Hey {{first_name|there}},
Welcome to number five of open kitchen. Last week I called tomato paste and soy sauce an umami bomb and just moved on, like everybody knows what that means hahah. So this week we slow down and do it properly: what in the world is umami?
No chemistry lecture. We keep it to what it tastes like, where it hides in our kitchens and a bite at the end with four sources of it, all from the supermarket.
What in the world is umami
You know sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Umami is the fifth taste, the savoury one. Think of a spoonful of good broth, a ripe tomato, a bit of parmesan or a drop of soy sauce. Underneath the sweet, the sour or the salt, there's something deeper that makes you want another bite, and that's umami.
The word is Japanese and roughly means "delicious". In 1908 a chemist called Kikunae Ikeda wanted to know why kombu dashi tasted so good, and found out it was glutamate, an amino acid. He gave that taste its own name, and your tongue has receptors made just for it.
You've been eating it your whole life: ketchup on fries, parmesan on pasta, a stock cube in your soup. Here's roughly how much of it is hiding in things you already have. Check the last bar.
Where it hides in your kitchen
Most of it is already in your fridge, and the pattern is easy to remember: umami lives in things that are aged, fermented, dried or cooked down. Glutamate gets freed up when proteins break down, and aging, fermenting, drying and cooking down either do that or concentrate what's already there.
Tomatoes, and the more concentrated the better. A ripe tomato has some, but tomato paste and sun-dried tomatoes have way more. That's why one spoon of paste did so much in the demi-glace.
Parmesan. Years of aging break its protein down into free glutamate, which is why a rind in a soup or sauce tastes like it cooked all day. Keep your rinds in the freezer (natural rind only, not the wax or plastic kind).
Soy sauce, miso and fish sauce. Fermented, so same story. A spoon in a bolognese won't taste like soy sauce, the bolognese just tastes deeper.
Anchovies. Cured fish with a lot of umami. Melt a few in warm oil and they dissolve in a minute or two, the fishy taste goes with them and all you get is depth.
Dried mushrooms and kombu. Drying concentrates everything. Dried shiitake and kombu are basically umami in a bag, the same two that made the fish stock in number three taste so deep.
When to reach for it
In number one I said that when food tastes flat, it needs salt or acid. But sometimes you add both and it's still flat, and that's when you're missing depth.
Soups and stews that taste thin. A spoon of miso or a splash of soy or fish sauce, stirred in near the end.
Tomato sauces, bolognese and ragu. Melt two or three anchovies in the oil before the onions go in, or drop in a parmesan rind while it simmers, and give it the time. Nobody will taste fish.
Anything without meat. Meat has umami built in and vegetables have less, so dried mushrooms, kombu, miso and tomato paste do that job.
Stack it
Here's the cheat code: pair two different kinds instead of piling on more of one. Glutamate sits in tomato, parmesan, soy and kombu. A second family, the nucleotides, sits in fish, meat and dried mushrooms. Put one from each side together and the taste gets way bigger than just adding them up.
That's why tomato and anchovy, parmesan and cured ham, and soy and mushrooms always just work. It's the same trick as the kombu, shiitake and fish in the fish stock, and the recipe at the end is built on it.
Time beats umami
Time always beats umami. An anchovy at the end of a 20 minute pasta sauce is gonna help a lot for sure, but it's not gonna make it nonna.
If you want depth and crazy nonna level sauce, the secret's in the time and all the flavours combining and layering, kinda like leftover pasta the next day. The sauce, the parmesan rind, the anchovy, the tomato paste, they all hug and love each other and only go crazier.
What to look out for
They all count as salt. Same as number one: parmesan, soy, miso, anchovies and fish sauce are seasoning, so taste before you add any extra salt.
More is not better. Too much and everything tastes the same, like one big savoury soup. Start with a teaspoon, taste, then decide.
Soy and heat, like I promised. Heat changes soy sauce: the fresh, almost fruity smell fades and it turns roasty and caramelly. That's great in a braise, but let it cook dry in a hot pan and it can go burnt. For that fresh soy flavour, stir it in at the end off the heat, like in the 45-minute demi-glace.
Quick one before the recipe. Number six is up to you, tap what you want. It takes two seconds.
What should number six be?
Try it this week
Warm a cup of plain tomato soup (or passata) with a pinch of salt and split it over three small bowls. Leave the first one alone. Stir a few drops of soy sauce into the second, and mash half an anchovy fillet into the third until it disappears. Taste them side by side. Same soup, but two of them suddenly taste like they cooked for hours. And if you make a sauce this week, save a spoon and taste it again tomorrow.
Recipe of the week: the umami bite
Four sources of umami in one bite, about 15 minutes, and everything's from the supermarket. It also uses what we did before: salt and acid from number one, fat from number two, and umami on top.
Rank: home cook
Time: about 15 minutes
Makes: 6 bites
What you need: a small frying pan
The toasts
3 slices of sourdough or baguette, each cut in 2 pieces
2 tbsp olive oil 0.4 or neutral oil, for frying
The tomatoes
250 g cherry tomatoes, halved
a pinch of fine salt (just a pinch, the rest of the bite is salty)
1 tsp soy sauce
To finish
6 anchovy fillets in oil
about 20 g parmesan, shaved with a peeler
freshly cracked black pepper
Fry the bread in half the oil on medium heat until golden and crisp on both sides, about 3 minutes a side, and drain on paper. Wipe the pan, add the rest of the oil and put in the tomatoes cut side down with the pinch of salt. Turn the heat up to medium-high and leave them alone for 3 to 4 minutes until they brown, then stir and cook another 3 to 4 minutes until the juice thickens and they go jammy. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the soy sauce. Spoon the tomatoes over the toasts, lay an anchovy on each, shave the parmesan over the top and finish with black pepper.
One thing to know: no time to cook? Put a thick slice of ripe tomato on the toast instead, then the anchovy, the parmesan and a drop of soy. Cold version, still four sources.
Why it works
Every bite hits umami from four sides. The tomato brings glutamate, and cooking it down concentrates it. Parmesan brings more from its aging and soy sauce brings it from fermentation. The anchovy brings glutamate plus a second kind (inosinate), which is what multiplies the rest. On top of that, the anchovy gives salt, the tomato gives acid and the oil and parmesan give fat, so it tastes like a finished bite.
Until next Wednesday
That's it for number five. Do the three-bowl test, make the bite and send me a picture, or tell me which bowl surprised you, I genuinely wanna see it. Questions about umami or anything else? Just hit reply, I read everything myself.
Struggling with sauces? I put my 5 hacks for when a sauce is split, bland or too thin into a free guide. Grab it here.
Wanna cook with me? Every week I post an extra tip in back of house that's not in the email, and it's where you show me what you made. It's free to join. Come in here.
See you next Wednesday ;)
P.S. Know someone who swears they hate anchovies? Forward them this one, they've probably been eating them for years in Caesar dressing. They can subscribe here so the next one lands in their inbox too.