Bafun Uni Powder is salted, aged Bafun uni — sea urchin roe — dried and milled into a fine powder. The flavor is deep and lingering: brine first, then a quiet bitterness, then a sweetness that arrives slowly. Salted uni, known in Japan as shio uni, is counted among the country's three great delicacies and was once reserved for nobility.
The base comes from Tentatu, a Fukui house founded in 1804 that invented salted uni — originally a preserved delicacy made for the lords of the Echizen domain. The method has held for over two centuries. Tentatu's master blender — the 11th-generation proprietor — travels each year to harvest sites across Japan: Fukui on the Sea of Japan coast, and various locations throughout Hokuriku and Hokkaido. He tastes uni from different stretches of coast and adjusts the aging to bring the umami to its ideal concentration.
Ayako, Umami Curator at The House of Umami, traveled to Mikunihama on the Fukui coast before visiting the Tentatu workshop, where she tasted uni drawn from several different sea regions side by side. The extent to which the flavor shifted from one coastline to the next surprised her. What stayed with her was the producer's diligence: a house that has worked this craft for generations, still asking how to make it better. Carrying Bafun Uni Powder is her answer to that.
The powder concentrates that work into a form a kitchen can reach for everyday. Drying removes all the water, so what is left is pure salted-uni flavor at full strength — a pinch goes a long way. Over hot rice, the steam lifts the aroma immediately. It holds up on pasta, in soups, and across raw preparations where a clean burst of the sea is wanted. Uni and salt, nothing else.
Contains: sea urchin.
