Seaweeds and Konbu: The Mother Lode of Umami

The spread of Buddhism from China and Korea to Japan in the sixth century brought with it a very specialized vegetarian cuisine, shōjin ryōri or ‘devotion cuisine,’ about which we will learn more later. It is thought that the idea of using kelp, the large brown alga known as konbu in Japan, to make and impart umami can be traced back to this religious movement. With the spread in the 1300s of Zen Buddhism, whose monks practiced an even stricter, more ascetic form of vegetarianism that eschewed all animal products, konbu took on additional prominence. It was used to make shōjin dashi, the ultimate vegetarian soup stock described in the previous chapter, which is sometimes served with salted dried tofu. As tofu is rich in protein, this simple temple broth is both palatable and nutritious.