Umami rich dishes and food are most popular!

Why is bacalao, boeuf bourguignon, pizza and sushi popular dishes? Why is the ham from Parma and the spanish Jamon Iberico so celebrated and the parmagiano reggiano cheese so incredibly valued?

Is it only the flavors of a superb thai soup, and the balance between sweetness, sourness, salt and bitterness that makes the soup delicious? Or is it the excellent cooking skills?  Do these factors explain why we crave certain food? The answer is no. One more substance is important, the amount of umami in the dish. Popular food and dishes mentioned above, are all rich in umami and I have yet to find one single recipe from our common ground of famous dishes that does not include ingredients and/or methods enhancing umami taste.When you taste signature dishes of the world, you'll find umami.

FREE GLUTAMATE AND PURINES

If you study a fresh cut of parmigiano reggiano, you can see small liquid pearls on the surface of the cheese. This liquid is pure free glutamate, the most important umami tasting substance, an amino acid present also in soy sauce, cured hams, fish sauce and tomatoes, especially sundried tomatoes.

In addition to the content of free glutamate, where parmagiano reggiano has most of all known cheeses, there are a few other chemicals in food that are responsible for the savoury taste, namely inosinate, adenylate and guanylate.  Even in small amounts they will make a dish taste more delicious as long as the free glutamate is present already.

THE TASTE

With a little training, you'll be able to feel the umami taste as a pleasant savoury sensation in your mouth.  Once identified you’ll learn to taste the difference between a creamy dish from an umami rich dish, the latter having a watery complex mouthfullness that lasts longer than sweet, salt, bitter and sour and fatty. 

A FEW GUIDELINES

To know how to work with umami in your kitchen, you'll need some knowledge of umami enhancing methods and which ingredients and condiments you should choose. Here is a few tips: 

Umami taste is potentially present in protein of foodstuff. The taste develops when proteins are subject to i.e. drying, curing, fermenting,smoking, brining,salting, marinating, braising and cooking.

• Homemade stock is excellent umami and should be used whenever called for in a soup and sauce recipe, and for braising and poaching as well. (Dashi serves the same function in asian cooking.) Stock and dashi cannot be fully replaced by water and industrial made bouillon cubes.

• ·       Gourmet salting is scientifically proved to enhance umami taste in meat. Fresh meat should always be gourmetsalted for better taste.

• Fish sauce, salted anchovies, soy sauce, shrimp paste & sauce, worchestershire sauce are examples of umami bombs. They are often used because of their saltiness, but that is only partly true. They add lots of umami taste, more than you realize. If a recipe calls for one of these condiments, it is critically important to use them, you cannot replace umami by fat or spices, bouillon cubes or any other flavor.

• Meat should be matured naturally, not by mechanical methods.

• ·       Sun riped tomatoes, grown in natural soil in temperate climate are rich in umami, cherry tomatoes have most, romano tomatoes (San Marzano) comes next. Use good quality canned tomatoes if the fresh tomatoes are not in season. Sun dried tomatoes and tomato paste can also rescue a bland tomato dish.

• Fresh cheese has little umami. Matured cheese has more umami with the parmesan on top.

• Dried fungi has more umami than fresh, with shiitake being most precious. Dried shiitake has 10 times more umami substance (guanylate) than any other dried fungi.

• Umami synergy is superbly created when combining proteins from vegetables, fish/seafood and animals in the same dish (beef in oyster sauce, miso soup, thai shrimp soup, spanish paella, norwegian bacalao and japanese sushi.