish to appreciate kombu dashi's delicate, infused flavours.
Kombu dashi is a (not-so-secret) secret flavour enhancer. This dashi will work to harmonise the flavours of the main ingredients in a dish. A go-to when you’re looking to boost the subtle, beautiful flavours of specific ingredients. Seafood and fish dishes, have gentle flavours that are ripe for amplifying. A light kombu dashi will not override their flavours and is ideal if you’re looking for a clear, tasty broth. Kombu dashi is exceptional for vegan and vegetarian recipes. Via the umami, it will deliver satisfaction to the dish and depth of flavour, without needing to use any seafood, fish or meat ingredients if you choose.
Uniquely, kombu has a sweetness, that other seaweeds don’t. It’s that sweetness and umami that I’m aiming to highlight, via dashi, in this recipe for a braised chicken and celeriac dish.
Grown in the colder, northern waters of Japan, kombu is an edible kelp. Generally, the further north it is grown, the more prized it is. Different varieties are farmed or picked from the wild off the coast of Tohoku (the northern most region of Honshu island) or Hokkaido.
There are many reasons to use kombu and its dashi. Top of the list being that it is a good source of glutamate, one of the amino acids responsible for umami. A story told better than me elsewhere, is the identification of umami as a basic taste in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda. The discovery was the result of his experiments with….yes, kombu! The taste had been brought into cooking instinctively for centuries, worldwide, with the use of dashi and other ingredients. Ikeda-san identified and named it as umami, a variant of the word ‘umai’ - delicious in Japanese. His work later led to the development of MSG.
Glutamate is the headline act in kombu dashi. Supporting it is aspartate, another amino acid with umami taste. Aspartate does not offer up as much umami as the glutamate, however it’s the synergy and ratio of the two that we want. These ratios vary according to the type of kombu you choose to use. Apparently, when it comes to tomatoes, the same is true. They also contain glutamate and aspartate. The best tomatoes have a 4:1 glutamate to aspartate ratio. This is the golden ratio that makes the tastiest tomatoes so……. tomatoey! Freshly made sources of umami create flavourful magic that I don’t think 1-dimensional, standardised, industrialised MSG can. This is the reason why it’s so worth making up your own batch of dashi.
Along with the umami, kombu brings a wealth of nutritional benefits. Don’t throw the kombu bits away once soaked, as they are a healthy source of dietary fibre, all important for gut health. Kombu also contains entire families of enzymes you may never have heard of. I hadn’t. These will help with digestion and can break down complex sugars, that are normally hard to digest. Kombu packs in minerals like calcium, iron, and iodine.
It is the Japanese love of kombu and other seaweeds, that probably explains why there is so little issue with iodine deficiency in Japan. This an increasing issue affecting many countries (not the USA) due to low iodine levels in the soil. Go easy though, as you can have too much of the stuff.
If you’ve just started to use kombu, it’s easy to think of it as a single ingredient, available in one variety. Plain old kombu. Most readily available kombu, doesn’t distinguish the type on the packet. Yet there’s a surprising number of varieties of the ingredient depending on the combinations of its species, area of origin, method of processing and storage. For a glimpse into this world of kombu, check out the 58 kombu products at Nishikidori online. There are some really inspiring finds from kombu powder or tororo kombu (the seaweed is soaked in vinegar, before being dried and flaked). To a unique Shiroita version, which is a whiteish, planed kombu used to top sashimi. I do my own version of this in my Gourment Sushi and Sashimi class. It’s an overnight sushi made with sea bream and kombu. The umami flavours transfer from the kombu into the sashimi fish. Delicious!
A general, everyday kombu, is Ma Kombu farmed mostly in the northern parts of Tohoku and also Hokkaido. This kombu’s leaves are fairly wide and thick. This is probably the kombu you know and love already. A great starting point.
For a more refined kombu, look for Rishiri Kombu from the very north of Hokkaido. Rishiri island’s waters offer a special environment for this kelp to grow. A favourite of the kitchens in Kyoto for high-end cuisine. The shape and thickness of the leaves of a specific kombu can affect its umami levels and flavour profile when made into dashi. Rausu kombu has a wider, thinner leaf with a sort of ruffled edge, that results in more glutamate, aspartate and amino acids finding their way into the dashi when soaked in water.
Often mistaken for dried sea salt or glutamate, the white powdery substance on kombu is mannitol, a sugar alcohol. Mannitol gives the kombu and its dashi another taste element; sweetness. Some recipes will tell you to wipe or brush the pieces of kombu before use. This advice is more to remove particles such as sand, leftover from the drying process which takes place in summer on sandy beaches in Hokkaido. Most kombu is so clean these days, that I don’t bother wiping it. Don’t wipe off the white powder, as you’ll be wiping away some of the flavour.
Two methods exist to make kombu dashi. Fast and Slow. For both, use a ratio of 1 part kombu to 100 parts water. The faster version, useful but less flavourful perhaps, is Nidashi, AKA the hot water method. Mizudashi, the cold water method, is very much like making a cold brew coffee, by soaking the kombu for longer for a day or two. A slower more gentle flavour extraction.
I tend to use the mizudashi method, as I’m looking for sublety when I make a kombu dashi. I find the flavour profile is more gentle if the kombu has been soaked for longer.
For either method, just as with shiitake dashi, always start with dried kombu. Fresh will not work and will lack umami. Drying as a process amplifies the flavour content. Those umami rich amino acids develop and this is dashi’s super power.
After soaking, set the soaked kombu to one side, there’s ways to use this up and not waste it. One idea is Tsukudani. The soaked kombu strips are simmered with soya sauce and mirin, creating a sweet and savoury side. Served cold, it is like a pickle, perfect for serving simply on top of rice.
To show off the benefits that kombu dashi brings to a dish, I’m going for a braised method in this recipe. Braising will let the main ingredients soak up the kombu dashi flavours, umami and sweetness. Use the dashi here to accentuate the flavours of the celeriac and chicken.
Celeriac, is not typically used in Japanese cooking. I thought of it as an easy-to-find alternative to Japanese root vegetables like daikon, taro or lotus root. I’m using it as it has a subtle celery-like flavour and when cooked it has a real sweetness to it. By using kombu dashi, for its flavour enhancing properties, it’s those celery-like and sweet flavours that will be amplified in this dish. Enjoy the recipe and please let me know what you think. Umai!
RECIPE
Serves 4 people
Ingredients:
700 g Chicken thighs with skin and bone
500 g celeriac
2 tsp coconut sugar or brown sugar
100 ml soya sauce (use temari soya sauce for a gluten free option)
100 ml mirin
100 ml sake
500 ml kombu dashi
200 g Konjac noodles
A handful of cooked edamame beans
Toasted sesame seeds topping
Shichimi togarashi (optional topping)
METHOD
Start by draining the konjac noodles and then rinse them well, to remove any excess liquids.
In a small saucepan, add the konjac noodles, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 3-5 minutes before draining and rinsing again. Set these to one side.
Peel the celeriac. Cut it in half and slice into 2cm thick pieces. Then cut each circular slice into quarters.
In a large casserole pot (like a Le Creuset) place the chicken thighs first, skin side down at the bottom of the pot.
Now add the celeriac on top. Followed by the dashi, sake, mirin and the cooked konjac noodles. Bring the pot to the boil.
Add the sugar and soya sauce, bring back to the boil. Then, reduce the heat to a simmer.
Cover with a circle of parchment paper with holes cut in it (known as an oshibuta or drop lid) it will seal in the ingredients during braising. Simmer for a further 20 minutes before serving.
SUBSTITUTIONS
Celeriac, is already a substituion, but you could swap back to more traditional Japanese root vegetables by trying out daikon (similarly sweet), lotus root, turnip or taro.
Swap out the edamame with any greens, to add colour to the dish.