Umami: The 5th Taste, Explained | Food52 + Ajinomoto

CONNECT WITH FOOD52

ABOUT FOOD52
As a one-stop shop for joyful living, F52 connects discerning home cooks with the interests they're passionate about via award-winning food and lifestyle content across platforms. We provide our audience with the recipes and solutions they crave to eat thoughtfully, live joyfully, entertain beautifully, and travel differently.

[uhohwhoops]

At the end, if you watch this video with the caption on, he says something like, “if you’ve had food that is deeply flavorful, chances are it’s because of your mommy.” True story, bro!

[APisceanSlant]

Watched the whole thing, still have zero clue what he's talking about.

[wah]

This is like trying to explain how something looks to a blind person
This like trying to describe sound to a deaf person.

[abrahamhernandez]

What if “umami” is just the biggest prank ever?

[Scrubdi]

A word people use to describe something that makes them seem like they know what they're talking about

[MushrooMilkshake]

What is umami flavor?

"Oh ya know, it's like cheese, or soy sauce, or ketchup."

[frosty]

Umami was first on adult swim, and now he's a flavour, wow. what's next he becomes kami?

[lalalala-pbly]

Umami's components are glutamic acid, glutamate and monosodium glutamate. The glutamic acid gives it a sourness, the glutamate is salty and monosodium glutamate is also salty. Sometimes in umami there is also a sweetness a tingling sweetness. CONCLUSION: Umami is salty, sour and sometimes a bit sweet in a good delicious way. :D

[danfoxdude]

Umani is just a word for people who want to sound sophisticated when they taste something.

[ShinKyuubi]

It's amazing to me that MSG is still kind of a bad word. I brought up Accent/MSG when I was talking to some people about a recipe and they looked at me very weird...like I was adding something really bad to it when before it sounded good..ya know the look, the kind of disgusted sneer like you tasted or smelled something not super heinous but still unpleasant. See..I like to look things up when I don't know something, especially if I'm putting it in my body so I had done some research on MSG, the effects of it on the body, and the so called "Chinese Food Syndrome" that started the whole slam against MSG, my love of anime helped out too because glutamate shows up a LOT in the Shokugeki no Soma/Food Wars series so it made me want to research it even more. When I told them that it appears naturally in stuff like tomatoes and mushrooms they looked stunned, people have heard MSG is bad for you for so long that when someone comes by with actual facts about it and how it is in fact NOT bad for..most people look like you slapped them with a fish.

[mevebelanger]

The auto-generated subtitles said that: "if you're eating something and it's deeply flavorful delicious, chances are it's because of your mommy".

Oh, ok.

[indigotheperson]

maybe umami is the friendships we made along the way...

[nickmeale]

When my food tastes bad I add nutritional yeast, fish sauce and soy sauce. Great umami flavors!

[pscs]

Can we all just appreciate how pumpkin-like those tomatoes are?

[ironiedusort]

Never in my life had I heard about this umami till I started watching videos on youtube about Japanese cooking.

[lynisganda]

When I cook a simple boiled pork soup (just pork ribs, onions, peppercorns, potatoes, and bok choy), I get to taste umami by seasoning my broth to my liking, then add a few shakes of MSG (Ajinomoto is my favourite brand). It's effect on my taste buds was just amazing - like when one comes in through a door to see the most wonderful room ever, that's how it felt like.

[victormunhozzz]

Okay, from this video, I conclude that Umami is just synonymous with savory.

[idot_lion]

Anyone come here after watching shokugeki no soma ?

[vanessareynolds]

Soooo it's not really a flavor? It's just the feeling of wanting to eat more because its good????

[tyrandyb]

Thank you for explaining this. I knew of it, but not exactly what it was.