Dried skipjack tuna (bonito) flesh — boiled, defatted, and shaped into a hard stick-like form — a Japanese fish product. Normally used as a condiment, it is shaved into flakes that season dashi stock and countless dishes with deep umami flavour. Repeated smoking, drying, and fermentation — sometimes with beneficial moulds — make it one of the hardest, most shelf-stable fish products in existence, keeping for months at ambient temperature. Shaved katsuobushi visibly moves atop hot dishes as the rising steam lifts it.