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umami

fear and loathing

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The 5th taste:

1. sweet (sucrose)
2. sour (vinegar, lemon)
3. salty (NaCl)
4. bitter (endive)


5. umami ( "meaty," "savory": (Parmesan cheese, bacon, seared meat, mushrooms): chemically speaking it's glutamic acid or its sodium salt, MSG.


Glutamic_Acid.png



1-4 are perceived via specific taste buds in the mouth.


Umami, and the panoply of subtle flavors are "tasted" with the sense of smell, which occurs mostly in the nares.
 

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Are you woke about umami?
 

Ojb81

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Go to hell
 

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From my personal experience, the purest taste of umami might be dashi.


Dashi is a broth made from kombu (a wide, dark green leaf of an ocean algae, which provides natural glutamate), mushrooms (shiitake), and katsuobushi (dried, thinly shaved flakes of bonito).
 

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From my perspective, seared meat is the standard for umami.

The most highly concentrated form of umami is the fond, which is the dark brown crud at the bottom of the roasting or searing pan. It's there for the deglazing, but most people throw it out while scullerying "dirty" pans.

You cannot make decent sauce or gravy without deglazing the pan, which is a lot easier than doing the scullery work. Deglazing is easy using liquids like water, wine, broth, etc. Take the crusted-up pan, add the liquid. Heat until boiling. Gently scrape up the fond from the pan's surface, and it dissolves up easily into a rich, dark, full of umami "solution."
 

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What's your experience with umami?
 

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By the way, some people like to cook meat using the sous vide method, which permits selecting the precise, final desired internal temperature of the meat, using bagged meat submersed in a constant temperature, circulating water bath. No way to overcook the meat.


But the cooked product looks pretty much raw, although its perfectly cooked all the way through. There's no searing, no umami...


Anyone sous vide-ing meat? Can you sear it prior to the water bath, or after it comes out?
 

Ojb81

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By the way, some people like to cook meat using the sous vide method, which permits selecting the precise, final desired internal temperature of the meat, using bagged meat submersed in a constant temperature, circulating water bath. No way to overcook the meat.


But the cooked product looks pretty much raw, although its perfectly cooked all the way through. There's no searing, no umami...


Anyone sous vide-ing meat? Can you sear it prior to the water bath, or after it comes out?

Pretty sure you do only sear AFTER sous-vide
 

Mofo

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Pretty sure you do only sear AFTER sous-vide
That is correct, but F&L imagines himself an expert on all things. A true renaissance douchebag.

If you were to ask him about traditional recipes that involve boiling meat, he’d be more useful.
 

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By the way, some people like to cook meat using the sous vide method, which permits selecting the precise, final desired internal temperature of the meat, using bagged meat submersed in a constant temperature, circulating water bath. No way to overcook the meat.


But the cooked product looks pretty much raw, although its perfectly cooked all the way through. There's no searing, no umami...


Anyone sous vide-ing meat? Can you sear it prior to the water bath, or after it comes out?



These guys, who aren't fools, suggest searing after sous vide and toweling the meat dry.


Science: Why Sous Vide is Perfect for Cooking Meat | Cook's Illustrated
 

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about searing meat to produce umami:


The physical-chemical reaction is called the Maillard Reaction.

The Maillard reaction (/maɪˈjɑːr/ my-YAR; French: [majaʁ]) is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that gives browned food its distinctive flavour. Seared steaks, pan-fried dumplings, cookies and other kinds of biscuits, breads, toasted marshmallows, and many other foods undergo this reaction. It is named after French chemist Louis-Camille Maillard, who first described it in 1912 while attempting to reproduce biological protein synthesis.[1][2]

The reaction is a form of non-enzymatic browning which typically proceeds rapidly from around 140 to 165 °C (280 to 330 °F). Many recipes call for an oven temperature high enough to ensure that a Maillard reaction occurs.[3] At higher temperatures, caramelization (a distinct process) and subsequently pyrolysis become more pronounced.

Maillard reaction - Wikipedia
 
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