Bonito Furikake (Okaka)

I shared 3 ways to make miso soup on my blog.

In the recipe that I titled “The Tastiest Miso Soup”, I taught you how to make dashi soup base from scratch where you use dried bonito flakes and kelp (dashi konbu) to extract umami out.

When you’ve got yourself a potful of fabulous golden soup base, you also have yourself the wet bonito and kelp that you’ve extracted the umami from.

Throw them away?

Don’t!

They will make great accompaniments for rice.

In this article, I’ll teach you how to make Bonito Furikake (Okaka) by using the used bonito.

If you’d like to check the recipe in a movie form, here’s the link; https://youtu.be/v_gRMRqX2C8.

You can simply put it on the top of freshly cooked warm rice, or mix it into cooked rice and turn it into a rice ball.

Okaka (Bonito frikake)

Ingredients

The dried bonito flakes that you used to make homemade dashi. It should be 20 grams when it was dried, but it should be soggy when you make this furikake using this recipe.

½ tablespoons of sugar

1 tablespoon of mirin

1 tablespoon of soy sauce

Toasted white sesame seeds (*optional)

Procedure

Add the bonito onto a cool pan that hasn’t been heated. Cook it over low heat, while stirring until they are dried to as crisp and flaky as it breaks just with a gentle touch.

Turn the heat off. Add sugar, mirin, and soy sauce. Mix. Turn the heat back to low, and cook until the liquid evaporates.