Reusing Ingredients

The reason for reusing the kombu and fish flakes which have already been used once in making ichiban dashi is that they still contain large quantities of the amino acids which give the dashi its umami component. The ‘Japanese Agricultural Standards’ stipulate that bonito honkarebushi flakes release around 15% or more of these substances during the making of ichiban dashi. Thus, supposing there are around 1000 mg of amino acids in the flakes initially we can assume that around 150 mg come out during the making of ichiban dashi, which still leaves an estimated 85%, or 850 mg, of amino acids.