Dashi Substitutes: What to Use When You’re Out (Japanese Cook’s Guide)
You’re halfway through a Japanese recipe, you reach for the dashi… and there’s none left. It happens to me too. Dashi — the savory Japanese soup stock made from kombu and bonito — is the umami backbone of miso soup, simmered dishes, and noodle broths, so running out feels like a dead end. The good news: you have more options than you’d think, and several of them are probably already in your kitchen.
This is an honest, practical guide to substituting dashi — whether you’re out of dashi powder, dashi packets, or the real thing. For each option below you’ll find how much to use, what it’s best for, and what it gets wrong. None of these are exactly dashi, but each will get you a good result when you’re in a pinch.
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The Short Answer
If you just need to get dinner finished, here’s the ranking:
- Kombu and/or dried shiitake soaked in water — closest in character, and fully vegan.
- Light chicken stock — the most likely thing to already be in a Western kitchen.
- Mentsuyu or shirodashi — if you have a bottle, this is what Japanese households actually reach for.
- A pinch of MSG, or a few drops of fish sauce — genuine last resorts, but they work.
First: The Easiest “Substitute” Is Instant Dashi
Before we get to true substitutes, know that the closest thing to homemade dashi isn’t a swap at all — it’s instant dashi. A spoon of dashi powder (Hondashi) or a simmered dashi packet gives you real dashi flavor in minutes, and both keep for months in the cupboard. If you cook Japanese food even occasionally, keeping one on hand means you’ll never truly be out. See my guide to the best dashi packets and powders for which to buy. If that’s not an option right now, read on.
Substitution Amounts at a Glance
All of these replace 1 cup (240 ml) of prepared dashi. If your recipe calls for dashi powder rather than liquid dashi, see substituting for dashi powder further down.
| Substitute | Amount for 1 cup of dashi | Vegan? |
|---|---|---|
| Kombu (kelp) | A 4 in / 10 cm piece soaked in 1 cup cold water | Yes |
| Dried shiitake | 2–3 mushrooms soaked in 1 cup cold water | Yes |
| Kombu + shiitake | A 4 in piece + 2 mushrooms in 1 cup water | Yes |
| Katsuobushi (bonito flakes) | A generous handful steeped in 1 cup hot water | No |
| Niboshi (dried sardines) | 4–5 fish, heads and guts removed, in 1 cup water | No |
| Chicken stock | 1 cup, unsalted or low-sodium | No |
| Vegetable stock | 1 cup, mild and unsalted | Usually |
| Mentsuyu (3x concentrate) | 1 tbsp + 1 cup water (skip the recipe’s soy and mirin) | No |
| Shirodashi | 1 tbsp + 1 cup water (reduce other salt) | No |
| Fish sauce | 1/4 tsp + 1 cup water | No |
| MSG | A pinch (1/8 tsp) + 1 cup water | Yes |
The Best Dashi Substitutes
1. Kombu Only (Easiest Vegan Dashi)
If you have a piece of dried kombu (kelp), you can make a simple vegan dashi with just kombu and water. Soak a strip in cold water for 30 minutes — or overnight in the fridge, which is easier and better — then warm it gently. Don’t let it boil hard, or it turns slimy and faintly bitter. I snip the kombu into a few pieces with kitchen scissors so it fits the pot and releases more flavor.
- Best for: miso soup, clear soups, delicate simmered vegetables.
- What it gets wrong: it’s mild and lacks the smoky top note that bonito gives real dashi.
2. Dried Shiitake Mushrooms (Deep, Vegan Umami)
Soaking dried shiitake in water makes a dark, deeply savory stock full of natural umami. On its own it’s stronger and earthier than dashi — noticeably mushroomy — so it suits robust dishes better than delicate ones. Save the soaking liquid; that’s your stock. Use the rehydrated mushrooms in the dish so nothing is wasted.
- Best for: simmered dishes, takikomi gohan, noodle broths, anything already earthy.
- What it gets wrong: too assertive for a clear soup. It tastes of mushroom, not of the sea.
3. Kombu + Shiitake Together (The Best Vegan Option)
This is the one I actually make. Kombu brings glutamate, shiitake brings guanylate, and the two amplify each other — that’s not folklore, it’s the same synergy that makes real dashi work, since bonito supplies inosinate against kombu’s glutamate. The result is rounder and more complex than either alone.
Put a 4-inch piece of kombu and two or three dried shiitake in a jug of cold water and leave it in the fridge overnight. That’s the entire method — no heat required. It’s the traditional base of Japanese Buddhist temple cooking (shojin ryori), which is vegan by definition and has been solving this exact problem for centuries.
4. Light Chicken Stock (Best Non-Japanese Option)
A light, unsalted or low-sodium chicken stock is the most accessible substitute if you don’t keep Japanese ingredients. It won’t have the clean sea-and-smoke character, but it delivers real savory depth and disappears into most simmered dishes. Use it one-to-one and go easy on added salt, since most boxed stock is already seasoned.
- Best for: donburi, nikujaga, curry, anything with a strong soy-based sauce.
- What it gets wrong: it reads as Western chicken soup in a delicate dish. Avoid for clear soup.
- Bouillon cubes work too — use about half the amount the cube says, since dashi is far less salty than bouillon.
5. Mentsuyu or Shirodashi (What Japanese Homes Actually Do)
Here’s the honest answer nobody writes down: if a Japanese home cook runs out of dashi, most of them don’t make kombu stock. They reach for the bottle of mentsuyu in the fridge door. Mentsuyu is dashi already combined with soy sauce, mirin, and sugar; shirodashi is the same idea but with light-colored soy sauce, so it seasons without darkening the dish.
The catch is that both are seasoned, so you can’t treat them as plain stock. Use about 1 tablespoon of 3x-concentrate mentsuyu per cup of water, then cut back or skip the soy sauce, mirin, and sugar the recipe asks for, and taste before adding salt. Done right, nobody can tell.
6. Katsuobushi Alone (If You Have Bonito but No Kombu)
You can make a perfectly good stock from katsuobushi (bonito flakes) by themselves. Bring water just below a boil, take it off the heat, drop in a generous handful of flakes, let them steep for two minutes, then strain. It’s smokier and sharper than full dashi because there’s no kombu sweetness to round it out, but it’s fast and it tastes unmistakably Japanese. This is essentially half of my from-scratch dashi method.
7. Niboshi (Dried Sardines)
Dried baby sardines make niboshi dashi, which is stronger, oilier, and more openly fishy than bonito dashi. It’s the traditional base for miso soup in much of western Japan, and it’s what a lot of ramen shops build on. Snap off the heads and pull out the dark guts first or it turns bitter, then soak the fish in cold water for at least 30 minutes before gently heating.
- Best for: miso soup, udon broth, anything robust.
- What it gets wrong: too strong for delicate dishes, and the smell fills the kitchen.
8. A Pinch of MSG, or a Dash of Fish Sauce
Dashi is essentially concentrated umami, so a tiny pinch of MSG dissolved in water gives you a surprisingly effective savory base — it is, after all, the compound that was originally isolated from kombu. A few drops of fish sauce lend seafood depth instead, but it’s much saltier and more pungent, so use a quarter teaspoon per cup at most and pull back the other seasoning. These are last-resort fixes rather than first choices, but they genuinely work.
9. Extra Miso (For Miso Soup Specifically)
If you’re specifically making miso soup and you’re out of dashi, lean on the miso itself. Use a little more than usual and it will still be good — miso has its own fermented depth, and a well-made awase or red miso carries a soup further than you’d expect. See my guide to the types of miso paste if you’re choosing one. It won’t be as layered as a dashi-based soup, but plenty of weekday soups in Japan are made exactly this way.
Which Substitute for Which Dish?
| Dish | Best substitute |
|---|---|
| Miso soup | Kombu dashi, niboshi, or just a little extra miso |
| Clear soup (osuimono) | Kombu only — nothing else is delicate enough |
| Gyudon / Oyakodon / Katsudon | Light chicken stock, or mentsuyu with the soy reduced |
| Simmered dishes (nimono) | Kombu + shiitake, or light chicken stock |
| Okonomiyaki / Takoyaki | A pinch of MSG in water, or chicken stock |
| Udon / Soba broth | Niboshi, or kombu + shiitake boosted with soy sauce and mirin |
| Chawanmushi | Kombu only, or shirodashi diluted |
| Takikomi gohan (mixed rice) | Dried shiitake — the earthiness suits it |
| Vegetarian / Vegan anything | Kombu, shiitake, or both together |
The trick is that in dishes with a strong sauce — like the soy, mirin, and sugar in a gyudon or oyakodon — the dashi is doing less of the heavy lifting, so a simple stock substitute barely shows. In a delicate dish like clear soup or chawanmushi, the dashi is the dish, so reach for kombu and accept that it will be milder.
Substituting for Dashi Powder Specifically
A lot of recipes call for dashi powder — usually “1 teaspoon dashi powder” rather than a volume of liquid stock. That teaspoon is meant to be dissolved into roughly 2 cups of water, so the conversion is simple:
- 1 tsp dashi powder ≈ 2 cups of prepared dashi. Substitute 2 cups of whichever liquid option above you’re using, and leave out the water the recipe was going to add.
- If the recipe is dry — sprinkled into okonomiyaki batter, say — you can’t swap in a liquid. Use a pinch of MSG, a crumbled bouillon cube, or a teaspoon of powdered kombu instead.
- Remember that powder is salted. Most dashi granules contain salt and sometimes sugar, so if you replace them with unsalted stock, you’ll need to season a little more than the recipe says.
What Not to Use
Just as useful as knowing what works:
- Beef stock. Too heavy and too red-meat flavored. It fights everything else in a Japanese dish.
- Seafood stock made from shells. Shrimp or crab stock is sweet and strongly shellfish-flavored — it reads as bisque, not dashi.
- Stock with herbs, bay, or celery. Most Western stock is aromatic with vegetables and herbs. Those flavors are obvious and wrong in miso soup. Choose the plainest stock you have.
- Wakame or nori instead of kombu. They’re seaweed, but they’re not interchangeable — wakame goes slimy and nori dissolves into a murky green. Kombu is the one that makes stock.
My Honest Advice
Substitutes will save a meal, but none of them fully replace real dashi — that clean, smoky-sweet umami is genuinely unique, and you notice its absence most in the simplest dishes. If you’re going to keep cooking Japanese food, the single best move is to keep a bag of dashi packets or a jar of dashi powder in the cupboard. It’s cheap, lasts for months, takes up no space, and means “I’m out of dashi” never stops dinner again. Here’s how to use dashi packets if you’re new to them, and how to make dashi from scratch when you want the real thing.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can I use instead of dashi powder?
For each teaspoon of dashi powder, use about 2 cups of a liquid substitute — kombu water, dried shiitake water, or light chicken stock — and leave out the water the recipe would have added. If the powder was going into something dry, use a pinch of MSG or a crumbled bouillon cube instead. Remember dashi powder is salted, so season a little more than the recipe says.
Can I substitute dashi with chicken stock?
Yes. A light, low-sodium chicken stock is one of the most practical dashi substitutes. It lacks dashi’s seafood note but provides similar savory depth. Use it one-to-one and reduce any added salt, since stock is often already seasoned. Choose the plainest stock you can — herbs and celery in the stock will show.
What is a good vegetarian or vegan dashi substitute?
Kombu (kelp) and dried shiitake, soaked together in cold water overnight. Either works alone, but combined they produce a rounder, more umami-rich stock than either does by itself. Neither contains fish, so the result is fully vegan — it’s the traditional base of Japanese temple cooking.
Can I use miso instead of dashi?
For miso soup, yes — use a little extra miso and skip the dashi entirely. For other dishes, no. Miso is a seasoning, not a stock; adding it to a simmered dish in place of dashi makes it cloudy, salty, and distinctly miso-flavored rather than simply savory.
Can I use fish sauce instead of dashi?
In a pinch, yes — a few drops add seafood umami. But it’s much saltier and more pungent than dashi, so use no more than a quarter teaspoon per cup of water and pull the rest of the seasoning back. It’s a last-resort fix rather than a true substitute.
Can I make miso soup without dashi?
Yes. Make it with just miso and water, using a little extra miso for depth, or steep a piece of kombu in the water first for a quick stock. It won’t be as layered as dashi-based miso soup, but it’s still good — plenty of weekday soups in Japan are made this way.
Is there a difference between dashi and dashi stock?
No — they’re the same thing. “Dashi” already means stock in Japanese, so “dashi stock” is a slight redundancy that’s become normal in English recipes. Both refer to the finished liquid, whether made from scratch, from a packet, or from powder.
How long does homemade kombu dashi keep?
Three days in the fridge in a sealed container, or about a month frozen — freezing it in an ice cube tray is convenient, since one cube is roughly two tablespoons. It has no preservatives and no salt, so don’t leave it at room temperature.
Does dashi contain fish? Is it gluten free?
Traditional dashi contains bonito (a fish), so it isn’t vegetarian unless it’s kombu or shiitake based. Plain dashi is naturally gluten free, but instant powders and packets sometimes include soy sauce or wheat-derived ingredients, so check the label if it matters.
