Dave Chang’s Shio Tare 

A salty, savory, smoky, Japanese-inspired marinade/dip/sauce to have on standby

---

Time: 30 minutes   Cost: $10–$15 (if you already have some pantry staples)

Difficulty: Easy to make, but knowing what to do with it requires some imagination

---

As featured on: The Dave Chang Show

Ideal for: Making ramen at home; home cooks learning the ropes of Japanese ingredients and components

Not ideal for: Authenticity police, vegetarians, people who never cook Japanese food

#japanesecooking #umami #buildingblocks #pantry

---

Dave Chang developed this shio tare (a traditional seasoning sauce for ramen) in our studio kitchen. It’s a shortcut method—you pulverize all the traditional ingredients and steep everything together—and it incorporates the chicken/pork fat that many ramen shops will add separately to their bowl. It turned out ridiculously well on the first try, but is by no means the most authentic shio tare. 

Ingredients

Pantry ingredients: 6
Fresh ingredients: 1
Specialty ingredients: 1 (substitutable)

10 strips bacon (not too smoky, if possible), sliced into ½-inch pieces
8 dried shiitake mushrooms
1 sheet dashi kombu
4 C katsuobushi
¼ C lard/schmaltz (or substitute bacon fat/fat of your choice)
1 C mirin
½ C sake
Sea salt, to taste

Process

1. Add the bacon to a saucepan over medium heat. Cook for 5–7 minutes, or until most of the fat has rendered.

2. Meanwhile, add the shiitake mushrooms, kombu (break it up if you need), and katsuobushi to a blender canister (or a food processor). Pulverize into a powder.

3. Add the dry ingredients, schmaltz, sake, mirin, and 4 C water to the saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 20 minutes—stirring every now and then—or until the liquid has reduced by half. 

4. Strain the tare through a fine-mesh sieve, then season with sea salt. It should be quite salty—think of the saltiness of soy sauce. It’s not a soup. Let cool, then store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a month. Deploy it as a marinade, a dip for meat and vegetables, or a seasoning for soups, noodles, etc.

TL;DR

• Render bacon
  

• Pulverize dry ingredients

• Add dry ingredients to bacon, along with water, fat, mirin, sake

• Reduce, strain, store

---

Where can I taste this without cooking it?

This isn’t a shio tare that Dave has made before, so you won’t find this exact version at a Momofuku. But to get a sense for what shio tare can do, visit a ramen shop that specializes in shio ramen. A few places with multiple locations to get you started: Ivan Ramen | Mensho | Hinodeya | Afuri | …

---

Estimated Nutritional Information

Dietary considerations:

Keto-adjacent, but the mirin and sake are carb-y. This is also very salty (as it’s supposed to be).

Sustainability:

Not very locavore. Meat-based.

Got questions? Did you make this recipe? Tell us all about it.