Umami - the illusive fifth flavour that will transform you vegetables cooking

Do you want to eat more vegetables? Maybe you’re trying to cut down on meat as well. Have you thought about umami? Here’s the thing: we love meat because of the savoury deliciousness. So logically, if you want to eat less of it, the source of that savouriness has to be replaced with somethings else.

It’s been somewhat of a buzz word in foodie circles in recent years. To some people it might just seem like another hipster trendy thing that’s cool to talk about.

Let me assure you, umami is anything but that. If you want to make vegetables the start of the show, then you have to understand umami. Thick books have been written on the subject. But in this article, we’re going to distill exactly what you need to know in order to start mastering the illusive fifth flavour.   

A bit of history

In the early 20th century a Japanese chemist by the name of Kikunae Ikeda wanted to understand why Dashi, the ubiquitous Japanese broth despite containing no meat, had such a richly layered flavour.

He decided to focus his attention on Kombu, a type of kelp that is a key ingredients in dashi. Using various methods he was able to isolate crystals of glutamic acid, which is a type of amino acid found naturally in the human body. When he tasted the crystals they were savory and he therefore called called the flavour ‘umami’ translates to ‘pleasant savoury taste’.

Dried kelp known in Japanese as Kombu.

Kikunae went to off to start a company which to this day produces most of the world’s MSG or mono-sodium glutamate, which has a dubious reputation. It should be noted that most MSG isn’t, as popular belief will have it, used in cheap Chinese take-aways, but rather by the processed foods industry where is got E number 621.

We’ve actually got glutamate receptors on our tongues, which were discovered in 2007.

How our love of umami made us creative

Umami giving ingredients are the result of centuries of innovation by people who couldn’t afford to eat meat. We are hardwired to love the richness of glutamates, which are naturally present in meat.

But even though most people throughout history couldn’t afford meat, they weren’t going to let the fact deny them the pleasure they got from eating. So they got inventive and used fermentation to create things like soya sauce, miso paste, oyster sauce, and fish sauce.

Miso fermentation vats.

In France a similar situation spurred on the emergence of the stock based cuisine. Poor peasants had only bones and cartilage available in term of animal ingredients. So they invented stocks that were full of glutamates. In Italy things like parmesan rinds and chunks of dried ham would give umami to pasta é fagioli (pasta and beans), in Spain you’d have Chorizo giving depth and richness to chickpeas. Everywhere we look, ancestral cooking cultures would come up with ways to ‘hack’ the umami code and put delicious food on the table.

To start getting your head around umami, a great is way is to taste the difference between umami and salt. Simply dip your finger in a little bit of flaky salt and taste it. Then do the same with soya sauce. Whilst the soya sauce does have saltiness there is so much more going on there. This is a good way to start training your ‘mental palate’ to incorporate umami into your home cooking.

All-purpose Sources of Umami

Tomato paste and sun-dried tomatoes

Tomatoes contain lots of glutamates, which is a huge part of the reason why most people love tomato sauce so much. Sun-dried tomatoes are great for adding little bombs of flavour to salads, pastas, soups, etc. They can be mashed if you want to disperse the flavour more evenly.

Tomato paste is great in as part of the flavour base for soups, stews, casseroles and dals. It’s a must to fry it off e.g. with your onions in a flavour base, rather than putting it straight into the liquid. By frying it off you will get a much more rounded result, as the acidity in the paste will break down.

Dried shiitake mushroom

I always have dried shiitake mushrooms around, because they are so incredibly versatile and lend such a fantastic richness to culinary creations from soups, stews, casseroles to stir-fries, omelettes an and sautés. Try grating umami onto an omelette or into whatever your cooking. You can also blend a bunch of them into fine powder and store that in a jar for convenient use.

Soya sauce

Salt aside, soy sauce is probably the most widely applicable form of seasoning. And it’s not just for Asian cooking. A drop here and there gives richness and depth that will take most dishes to the next level. When it comes to leafy greens, something you’ll want to eat ideally on a daily basis, there’s nothing quite like a good soya sauce to make them sing. Make sure you get a naturally brewed one. It should contain only soya beans, water, wheat, and salt. If there’s anything else in there like E numbers and unpronounceable stuff, then it’s made using an industrial method that speeds up the process, but kills the flavour. This Guardian article provides more detail.

Oyster Sauce

Oyster sauce is another fantastic source of umami, which is particularly good for veggie stir-fries, and fried noodle dishes. It’s less versatile than soya sauce and of course it isn’t plant-based, so if you want to keep it that way, plant-based, then this is off your list. Read more about the wonders of oyster sauce in this BBC article.

Miso Paste

Miso paste on the other hand is completely plant-based, made from beans (traditionally soya beans), koji culture, and salt, sometimes with the addition of a grain like barley or rice. If you are the kind of cook who likes your veggies, then miso, if you haven’t already discovered its wonders, could well be your new best friend.

Dunk a spoonful into soups, stews, and casseroles. Dissolve in water and toss with steamed green. Add to stir-fries. If you want to retain the gut health benefits of miso, it should be added when whatever you’re adding it to is below 60°C. That was the beneficial microorganisms stay alive, and can do their thing for your gut.

Seaweed

Besides being a veritable vitamin and mineral bomb, seaweed also has fantastic culinary properties. You can actually replace fish sauce or anchovies with powdered seaweed. Dulse or kelp work really well. Bake it for five minutes in a 160°C oven. Then blend it to a fine powder. This powder can now be used like you would use fish sauce or anchovies.

Dried Irish Dulse.

Say you want to make a pad thai. The sauce contains both fish sauce and oyster sauce. Replace the fish sauce with seaweed powder and the oyster sauce with a dark miso. Voila! You’ve got a vegan pad thai sauce that comes really f’ing close to the real thing.. if not better!

Anchovies and fish sauce

Have you ever had pasta puttanesca? If you haven’t you really should try it, because it’s one of the very best pasta sauces out there. So incredibly rich and savoury. Why? Well because of U M A M I of course! You can think of anchovies and fish sauce the same in culinary terms, as fish sauce is made from fermented anchovies. You can recognise the quality of a fish sauce by the percentage of fish to salt. The higher the fish content the better the quality. 50-60% is a good benchmark.

Get Cooking!

Go out and get some of these ingredients. Start playing around with them when you cook things. Before you know it, your mental palate will start to get it. The difference in how these ingredients deliver umami is subtle, and there is no right or wrong.

Some people might prefer miso in a dish where another would add anchovy. Totally cool. The important thing here is that if you want to really, truly fall in love with vegetables and make everyone else around the dinner table do the same, you’ve got to get those glutamates going.

Happy home cooking!