Umami: what is it, and why should you care?

Hard to pinpoint but easy to recognise, umami is known widely as the fifth taste. It’s in lots of foods you eat all the time and it has a super power. It’s extremely addictive.

An ode to umami, the mysterious fifth flavour beyond salty and sweet, bitter and sour.

Hard to pinpoint but easy to recognise, umami is the deep, meaty, savoury, addictive taste in food such as Parmesan, mushrooms, anchovies, miso, tomatoes, soy sauce, fish sauce, and dried seaweed. I swear it’s also on my toast, right there in a smear of Vegemite.

As Kate Gibbs from Delicious.com.au notes, umami was discovered more than a century ago by a Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikeda, and handed the word “delicious” in Japanese.

Inspired by dashi broth, the chemist honed in on kombu, the seaweed, to dig in to reasoning of all this deliciousness. In doing so he pinpointed glutamate, an amino acid, as the source, and then went on to produce the stuff in industrial quantities, patenting the notorious flavour enhancer MSG.

Monosodium glutamate, the easy way to get that umami hit, was soon demonised as the cause of an allergic reaction known as Chinese restaurant syndrome, a theory that’s since been debunked by scientists.

Umami. It’s right there on your morning toast.

Escoffier, the 19th-Century French chef who brought veal stock to the table, believed a fifth and savoury taste was key to its popularity and his success. It also goes some way to explain the success of burger chains, which use umami both in natural and artificial forms to secure their finger-licking success. Browned meat, ketchup, tomatoes, say stuffed into a sugar-laden bun (lest not forget that addiction, either), create a perfect triumvirate of deliciousness because of umami.

It’s now a culinary juggernaut, and lacing cheap, non-nutritious foods with MSG to make them irresistible is rife. It’s why we go to the culinary heights of licking the seasoning off corn chips. But I’d rather turn to the magic of umami; write a love song rather than a tragedy.

Look at any decent restaurant menu; it’s riddled with umami. Chefs and food writers have thrown around umami as a term for a while, bashed it about knowingly.

But every mother with a wooden spoon is making it in her slow-cooked bolognese, too; that pleasing secret oomph coming via a teaspoon of British Marmite or tomato paste.

Yep, there’s a tonne of umami in your bolognese sauce, too. Picture: iStock

One diehard gastronome with strong feelings for the biltong from the Woollahra-based butcher Victor Churchill gets it sliced and eats the whole bag on the drive home, and she is actually chasing umami. And the guy who made that Parmesan gnocchi with brown butter and chicken jus for you? He’s a keeper.

For dieters, umami is a means to feel sated, fuller, content. Cast the burger to the side, but a bowl of dashi broth, a scattering of Parmesan in a salad, vegetables cooked in rich bone broth, umami may be every calorie counter’s fast-track to a dream waist.

Umami overhauls the tragic, lonely ingredient that won’t cut it for dinner and becomes something sating and savoury, rich and pleasing. Take the average fridge. A bouquet of broccoli you’re not sure what to do with is whipped into an entire lunch for one when steamed and tossed briefly in a pan with an anchovy and lemon or soy sauce dressing. Dried shiitake mushrooms, revived and added to miso soup, is an umami double hit. Fresh, quality Parmesan, grated over a raddichio salad, and asparagus charred on a barbecue grill and strewn on a puddle of miso and tahini sauce. Umami, after all, maketh the meal.

Related story: What exactly is guanciale, and how do I use it?

Originally published on Delicious.com.au as Umami: what is it, and why should you care?

Originally published as Umami: what is it, and why should you care?