How to cook with shio kombu: a measured first batch

A packet of shio kombu brings its own seasoning to the pan. The salt shaker can wait. Start with a measured batch, cook it through, then decide whether it needs anything else. That gives you something more useful than a handful of kelp and a hopeful guess.

What are you adding with the kelp?

Kurakon's label lists soy sauce and salt among the ingredients of its seasoned kelp. Check your packet before adding your usual seasoning.

The two methods below give the kelp different jobs. Keep each amount with the dish it belongs to; they do not establish a general salt-replacement ratio.

Make four small chicken balls

Soac's recipe makes four small balls, not four dinners.

1. Mix the chicken, spring onion, garlic and kelp with a little white pepper. Divide and shape into four equal balls, or eight for the doubled batch.
2. Optionally coat thinly with sweet potato starch. The optional perilla garnish is omitted here.
3. Heat oil in a pan. Brown the surface over medium-high heat, then lower to medium-low and cook through.
4. Taste a cooked ball before deciding whether to add more seasoning.

For the chicken here and in the rice-ball method below, Hong Kong's Centre for Food Safety specifies a core temperature of at least 75°C for 30 seconds. Probe the thickest part with a thermometer cleaned and disinfected before and after use.

See the original four-ball chicken method in the catalogue.

Doubling gives eight same-sized balls; it does not provide a frying time. Browning is the first stage, followed by lower heat and the core-temperature check.

Prefer a scale to a spoon?

Kurakon's chicken rice ball is an external recipe using 4 g shio kombu, 50 g minced chicken and 100 g cooked rice for one rice ball. Fry the chicken in oil; when its outside changes colour, add the kelp and continue until cooked through. Mix with the cooked rice and shape. No extra salt or soy sauce is listed.

Start with cooked rice; making it is extra work. This dish's 4 g does not convert Soac's spoonful into grams or set the dose for a rice-free mixture.

Pick the measurement you want to follow, then keep the rest of that recipe with it. Weighing and spooning are both usable instructions here; borrowing the dose from one dish and the ingredients from the other creates a new recipe.

These are comparisons and scaling of published methods, rather than results from a Nourishible cooking test.