It’s All About the Umami
Perhaps you’ve had this experience:
You have a recipe that relies heavily on chicken or beef broth for flavor. In order to “parvise” the recipe (or make it vegetarian), you replace the meat broth with immitation chicken or beef broth from a mix. The recipe works beautifully, but you’re not happy about your reliance on phony meat, so one day you nobly prepare a homemade vegetable stock and use that instead. To your surprise, the flavor is one-dimensional and unappealing. You were better off with the mix.
A Boston Globe article that I read recently got me thinking about this phenomenon in a new light. The article is about the fifth and least familiar taste, umami. The word umami, which roughly translates as “delicious” in Japanese, was first used to describe a specific taste by the Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda, who isolated monosodium glutamate, or MSG. Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that MSG is unhealthy unless you’re allergic to it; unfortunately, however, many people are.
Scientists attribute umami to certain amino acids and nucleotides including, but not restricted to, glutamate. It seems that the flavor develops in meat as it cooks and the proteins are broken down into amino acids. (Braising meat is the best way to bring out the umami.) Vegetables develop umami as they ripen. Fermentation brings out the umami in wine, beer, and Asian foods like miso and fish sauce.
Clear vegetable broth isn’t nearly as umami-rich as chicken broth or soup mix with MSG, presumably because you need a higher concentration of specific vegetables in order to get deep umami flavor. A rich mushroom, squash, or tomato broth is fine, but only if you’re making mushroom, squash, or tomato soup.
The authors of The Fifth Taste: Cooking With Umami claim that you don’t need MSG to make umami-rich food, and they seem to have plenty of vegetarian recipes to offer. Still, it seems to me that takes a bit more to pack umami into a vegetarian dish than a fleischig one. Here are a few tricks that I’ve found bring out the flavor I now know as umami in parve soups:
1. Make soups hearty, not thin and clear.
2. Use crushed tomatoes or tomato puree if the flavor is compatible with the type of soup you’re making.
3. Add chunks of sweet potato or winter squash to vegetable, split pea, and lentil soups.
4. Add a splash of dry wine (preferably red, if you’re using tomatoes).
5. Let soup simmer for a good 3-5 hours, if not longer.
As for parve hot and sour soup, vegetarian grape leaves, and matsa farfel kugel, I’m sticking with the MSG.
(Cross-posted to Apikorsus.)
You may consider adding to your list of tricks using a bit of soy or worcestershire sauce, where appropriate.
Quite logical. Have you ever used worcestershire sauce in pasta sauce?
Nope, I’ve only used red wine as my umami-booster.
I read the URL in my history and couldn’t figure out why KosherBlog would right about my OTHER alma mater–The University of Miami! Great pun and great info.
I’m sure I don’t need to mention this to foodies such as yourselves, but just in case… be aware that worcestershire sauce contains fish-derived ingredients, and should not be used with meat recipes if it’s your practice to keep them separate.
Hi, Ralphie–
On that note, the heksher on the worcestershire sauce will indicate whether or not it can be used with meat recipes. For example, Lea & Perrins is labeled OU-Fish since there’s a significant-enough quantity of anchovy. Heinz Worcestershire, on the other hand, has a plain OU… not enough fish, thus acceptable with meat.
Don’t know if its the umami or whatnot, but making a vegetarian vegetable broth from roasted vegetables, including root vegetables, makes a nice broth for a soup base. Once upon a time the NYT magazine had a recipe for this and I use it occasionally with good results.
Mushrooms, especially shitakes, are a great source of umami. Throw some dried mushrooms into a spice grinder and store the powder. It really enhances vegetable soups and stews of any sort without making them overly “mushroomy”.
Karen: That sounds like a great technique. I have found that roasting tends to bring out the flavor in vegetables and meat in a way that boiling doesn’t.
Dan: I never would have thought of grinding dried mushrooms, although I have seen recipes that make use of the cooking liquid. Interesting idea.
I have a recipe that requires a can of cream of chicken soup, but my husband is a vegetarian. Do you have a suggestion?
All the tips are good, but I still keep a shaker of MSG for when I ccan’t quite get the umami level to where I like, and using soy sauce, miso, etc. is not an option. As long as you did your due diligence in making the dish as flavorful as possible, you should only need a tiny bit of it.
Also, you’re much better off using pure MSG rather than something like fake chicken soup mix. The mixes have other stuff which make the food just taste like fake chicken soup (yuck!).
MSG is usually found in the spice section. I found a brand with an OU called “Accent”.