Dasima

Dasima (다시마) is kelp of the genus Saccharina, chiefly Saccharina japonica, the broad brown blade that Korean cooks have long used to give stock its depth. It is gathered and farmed along the cold southern and south-eastern coasts, with the waters around Wando in South Jeolla and the coast near Busan and Gijang among its producing places. It belongs to the everyday pantry rather than to any one court or temple table, and it is carried by home kitchens, by the temple kitchen, where it serves as a source of savour without meat or fish, and by the Korean diaspora, which keeps it in the cupboard wherever it settles.

The dried blade is thick, dark olive to near black, and dusted with a pale bloom of natural salts and mannitol; this white powder is not mould and is not to be washed off hard. It is sold in flat sheets or in squares of roughly ten centimetres, and it swells to several times its size in water, turning supple and glossy. Its savour comes from glutamate released into the liquid. In the Korean kitchen it has three uses: as the base of anchovy and kelp stock (myeolchi dasima yuksu), as a wrapper or flavouring laid in the pot with rice or beans, and, blanched and cut, as ssam, the sheet used to wrap rice and a dab of ssamjang. Young blanched dasima is also cut into squares or strips and served with vinegared gochujang as a side dish.

Dasima stock underlies the clear soups, the noodle broths such as janchi guksu, the mild jjigae and the poached radish dishes of the Korean table, and it sits well beneath the sweetness of radish and the salt of ganjang. It is drunk with the soup it flavours and eaten with rice. The structural reason is that its savour is round and non-meaty, so it supports salt and fermented flavours without competing with them, and it lets a light dish taste full without fat. Blanched dasima with gochujang and vinegar is eaten with rice and with grilled fish, where its slight chew and brine cut the richness.