Dashi!

Still having little to no time to actually get fancy with my cooking skills, I am posting this SUPER-EASY soup broth recipe!  Dashi is Japanese sea stock, a common base for miso and other soups, and is both delicious and healthy.  Do not be scared to use kombu or bonito flakes- I promise it will all turn out fine!

Ingredients:

• 5 cups water
• Kombu (edible seaweed vegetable); approx an 1"x8" long "stick" of kombu, or the rough equivalent of this amount
• 1/2 cup dried bonito flakes
• green onion (as little or as much as you desire)
• shittake mushrooms (optional)

First, soak the kombu in your 5 cups of water for approx 10-15 mins.  I threw a shiitake cap and a few green onions in there as well for good measure.

After the kombu has it's soak, turn on the stove, heat the water n' kombu combo until just-about boiling; you should see bubbles forming on the sides of the pot, and right before it actually boils.......

....Turn off the stove, let it simmer on its own, just sitting there.  This is ridiculously easy.

Add the 1/2 cup of dried bonito flakes over the surface, and let the bonito flakes hang out here for another 5-7 minutes.

Once that time has passed, take the pot of broth and pour into a strainer lined either with cheesecloth (or a large coffee filter) with a container underneath to catch the Dashi!

(In the pic below I added extra green onions and shiitake mushrooms to the broth as soon as it was strained and ready)

You did it! Congratulations!  Eat it now, or put it in the fridge- where it will keep for 1 week, or in the freezer, where it will last a lot longer.

Feel free to: add this as the base to any and every soup, add a dash of tamari or sesame oil, add seaweed/sesame seeds, add brown rice crackers, throw it on top of noodles or rice...you get the idea.  Do your thing.  Make it yours!