Saus.Guru’s Flavor Secrets Leaked, Bandits Identified!
Hello there, lover of good taste!
Because let’s be honest, if you didn’t appreciate top flavors, you wouldn’t be reading this blog post right now. Our flavor secrets have been leaked. The culprits? It’s us.
Do you know the four basic tastes?
The answer is easy, right? Sweet, sour, salty, bitter. But wait, there’s more! I bet you know very little about this. As flavor makers, we work with two additional taste building blocks: a fifth and sixth dimension of taste that create a party in your mouth. Allow us to introduce umami and kokumi.
At Saus.Guru, we love sharing our passion and knowledge with other enthusiasts of good flavors and delicious food. That’s why we gladly reveal our “secrets” in our blogs and enjoy talking about our methods and why we use them.
Umami and kokumi are two flavor maestros that are not just your ordinary salt and pepper in our sauces. They are the conductors of our flavor orchestra. Let’s take a look at why.
FLAVOR SCIENCE EXPLAINED
Umami: The Fifth Taste Dimension
Umami, or “savory” in Japanese, earned its place in the taste premier league around 1900. Unlike the other four tastes, umami sets the mood at the flavor party. It adds an independent savory element to your taste buds. The flavor can be described as meaty, broth-like, and flavorful.
Professor Kikunae Ikeda is the taste DJ who discovered umami in 1908. He experienced an umami bomb when he added kombu, a Japanese seaweed, to his dashi soup. It turned out that monosodium glutamate (MSG), responsible for the umami taste, was the flavor enhancer.
Kokumi: The Flavor Enhancer
Kokumi is not exactly the sixth taste but rather an all-encompassing flavor enhancer. It’s still relatively unknown to the general public but plays an essential role in Saus.Guru’s method of naturally amplifying flavors, like an extra amplifier with double bass speakers.
Kokumi enhances and prolongs the five basic tastes. Words that express the idea of kokumi are continuity, fullness, heartiness, and richness, all indicating a full-bodied flavor. Like umami, kokumi is activated by certain amino acids or small peptides.
Our Flavor Secret:
Making Sauces with Umami and Kokumi
For us sauce geniuses, umami and kokumi are the secret ingredients in our sauces. They not only help us create sauces that “taste good,” but they also enhance the flavor of the dishes they accompany, making the dining experience more satisfying and enjoyable.
Umami, with its meaty, broth-like, flavorful profile, can add depth and richness to our sauces. On the other hand, kokumi can help our sauces bring out the best in a dish.
The best part is that MSG and other flavor enhancers, despite their bad reputation, are naturally found in fermentation or aging processes. These are important flavor characteristics in food that we, as sauce makers, can leverage. Want to know which products we extract our “MSG” from? Stay tuned for our upcoming blog number 3#.
Conclusion: The Magic of Umami and Kokumi at Saus.Guru
At Saus.Guru, we believe that understanding the sensory effects of umami and kokumi is more than just an interesting taste journey. It is a vital tool in our sauce toolbox. With these two taste sensations in our holsters, we can create sauces that are not only flavorful on their own but also enhance the experience, satisfaction, and WOW factor of the dishes they accompany.
So the next time you have a dish that tastes a bit meh, reach for one of our culinary supporters, and together we’ll turn it into a party! Not only will we bring your dish to life with an explosion of flavor, but we’ll also take your taste buds on an adventure through the unexplored worlds of umami and kokumi. It’s not hocus-pocus, just a little scientifically backed magic, straight from our kitchen to yours.