Easy Japanese side dish: TSUKUDANI (Dashi part 2) 〜佃煮〜 easy Japanese home cooking recipe

Welcome to Taishi's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make tsukudani with the leftover from the dashi making. So this is the second part to dashi. Probably a lot of people throw away the leftover kombu kelp and bonito flakes because all the juice is taken away, but you could make this small side dish with the leftover. In Japanese cooking, or in Japan in general, we try not to throw away food because we respect the nature, we respect the food. So this is a perfect recipe to make after making dashi because you end up with the kombu Then, let's get started. Here are the ingredients for tsukudani. Well, there are different kinds of tsukudani, but here today I'm going to make the tsukudani with the rest from the making dashi. So these are used up bonito flakes and kombu kelp. So for the seasoning, I have soy sauce and sugar, and then mirin and sake. If you don't have mirin or sake, so you can make just with sugar and soy sauce. So for the condiment, I have roasted sesame. So the bonito flakes, I don't have to do anything, I'm just going to put it aside, and the kombu kelp, I'm just going to cut into pieces, cut in half, and then just small strips. There's no particular right way for this, just bite-sized pieces. So then, let's cook. So in a pan, I'm going to add in the kombu kelp and then the bonito flakes. So I'm just going to take them apart so that I don't have to mix later. To that, I'm going to add in two teaspoons of mirin, two teaspoons of sake, two teaspoons of sugar. So if you don't have sake or mirin, you can just add in the same amount of water. I'm going to heat to medium. I'm going to try to spread out the bonito flakes. So the reason why you put in the sweet first is that when the saltiness comes first, then the sweetness doesn't get soaked up as much. So in Japanese cooking, we always put the sweetness first and then the saltiness. So as it's getting heated, I'm going to put in here two teaspoons of soy sauce. And then when the soy sauce comes in, the water from kelp and bonito flakes is going to come out. So you kind of want to heat it so much that there's not much fluid left. So it looks good. So the fluid is gone. So I'm going to turn the heat off and then here I'm just going to sprinkle about a teaspoon of sesame seeds. So it's finished. So let's eat. So this is something that you would never eat alone. So this is something you eat either with rice or if you like sake. This is also good with sake because it has a little bit more stronger taste than just regular dish. So I'm going to put this over rice and eat it with rice. This is good. So this is like nothing special, but it's better than throwing away the used up kelp and bonito flakes. And the kelp and the bonito flakes, so most of the umami is just gone. Still they have a little bit of taste to it and nutritious wise, I'm sure there's quite a lot of nutrition in there. So instead of throwing away, you should eat them and it won't have that much taste. So I'm going to eat things like this so we know how to throw them away. So the combination of soy sauce and sugar, you may notice it's the same sauce as the teriyaki and I would say almost half of Japanese cuisine is made up of this. But depending on the ingredients, sometimes soy sauce is stronger, sometimes sugar is stronger. But with different ingredients, they taste differently. So this just matches perfectly with rice. That was delicious. This matches rice really perfectly and it's really sad to just waste good food away. So if you make dashi, please try making this as well. I hope the video was informative for you and if you have any comments or requests, please write that in the comments below. And if you like what you saw, please subscribe and I look forward to see you in the next video. Bye.