Dashi & Umami

Japanese Cuisine & Food Culture

Human Resource Development Program

The Essence of Japanese Cuisine

JCDC
(Japanese Cuisine & Food Culture Human Resource Development Committee)
 Dashi & Umami

In the beginning

Murata Yoshihiro
Chairman of JCDC / The third generation owner-chef of Kikunoi

The essentials of Japanese cuisine can be captured by the following elements: “the
five flavors,” “the five techniques,” and “the five colors,” an emphasis on the use of
seasonal ingredients, artistic expression of the seasons, and feel for harmony with
nature. The five flavors, defined according to Chinese tradition, are: spicy hot, sweet,
salty, sour, and bitter. The five techniques are: cutting (including raw ingredients),
grilling, simmering, steaming, and deep-frying. White, black, yellow, red, and
blue/green are the main colors that come into play in the selection of tableware, use of
garnishes and and decorations of the dishes, and presentation of the menu. As
important as the “five flavors” is umami, a sixth flavor and the fifth “taste” that is
abundant in dashi broth. Japanese cuisine notably aims for a balance of flavors.

Dr. Ikeda Kikunae provided scientific evidence of umami in

1908, but already in the thirteenth century, the Priest Dogen’s
teachings recorded in Tenzo kyokun (Instructions for Zen Cook)
mentions a “sixth flavor”—which he called tanmi (“the light
flavor”). Tanmi referred to a faint flavor that was thought to bring
out the character of the ingredients; it is close to umami. During
my training, I myself learned from senior chefs the wisdom that “food should not be
made so that it is supremely delicious only when you are eating it. What you seek are
tastes that leave such an impression that they are remembered three days later,” The
secret of seasoning, then is to refrain from adding that last dash of salt that might
seem necessary, and what makes that possible is the power of umami. In Western
cuisines, foods different in taste and flavor, such as meat and sauce, and arranged
separately on the plate and their flavors are combined to achieve a pleasant balance in
the process of eating. In Japanese cuisine, the umami taste enfolds and bolsters other
tastes, setting the stage for a concert of flavors in the dish as a whole. Japan has a long
tradition in which harmony is considered the greatest of virtues, and the emphasis on

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harmony is distinctive in Japanese cuisine. Knowing how to use umami to draw out the
flavor of ingredients can be a tremendous asset in the techniques of a chef. The umami
taste may have been identified in Japan, but umami-rich broth very close to Japanese
dashi, like Russian borsht soup made from beets and beef, or high-quality Chinese tang
broth made with Jinhua ham, have been used in cooking since long ago in places all
over the world. What is distinctive about Japan’s dashi broth is it’s virtual absence of
calories, its blending of different umami substances including glutamic acid and
inosinic acid, and also its clear, transport color.

Ichiban dashi is the basic broth to be used in all sorts of recipes. There are also
various other types of Japanese stock, including shojin dashi, centuries-old recipes
calling for only vegetable ingredients, as well as more recently developed vegetable
dashi and duck or chicken dashi. The terms dashi and umami are by now familiar to
chefs all over the world. We have held numerous workshops for chefs on dashi and
umami overseas, and we are always gratified by the positive response as the chefs
quickly learn the techniques and apply them to their own cooking. That response is
providing an inspiration to young Japanese chefs as well.

There is no single “correct” recipe or

technique for umami or dashi. What is
important is the way of thinking that is behind
the work of a chef. What we hope is that the
trainees will learn the basics presented this
program and be able to put them to use in
their own cuisines, helping them to open up
new horizons in their profession.

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Japanese Cuisine
Composition and Custom

Kumakura Isao
Honorary Chairman of The Washoku Association of Japan / Director of the MIHO MUSEUM

The four basic components of the typical Japanese

meal are rice (gohan), soup (shiru), side dishes (okazu),
and pickles (tsukemono; also konomono). Rice is the
staple and soups are often umami-flavored miso soups.
Sometimes the soup will be seasoned with salt or
shoyu, but in either case the liquid is drunk directly
from the bowl. Chopsticks are used to eat the solid
ingredients together with rice. One main side dish and
one or two other side dishes normally accompany the rice and soup. The pickles, which
are somewhat salty or sour, add flavor to the bites of rice and refresh the palate if
eating something oily or strongly seasoned. This typical meal is made to be eaten
without drink, although sake, beer, or other alcoholic beverages are often served.

In contrast to household fare,

Japanese cuisine served in restaurants
or prepared by a professional chef is
intended to accompany sake or some
other alcoholic beverage. Side dishes to
be eaten with rice are called okazu or
osozai; appetizers and tidbits made to
be enjoyed while drinking sake are
called sakana. In order to encourage
drinking, restaurant dishes are kept small, their content varied, and flavor modulated,
keeping the appetite whetted for more. The types of dishes, names, and order in which
they are served differ from one restaurant to another, but the basic ones are sakizuke
(appetizer), otsukuri (sashimi), owan (clear soup dish), yakimono (grilled dish), hassun
(seasonal appetizer), sunomono (vinegared dish), often along with a carefully timed
steamed or deep-fried dish. In this way, it is only after ample sake and side dishes have

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been served that the meal will finally be brought to an end with rice, soup, and pickles.
After that, a sweet or jellied desert nay be served. In this way, the composition of a
household meal and of a full-course restaurant meal are basically quite different.

Until the end of the nineteenth century, Japanese generally ate their meals served
on individual trays or tray tables (zen; also o-zen) about 40 centimeters 8about 15
inches) square. At the front of the tray is the rice and soup bowl, and between them a
dish of pickles; at the back there is room for up to three side dishes. The largest meal
that can be served on such a tray consists of one soup and three side dishes besides a
bowl of rice. This is called ichijyu-sansai meal. Even simpler meals would have fewer
side dishes. When guests are being entertained, however, hospitality may call for more
dishes to be served, so in those cases the
number of trays or tray tables is increased.
From around the fifteenth century, a style of
banquet developed known as honzen cuisine.
The number of zen (between two and seven)
and the number of dishes determined the grade
of the repast. Orthodox honzen cuisine is
visually quite extraordinary, but not very tasty
to actually eat, and today it has almost
completely disappeared. Nevertheless, quite a large number of food preparation
methods have been developed out of and refined from that tradition.

The so-called kaiseki style of dining emerged in the sixteenth century with the
development of the tea ceremony. This follows the basic rice and soup formula found in
household fare, but an additional three side dishes—in the form of the mukozuke (light
side dish, often sashimi), simmered dish, and grilled dish—are brought out from the
mizuya (preparation room) one by one.

Today’s fine Japanese cuisine combines the menu of dishes from honzen banqueting
with the sequential presentation of a kaiseki meal.

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■ Basics of Japanese Cuisine

Sweet, sour, bitter, and salty are well established today as the basic tastes, but
Japanese have long identified a fifth taste, umami, which is also now widely
recognized. Methods of bringing out this umami taste are described in Japanese using
a verb that means “drawing out flavor.” It is
not certain when the word “dashi” began to be
used, though it is known that by around the
fifteenth century umami was extracted
using katsuobushi (dried and smoked
bonito) and kombu (kelp). The okusadomo
yori soden no kikigaki (Oral
Instructions of Lord Okusa), a culinary
text of the time, calls for “boiling
[katsuobushi] and bringing its flavor out fully.” It should be noted that “dashi”comes
from the return “ni-dashi,” which means “boiling to bring out [flavor].”

Umami being as important a taste as it is for

Japanese cuisine, it was not long after modern
science was introduced to Japan in the nineteenth
century that Japanese began the scientific analysis of
umami taste. In 1908, the scholar Ikeda kikunae
(1864–1936) identified the substance responsible for
umami in kombu as sodium glutamate. One of Ikeda’s students went on to locate the
umami in katsuobushi in the histidine salt of inosinic acid and later that of shiitake
mushrooms in guanylic acid. Five hundred years earlier, however, cooks had devised
methods of using these three ingredients to make a tasty broth.

Ryori monogatari (Cooking Stories), the first

woodblock-print cookbook in Japan (1643), mentions
katsuobushi broth and advises using 1 sho (masu
box, 90grams or about 3 ounces) of katsuobushi for
1.5 sho (2.7 liters) of water. It also calls for using a
kombu dashi-based clear soup (sumashijiru) for soups
with perch (suzuki) or cod (tara), and includes some
mention of the dashi in shojin temple cuisine,

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suggesting that at that time dashi was in the process of becoming established as a
seasoning for soups and simmered foods.

Cookbooks were published in great quantity in the eighteenth century and Japan’s
culinary arts made great strides. Ryori komoku chomisho (Book of Seasonings by
Cooking Category), published around 1730, states that “dashi is the very basis is to
Japanese cuisine.

In the Edo period, the main way of making dashi

involved simmering the stock for a fairly long period.
Ryori komoku chomisho indicates the quantity of
katsuobushi at 15 percent of the amount of water and
calls for cooking the liquid until it has been reduced by
30 to 40 percent. This is quite different from the
procedure most common today, which is to add
katsuobushi flakes to boiling water, turn off the heart after about thirty seconds, and
then pour off the broth. As for kombu broth, some of the old cookbooks call for the
reduction method, but quite a few of them describe making broth from cold water.
Some recommend soaking the dashi ingredients in water overnight, a method still used
today.

The method of combining different dashi ingredients that is now well established is
a relatively recent innovation. In the Edo period, katsuobushi-based dashi was the
main type in eastern Japan and kombu-based dashi the main type in western Japan,
and it seems that using both katsuobushi and kombu to double the umami of the broth
is a product of the twentieth century.

Japanese broth, whether made with

katsuobushi, niboshi (dried sardins), or
ago (dried flying fish), contains almost
no animal fat or gelatin. In the case of
katsuobushi and kombu, while
considerable time is consumed in
processing the ingredients, making the
broth itself takes almost time at all.
The dashi ingredients are painstakingly prepared, cured, and preserved over a long
period of time, but it only takes a moment to extract the essential umami from them,

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after which the dregs are in most cases simply disposed of. In some cases, the
ingredients may be recycled to make niban dashi.

The fermentation processes for miso and shoyu

take from three months to three years, meaning the
products are well-matured. Their manufacturing
processes are complex and take time, but once
ready, miso and shoyu can be used directly on
food, and like katsuobushi and kombu, extracting
umami from them takes little time—a distinctive
feature of Japanese cuisine.

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The Science of Umami

Ninomiya Kumiko
Director of the Umami Information Center / Member of All Japan Food Association

Umami has been identified as a basic taste, distinct from the other four—sweet, sour,
and bitter—and cannot be created by any combination of the others. The presence of
receptors on the tongue that sense umami substances and the way the nerves transmit
taste information from tongue to brain have all been scientifically explained and
verified, and by now are widely recognized.

The discovery of this fifth taste began with research in 1908 on kombu dashi by
Ikeda Kikunae (1864–1936), who identified the main substance of umami taste as
glutamic acid. In 1912, Kodama Shintaro identified the umami substance in
katsuobushi as inosinic acid, and in 1960 Kuninaka Akira discovered another umami
substance, especially abundant in dried shiitake mushrooms, to be gunylic acid. Since
the ingredients involved in these findings are traditionally used to make broth for
Japanese cuisine, and since Japanese scientists made the discoveries, many assumed
for quite some time that umami must be a distinctively Japanese taste. Since 2000,
however, following research by American scholars verifying the presence of receptors
for glutamic acid on the tongue, scholars and chefs have come to recognize umami as
one of the basic tastes.

Glutamic acid is an amino acid that is contained in edible seaweeds like kombu,
various kinds of vegetables (especially tomatoes, broccoli, asparagus, etc.), and
mushrooms of many varieties. It is also present in meat, fish, and seafood, as well as in
fermented foods like miso, shoyu, fish sauce, and cheese. The glutamic acid found in
many foods in which the proteins in soybeans, milk, fish and seafood, and animal meat
are broken down into amino acids, much of which is glutamic acid. Protein is made up
of some 20 kinds of amino acids, and glutamic acid constitutes about 20 percent of
animal protein (meat, fish, milk) and 40 percent of plant protein (soybeans, grains).
Consequently, fermented foods made with these ingredients are rich in umami. Other
fermented foods produced by lactic acid fermentation or by alcoholic fermentation do
not contain much glutamic acid.

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■ Umami-Boosting Synergies
Inosinic acid and guanylic acid are umami-boosting nucleotides that, when present
together with glutamic acid, can greatly increase the umami taste experience. A kind of
chemical synergy can enhance the umami taste in a dish by seven or eight times.

Inosinic acid is the umami component that is contained in meat and fish. It is
produced through the workings of an enzyme derived from a substance called ATP
(adenosine triphosphate) stored in the body of animals as a source of energu. After the
death of an animal, inosinic acid continues to be made from ATP for a while; but after a
period of time the inosinic acid degrades to hypoxanthine which has no umami taste
effect. The length of time this takes to occur differs from one kind of animal tissue to
another, but it is generally shorter for fish than for animal meat. With fish the quantity
of inosinic acid is thought to peak two to three days after landing and then begin to
decrease, but this can vary for different types of fish. In the case of meat refrigerated at
40°F (4°C), the inosinic acid level peaks for beef at 4–12 days. For pork at 1–6 days,
and for fowl at 0–2 days. For each of these kinds of meat, with longer-than-optimum
storage the inosinic acid declines; but as the meat is cured, more protein is broken
down into amino acids and the umami component, glutamic acid, increases.

A tradeoff between the umami taste contributions made by the effects of inocinic
acid and the quantity od glutamic acid is illustrated by the case of dry-cured ham,
sometimes mistakenly thought to be rich in inosinic acid simply because it is of animal
origin. In fact, dry-cured ham contains little or no inosinic acid. This is because the
inocinic acid contained initially in uncured ham degrades through the action of
enzymes over the long period during which the meat is pickled in salt, desalinated,
dried and cured with mold. So dry-cured ham does not owe its umami taste to the
presence of inocinic acid but rather to high levels of glutamic acid. The amount of
glutamic acid in uncooked pork meat is as low as 8 mg per 100 grams, but increases
some 40 times (320 mg/100 g) in completely dry-cured ham. During the curing period,
proteolytic enzymes break down the protein in the meat into amino acids, producing
large amounts of glutamic acid which is further concentrated by the mold-curing and
drying processes. By contrast, in katsuobushi and niboshi, which are dried after
heating, inosinic acid is preserved.

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Another umami flavor enhancing

substance, guanylic acid, is known to be
present in dried mushrooms, but its
quantity in both raw and dried
mushrooms is quite low. Recent research
has shown that it is when dried
mushrooms are rehydrated or heated
that guanylic acid is produced and
accumulates. Many varieties of
mushrooms have plentiful amounts of glutamic acid, so by skillful use of dried
mushrooms, it is possible to greatly increase umami through the synergy of the
glutamic and guanylic acids.

■ How Umami Is Tasted

The level of umami flavor expressed in various kinds of foods is not something that
can be indicated on a label; it depends on the experience and alchemy of the cook.
Judging the amount of sweetness, sourness, saltiness, and bitterness in ingredients is
relatively easy for most people, but to evaluate umami, it is very important to train
oneself by experiencing both flavor on the tongue and something called mouthfeel.
Umami is a taste that lingers longer on the palate than sweetness or sourness and that
spreads over the entire tongue. After thoroughly chewing different varieties of tomato,
one will find that with some tomatoes the taste sensation seems to cover the tongue
and longer as an aftertaste, even after swallowing. Other tomatoes taste distinctly
sweet or tart, but after the sensation of those tastes is gone there is no lingering
aftertaste. The tongue-coating sensation, which lingers as an aftertaste, is umami. One
can experience the same sensation after eating dry-cured ham or cheese. A French chef
who understands this sensation tells of the South
American native species of tomato called the
tamarillo that has a very strong umami taste.
Analysis of the quantity of glutamic acid in the
tamarillo tomato showed that it is about 750 mg per
100 grams, two to three times the amount of
glutamic acid in ordinary tomatoes. Moreover, when
the fleshy part of the tamarillo and the soft seed-

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holding jelly are separated, it is found that the jelly-like substance contained 1,200 mg
of glutamic acid per 100grams, three times that of the fleshy part. The higher
percentage of glutamic acid in the seed-holding jelly compared to the flesh was found to
hold for other types of tomatoes as well. These findings confirm what chefs have long
recognized.

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Dashi Ingredient Science

Kawasaki Hiroya
Principal Researcher - Ajinomoto Co., Inc. / Director of the Japanese Culinary Academy

Dashi is a broth made by placing ingredients in water and extracting flavors or

aromatic substances from them. Any particular ingredient is made up of many different
components, and when making dashi, what is important is to extract only the desired
substances. The ingredients used to make dashi in Japanese cuisine contain very
concentrated amounts of umami, and the transferal of that umami to water is what is
known as “dashi o toru” (making broth).

The fond or bouillon of French cuisine or the tang broth of Chinese cuisine are
extracted from raw meat and vegetables in hot water. They also concentrate the flavors
by heating the liquid for an extended time, causing the Maillard reaction and the
oxidation of fat. French and Chinese broth made through these processes of extraction,
concentration, and reaction are what give these cuisines their rich flavors and fine
aromas. For Japanese cuisine, the widely used basis for food preparation is broth made
by extracting the umami components and aroma from dried kombu and dried and
smoked katsuobushi into water. Kombu is concentrated through drying; katsuobushi is
concentrated by drying and smoking and its aromatic components are obtained from
Maillard reaction and smoking. The dashi
broth prepared in the Japanese kitchen
thus, is made by using hot water to extract
substances in kombu and katsuobushi that
have already undergone concentration and
the Maillard reaction. Dashi thus differs
from the broths used in France and China
not only in terms of the ingredients but in
the order of steps by which the broth is
made.

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Why is dashi so important to Japanese cuisine? It is used to prepare dishes made

with vegetables and grains, and is a liquid containing umami. We can think of umami
as signaling the presence of protein, since if a substance contains umami that means it
likely contains protein. Meat, which is protein in solid form, is full of juices replete with
umami. Japanese cuisine might be characterized as a type of cooking that uses umami
(a sign of protein physiologically) in the preparation of vegetable and grain dishes. If
the body can only obtain carbohydrates, it can convert them to amino acid in the body,
thereby producing protein. It was important to make the most of the umami of dashi in
order for people to be able to consume large amounts of vegetable and grain.

Kombu contains large amounts of glutamic acid, and when placed for a few hours in
cold water, the glutamic acid, which is water soluble, dissolves. The density of glutamic
acid is greater for water in which kombu heated for one hour at 140°F (60°C) than that
for water in which kombu was heated for the same time at either 85°F (30°C) or 175°F
(80°C). When heated in water that is too hot, a substance in kombu with an unpleasant
odor is also extracted. When that happens, the odor can be boiled off after removing the
kombu.

The umami in katsuobushi comes primary from inosinic acid. In fact, katsuobushi
contains a greater amount of isosinic acid than any other foodstuff. The bonito fillets
from which it is made are cooked soon after the fish is caught in order to deactivate the
enzymes that break down inosinic acid. They are then dried and smoked in that state
so as to keep the rich isosinic acid content intact. The blocks resulting from this process
are extremely dense and hard, using them requires shaving off thin flakes and then
extracting the umami from the flakes in hot water. When ichiban dashi is made by
adding katsuobushi to broth made with kombu, the savoriness of the broth is increased
by the synergy of the glutamic acid from the kombu and the inosinic acid from the
katsuobushi. Katsuobushi is also important for its distinctive aroma. To transfer that
aroma to water and prevent it from getting lost, it is best not to raise the temperature
of the water too high.

These texts are reprinted with permission from The Japanese Culinary Academy’s Complete

Japanese Cuisine FLAVOR AND SEASONINGS: Dashi, Umami, and Fermented Foods, (2017,

Shuhari Initiative)

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