What is this used for?

12 comments

1. You’d need a bonito shaver.

2. I believe these are for shaving to make bonito flakes

3. katsuobushi? you’ll need a mandoline slicer for this

4. hard to tell from pic are they just thick cut? If so they work great for some types of ramen

5. I can’t tell the scale just by this, but to me it looks like they’re just cut very thick. If that’s the case, they’re not too thick for dashi; you just need a slightly different recipe. Some restaurants use multiple types of katsuo bushi to get the flavor profile they want in their dashi.

6. Shaved it to make a topping for takoyaki and/or becoming an ingredient for broth, I think

7. When you get the shaver for this you will be in heaven. Flavor like no other.

8. これは本枯節（ほんかれぶし）と言うものです。
   this is called honkarebushi the difference between normal katsuobushi and this one is fermentation process. It should have deeper flavour.
   鰹節（かつおぶし　katsuo bushi ）or 荒節（あらぶし arabushi ）translate into English as Dried bonito
   本枯節（ほんかれぶし honkarebushi ）translate into English as fermented dried bonito
   Katsuo bushi only takes around 1 month to make but Honkare bushi takes minimum 3 months to half a year to make. It has more delicate deep flavour.
   “Hon-kare”, made by shaving the surface of unrefined-dried bonito and moulding it to extract water which concentrates the UMAMI and decomposes fats, resulting in the highest quality dried bonito
   I hope you will enjoy the delicate flavour!

9. Katsuo that is intended for shaving would likely be in a big block or whole fillet like is sold at my local grocery store. If the slices are just a couple of mm thick 1/8in then it’s a specialty katsuobushi for dashi. I believe the stuff I have in the pantry is simmered for 10 minutes and gives a deeper more complex flavor to the dashi.

   In my opinion sometimes the thin sliced stuff is a little too bright in flavor and this thicker dashi makes a more balanced stock. Thinner stuff is more casual and is used as an ingredient by itself too.. It’s kind of like going from standard konbu to one grown on the Shiretoko peninsula home cooks usually won’t bother with the thicker stuff- hell most of the time it’s just dashi powder – but when you need it to count it’s good to have.

10. need bonito shaver

11. You have to shave them…

12. It’s actually stewed to extract the broth, but it’s also tasty if you just slowly bite into it and chew it like chewing gum. It’s hard at first, though.