Demonstrating Umami

[guitarjim]

Working on an umami-themed dinner menu. I want to start with an educational experience before the appetizer to teach folks what umami is, since it's not easy to identify like salt. I've read a bunch of materials on it. Suggestions included a cup of water with 1/8 tsp MSG added to it, and doing a side-by-side scrambled egg bite, one plain and one with MSG added. I've tried the egg method and you can feel/taste the difference, but I'm not sure it's pronounced enough for everyone to get it.

It would be great if I could really give their brains something to hold on to as the move through the other courses.

I'd appreciate any other ideas you may have.

Thanks.

[btbyrd]

The dinner itself should be the educational experience. Grafting it on beforehand with MSG scrambled eggs is weird. 

[guitarjim]

All due respect, but I disagree.  When learning to identify flavors in wine, whiskey or whatever, the proven method is to highlight the flavors that should be present, normally through vials that are sniffed.  This accentuates that aspect of the wine when the taster takes a sip.  I don't think of that as weird.

 

To just serve a room full of people a series of umami rich dishes and tell them that what they are tasting is umami does nothing to help them, and I would feel that I was being arrogant.

[gfweb]

Hmmm.

 

Is this a lesson or a meal?

[guitarjim]

Both.  Most people don't really understand what umami is.  I've been asked to cook an umami themed dinner.  Seems logical (to me anyway) to incorporate a bit of education along with that.  The clientele are average folk, not chefs, and not hard core foodies.

[gfweb]

It might not be easy to do this without trickery.

 

What sources of umami do you want to use?

 

I could see deviled eggs with and without mustard...hamburger with and without soy......

[guitarjim]

I'm wide open on sources, and trickery is fine as long as it's legit.  Your examples show the challenge.  A hamburger has umami.  A hamburger with soy has more umami.  But is the differential great enough that the average person will get it?  I think the average person will taste the soy, but won't necessarily recognize that it has increased umami.

[Alex]

Have you done the A-B test with anything other than scrambled eggs? Maybe something blander or less distinctive, like stir-fried bok choy thickened with a light cornstarch slurry.

[guitarjim]

Alex.  Thanks.  I haven't tried something like bok choy.  That's a fair point.  

[Mjx]

I'd present three small portions of plain rice to each, with sides of a mushroom duxelles, roasted tomatoes (if you can find really good ones), and soy sauce. You could try straight MSG, but on its own it tends to taste of mass-production, so I'd go for sources of umami that are more complex, and help the guests to identify their shared savouriness.

 

ETA, are these personal guests, or clients? If they're clients, they'll probably be more open to an actual lesson, and feel that it adds value to the experience, but if they're dinner guests, they may prefer a more subtle, integrated approach to learning about umami.

[btbyrd]

The thing to do is start them out with a cup of dashi.

I have been umami-bombing myself for like 15 years. It's not really all that mysterious and I think you're getting too in your head about it. I don't know how many people you're serving, but my initial thought would be to do 3-5 canapes each featuring a different classic umami-rich ingredient. Also have a shaker of MSG on the table and let guests taste it themselves by salting their finger or whatever. Parm, shiitake, miso, bonito flake, some crudo cured in kombu.... you know, whatever. But at that point you're basically just doing a mini-meal as hors d'oeuvres. That's how I'd want to do it, but I'm cheffy and pretentious. The easier route is just to start with dashi. Good dashi is simple and contains two classic sources of umami. It was by investigating the properties of dashi that umami was discovered in the first place. Start at the beginning. Free glutamic acid from kombu + isosinate from katsuobushi. Maybe serve two dashis, one classic and one with dried shiitake for an extra dose of guanylate. Or a whole dashi flight also featuring some crappy hon dashi or your own synthetic "dashi" constructed from MSG and magic powders.

 

I don't know, it's your dinner. Go nuts.

 

Edited December 30, 2024 by btbyrd (log)

[Shel_B]

Recently, I've experimented a bit with the concept being discussed.  I like turkey burgers and discovered that adding a small amount of soy sauce to ground turkey greatly enhances its flavor. And just last week I added some soy sauce to a tuna salad ... wow! I was quite surprised by the increased depth of flavor.  I'm talking about a small amount of soy sauce like a teaspoon to a pound of ground turkey and something similar for the tuna salad.

 

Perhaps something to think about for this dinner ...

[weinoo]

I like the idea of rice and various accompaniments, as well as dashi.

 

As a matter of fact, there's a great source for dashi of all types, here in Brooklyn. I love this shop...

 

https://okume.us/

 

Where they will custom blend any dashi ingredients of your choice, and bag them for you.

[haresfur]

18 hours ago, Mjx said:

I'd present three small portions of plain rice to each, with sides of a mushroom duxelles, roasted tomatoes (if you can find really good ones), and soy sauce. You could try straight MSG, but on its own it tends to taste of mass-production, so I'd go for sources of umami that are more complex, and help the guests to identify their shared savouriness.

 

ETA, are these personal guests, or clients? If they're clients, they'll probably be more open to an actual lesson, and feel that it adds value to the experience, but if they're dinner guests, they may prefer a more subtle, integrated approach to learning about umami.

 

I like this idea and think you could also do rice with salt, rice with sour, rice with sweet to show that none of those cover the umami flavour and that the umami dishes have more in common with each other than they do with the other tastes

[guitarjim]

11 hours ago, weinoo said:

I like the idea of rice and various accompaniments, as well as dashi.

 

As a matter of fact, there's a great source for dashi of all types, here in Brooklyn. I love this shop...

 

https://okume.us/

 

Where they will custom blend any dashi ingredients of your choice, and bag them for you.

That is an insanely cool web site.  Thank you.

[Mjx]

8 hours ago, haresfur said:

 

I like this idea and think you could also do rice with salt, rice with sour, rice with sweet to show that none of those cover the umami flavour and that the umami dishes have more in common with each other than they do with the other tastes

 

This would be a really strong way to position umami!

[Alex]

9 hours ago, guitarjim said:

That is an insanely cool web site.  Thank you.

 

It's also a cool shop. During my last visit to NYC I picked up some Kyoto dashi, which was the base for the first course of last week's Feast of the Seven Fishes. 

[weinoo]

20 minutes ago, Alex said:

 

It's also a cool shop. During my last visit to NYC I picked up some Kyoto dashi, which was the base for the first course of last week's Feast of the Seven Fishes. 

 

Did you make furikake after infusing the dashi?