Dashida Powder (다시다): What's in Korea's Beef Stock, Prices, How to Use It

The kind of broth 쇠고기 다시다 exists to shortcut. Photo by makafood via Pexels.

Dasida beef stock powder (쇠고기 다시다), 1 kg — the export pack of the product this guide is about. We could not find the 500 g bag in stock on Amazon US in October 2026, so this is the size that ships; decant it into a sealed jar. Export packs are labelled in English and their recipe can differ from the Korean one quoted below. See Dasida beef 1 kg on AmazonAffiliate link. As an Amazon Associate, EpicKor earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

Last updated: 10 October 2026. Prices were read from CJ CheilJedang's own shop, CJ The Market, and the Danawa price-comparison site that day; the label is quoted from a Korean retail listing of the product. Sources are at the end.

Dashida (다시다, also sold as Dasida) is a Korean soup-stock powder made by CJ CheilJedang since 1975. A spoonful in a pot of water tastes like beef broth in seconds, which is why a very large share of Korean home and restaurant cooking uses it. Here is the part the shop listings leave out: the first ingredient on the beef version's Korean label is salt, and the label states the beef content as 5%. It is a seasoned salt with beef flavour built in, and that changes how you cook with it.

Dashida Quick Guide

Which Dashida to Buy, and What It Costs in Korea

There are more versions than most guides list, and two choices trip people up. Prices below are CJ CheilJedang's own shop, CJ The Market, as of October 2026 (sale prices where a discount was running).

Two things to check. First, 진한다시 (Jinhan-dasi) is CJ's own budget seasoning for restaurants, made "with Dashida's know-how" in CJ's words and sold in the Dashida range. It is a genuine CJ product, not a knock-off, but it is a different formulation from the one whose label is quoted below, it costs less than half as much per kilo as standard beef Dashida, and it appears next to the regular pack in US search results. If a recipe says Dashida, it means the one labelled 다시다 쇠고기. Second, anchovy versus beef: beef Dashida in a soybean-paste stew is a recognisably wrong flavour to a Korean palate. Buy beef first; if you buy a second flavour, make it anchovy.

Bigger bags are cheaper per gram, but stale faster at home. At CJ's own prices, the 500 g box works out at ₩28.8 a gram, the 1 kg bag ₩20.2 and the 2 kg bag ₩16.4. Costco Korea sells beef Dashida as two 1.2 kg tins for ₩35,490, about ₩14.8 a gram. Online sellers undercut CJ: the lowest listings on Danawa on 10 October 2026 were ₩11,500 for 500 g and ₩15,670 for 1 kg, before any delivery charge.

In a Korean shop, look in the 조미료 (seasoning) aisle of Emart, Homeplus or Lotte Mart. The 500 g and 1 kg sizes are soft pouches, so for a suitcase, tape the zip and bag it again.

What the Label Actually Says

The English-language pages for "dashida powder" are mostly shop listings, and they describe it as beef broth. The Korean label of 쇠고기 다시다 tells a more useful story. Its ingredients run, in descending order:

1. 정제소금 — refined salt (Korean)
2. 조미야채양념분말 — a seasoned vegetable powder made from wheat starch, salt, dried onion, dried garlic and MSG
3. L-글루탐산나트륨 — MSG, listed again on its own
4. 설탕 — sugar
5. 식물성단백농축액 — a vegetable-protein concentrate from defatted soy and corn gluten

Only after those, and after glucose, do the beef ingredients appear: 정제우지 (refined beef tallow, Australian), 효소분해 쇠고기엑기스 (enzyme-hydrolysed beef extract, Australian), 한우지방 (fat from Korean Hanwoo cattle) and 사골농축액분말 (bone-broth concentrate powder, Australian). The label then states the beef content outright: 쇠고기 함량 5% (정육기준), meaning 5% measured as raw-meat equivalent.

So, is beef Dashida actually made with beef? Yes, but beef is the flavour, not the bulk. Salt and savoury compounds are the bulk.

The sodium number makes it concrete. Costco Korea's listing gives 17,420 mg of sodium per 100 g, 871% of the Korean daily reference value. That is the same amount of sodium as about 44 g of table salt, although part of it comes from the MSG rather than salt. Namuwiki, the Korean user-edited encyclopedia, puts the MSG share of this kind of seasoning at roughly 15–20% and the salt at 30–40%; CJ does not publish the percentages, so treat those as unofficial estimates. The rest of the 100 g label: 250 kcal, 34 g carbohydrate (13 g sugars), 13 g protein and 7 g fat.

The label also lists three further unnamed flavour enhancers (향미증진제). In seasonings like this they are usually nucleotides (IMP and GMP), which boost glutamate's savouriness more than either does alone, which is why one small spoonful changes a whole pot.

Allergens on the beef label: beef, soy, wheat, milk. If you cook for someone with a wheat or dairy allergy, Dashida is out.

The rule that follows: when a recipe calls for Dashida, reduce or remove the salt it also calls for. Salting normally on top is the most common beginner mistake.

Is Dashida Vegetarian, Vegan or Halal?

• Beef Dashida is not vegetarian. It contains beef extract, beef tallow and Hanwoo fat.
• Anchovy, seafood and clam Dashida are not vegetarian either; they are built on fish and shellfish.
• 비건 다시다 (Vegan Dashida) is. CJ launched it in November 2022, using heat-treated soy protein to imitate the beef version's flavour. CJ said it held certification from the Korean Vegan Certification Institute (한국비건인증원) and Europe's V-Label. It came in a 100 g pouch, 5 g sticks and a 1 kg bag; in October 2026, CJ The Market lists the 1 kg bag at ₩17,425 on sale.
• Halal: we found no halal certification for any Dashida. The CJ products Korean press reports as halal-certified are bibigo lines such as kimchi, gim snacks, noodles and frozen fried chicken. Treat beef Dashida as not halal; the vegan version or a homemade anchovy-kelp stock is the safer route.

How Koreans Actually Use It

It is a weeknight tool, not a cheat. Dashida has been standard in Korean home kitchens and in a great many restaurants for fifty years, so the soup you remember from a trip may well have been made with it.

A bowl of gukbap at a Korean restaurant counter: everyday broth cooking, the kind Dashida is made for. Photo by 세훈 예 via Pexels.

How much. CJ's own guidance is 1 teaspoon (4–6 g) per serving in a soup or stew, added first, with the salt adjusted afterwards. That is generous: 5 g carries about 870 mg of sodium, over 40% of the Korean daily reference. Our suggestion, not CJ's: start at half that, about half a teaspoon per serving, and taste before adding more. Add it once the water is hot, so it dissolves cleanly. Because the effect multiplies rather than adds, "not enough" and "too much" are only a pinch apart.

Where it goes besides soup:

• Fried rice (볶음밥): a pinch over the rice in the pan instead of salt
• 무침 seasoned vegetables: a little in the dressing for blanched spinach or bean sprouts
• Stir-fried 어묵 fish cake and 감자볶음 potatoes: seasoning that does not add liquid

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What to Use When You Have Run Out

Nothing on a Western shelf does all of Dashida's jobs at once, but you can get close.

Whatever you swap in, set the salt separately. Dashida carries its own salt load, bouillon a different one, and homemade stock none.

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Dashida vs Dashi: Not the Same Thing

Dashi (だし) is a Japanese technique, not a product: a stock made by steeping 昆布 kombu (dried kelp) and 鰹節 katsuobushi (dried, smoked, fermented skipjack tuna, shaved into flakes) in water. It has no added salt and no meat. It is deliberately quiet, a background for miso and soy sauce. Dashida is a finished, salted seasoning that announces itself.

Katsuobushi, shaved from a block of dried, smoked, fermented skipjack tuna: one half of Japanese dashi. Photo by Sakurai Midori, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Kombu drying in Hokkaido, the other half of dashi. Photo by Marie-Sophie Mejan, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The real Japanese counterpart to Dashida is ほんだし Hondashi, Ajinomoto's instant bonito granules: two industrial powders, each built to replace a stock that once took an hour. That pairing is not a coincidence, as the history shows.

Where Dashida Came From

Dashida launched on 20 November 1975, made by 제일제당 (Cheil Jedang), the company now called CJ CheilJedang.

"11월 20일 다시다 탄생" — November 20, Dasida is born. A frame from the 1975 launch campaign, from CJ CheilJedang's brand archive.

It was built to beat 미원 (Miwon). Cheil Jedang's earlier MSG seasoning, 미풍 (Mipung), never caught Miwon. According to Namuwiki, Samsung founder 이병철 (Lee Byung-chul) once said three things in the world would not go his way: his children, golf and Miwon. It is a widely repeated anecdote rather than a documented quote. The same account says he pointed his researchers at Japan's Hondashi and asked for a Korean equivalent. The answer was a new category, a 종합조미료 (compound seasoning) combining salt and MSG with real beef and vegetable ingredients.

The name is a Korean pun. CJ's official explanation is the phrase "맛이 좋아 입맛을 다시다", "so good it makes you smack your lips". The verb 다시다 means to smack your lips. Namuwiki suggests the name also echoes Japanese dashi, which would fit a product briefed against Hondashi; CJ has only ever given the lip-smacking explanation.

It won fast. CJ says production had to be raised tenfold within two months of launch, and Newsis reports that from 1983 Dashida's sales began to overtake fermented (MSG) seasonings such as Miwon.

"그래, 이 맛이야" — "Yes, this is the taste." The line belongs to actress 김혜자 (Kim Hye-ja), who tasted a bubbling stew in Dashida commercials for decades. In CJ's own 2023 interview she put her run at 27 years, enough to put her in Korea's book of records; Newsis's 2021 history gives 25. Either way, the slogan is still the phrase Koreans say when a soup comes out right.

Fifty years on, it is still the default. Newsis reported in 2021 that CJ had produced about 25,000 tonnes a year for a decade, on annual sales near ₩300 billion, and both Newsis and CJ put Dashida's market share above 80%. That share can only refer to the beef-stock-powder segment Dashida created: in the aTFIS food-industry statistics for 2023, the whole Korean seasoning retail market was ₩319.5 billion, and Dashida led it at ₩107.3 billion, ahead of Miwon at ₩53.7 billion. And the circle closed: CJ began exporting Dashida in 2014, and in November 2023 beef Dashida ranked No. 1 in the K-seasoning category on Qoo10 Japan, with anchovy Dashida at No. 5. The Korean answer to Hondashi now sells in Hondashi's home market.

When You Should Not Use It

• Not in Japanese dishes. Dashida in miso soup gives you Korean-tasting miso soup. Use kombu and katsuobushi, or Hondashi.
• Not if you avoid MSG. MSG appears twice in the beef label's first three ingredients, and it is how the product works. For a savoury base without it, use an anchovy-kelp stock, which is the older Korean method and no compromise. CJ's MSG-free natural line, 산들애 (Sandeulae), launched in 2007, but CJ The Market did not list it in October 2026, so do not count on finding it.
• Not if you manage sodium closely. At 17,420 mg per 100 g, even half a teaspoon adds up, and Korean soups already run salty.
• Not when you want real beef stock. For 곰탕 or 설렁탕, simmer bones; a 5%-beef powder gives no body or gelatin.

On the MSG argument: glutamate is the same molecule in kelp, tomatoes and soy sauce. If any number on the Dashida label should change how you cook, it is the sodium, not the MSG.

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FAQ

Q: What is dashida powder? A: A Korean granulated soup-stock seasoning made by CJ CheilJedang since 1975. The beef version (쇠고기 다시다) lists salt first, then a seasoned vegetable powder, MSG and sugar, and states its beef content as 5%. You stir it straight into soups, stews and stir-fries.

Q: Is beef Dashida made with real beef? A: Yes, but little of it. The Korean label lists beef extract, beef tallow, Hanwoo fat and bone-broth powder, and gives the beef content as 5%. Salt and MSG make up far more.

Q: How much does Dashida cost in Korea? A: As of October 2026, CJ's own shop lists beef Dashida at ₩14,400 for 500 g and ₩20,160 for 1 kg. Online sellers on Danawa were lower, about ₩11,500 and ₩15,670 before delivery. Costco Korea sells two 1.2 kg tins for ₩35,490.

Q: How much Dashida should I use? A: CJ recommends 1 teaspoon (4–6 g) per serving in soups and stews. We suggest starting with about half that and tasting, and cutting back the salt your recipe calls for, because Dashida carries 17,420 mg of sodium per 100 g.

Q: Is there a vegetarian or vegan Dashida? A: Yes: 비건 다시다 (Vegan Dashida), launched by CJ in November 2022, made from soy protein. The other versions are not vegetarian, and we found no halal-certified Dashida.

Q: Is Dashida the same as dashi? A: No. Dashi is an unsalted Japanese kelp-and-bonito stock; Dashida is a salted Korean seasoning powder. Its Japanese counterpart is Hondashi.

Q: What can I use instead of Dashida? A: A crushed beef bouillon cube with less added salt, or, better, a 15-minute anchovy-kelp stock. Avoid Japanese dashi packets.

Sources

• CJ The Market, search "다시다" — every CJ price in this article (beef 500 g / 1 kg / 2 kg, anchovy, seafood, clam, cold noodle, Gold, Premium Gold, Vegan, 진한다시), read 10 October 2026; the beef 1 kg and 쇠고기 진한다시 product pages for CJ's usage guidance (4–6 g per serving) and the 진한다시 description
• Danawa price comparison, "다시다 500g" and "쇠고기다시다" — online lowest prices, 10 October 2026
• Costco Korea: 백설 쇠고기 다시다 1.2kg x 2 — price, nutrition per 100 g (sodium 17,420 mg, 871%), allergens
• Shinsegae TV Shopping: 쇠고기다시다 2kg — full 원재료명 및 함량, "쇠고기 함량 5%(정육기준)", allergens
• CJ CheilJedang: Dasida brand page — 1975 launch, "lip-smackingly delicious" name origin
• CJ Newsroom, "국민 조미료 다시다, 50년 롱런의 비결은?" (23 November 2023) — tenfold production in two months, 80%+ share, Kim Hye-ja's 27 years, 산들애 2007, Vegan Dashida
• CJ Newsroom: 비건 다시다 launch (27 October 2022) — soy protein, pack sizes, Korean Vegan Certification Institute and V-Label
• Newsis, "'그래, 이 맛이야'…어느새 46년 '고향의 맛' 다시다" (25 April 2021) — 20 November 1975 launch, 1983 milestone, 25,000 tonnes a year, sales near ₩300 billion, 80%+ share, Kim Hye-ja's 25 years
• The Guru, "CJ제일제당 '다시다' 日 인기몰이" (23 November 2023) — exports since 2014, No. 1 and No. 5 in Qoo10 Japan's K-seasoning category
• 다시다 (Namuwiki, user-edited) — Lee Byung-chul's Miwon remark, the Hondashi brief, the dashi name theory, salt and MSG share estimates
• Economist (Korea), "'감칠맛' 찾는 소비자 덕…식품 시장 조용한 강자된 '이것'" (12 May 2024) — aTFIS 2023 seasoning retail figures: market ₩319.5 billion, Dashida ₩107.3 billion, Miwon ₩53.7 billion

Formulations differ between the Korean domestic packs and export versions, and prices change weekly. Check the label on the box you actually buy.