Umami Seasoning

Umami is the deliciously rich, meaty flavor you'll get naturally from foods like parmesan cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, soy sauce, miso and mushrooms.

The Umami effect is to balance taste and round out the overall flavor of a dish. Umami enhances the palatability of a wide variety of foods.

Suggestions

• Mix 1/4 teaspoon Umami Seasoning with 1 Tablespoon butter, slather over corn on the cob or mushrooms.
• After seasoning in your usual way, add a pinch of Umami Seasoning to meats before barbecuing.
• Add 1/2 teaspoon per litre of stock when making any vegetable soups.
• Use in risotto and as a substitute for truffles, add to soups, stews and casseroles. Delicious rubbed onto pork fillet and steaks before cooking on the barbecue.
• Sprinkle on top of this avocado toast recipe
• Pour it over popcorn as a lower-sodium swap for salt
• Mix into homemade veggie burgers or inside the bun of one that's premade
• Use as a topper for roasted sweet potatoes (or any roasted vegetable)
• Sprinkle over grilled eggplant, or mix it into the marinade
• Stir into the coating for this delicious recipe for Panko-crusted chicken tenders
• Add on top of Nicoise salad or blend it into the dressing
• Dash it over this baked salmon with mushrooms before it goes in the oven and after

Umami is often referred to as the Fifth Taste (in addition to sweet, salty, sour, and bitter) and is described as a pleasant "brothy" or "meaty" taste with a long-lasting, mouthwatering and coating sensation over the tongue.

It's a Japanese term that translates to "pleasant savory taste," and it's really just that. Umami is the deliciously rich, meaty flavor you'll get naturally from foods like parmesan cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, soy sauce, miso, and of course, mushrooms.

Umami has a mild but lasting aftertaste associated with salivation and a sensation of furriness on the tongue, stimulating the throat, the roof and the back of the mouth. By itself, umami is not palatable, but it makes a great variety of foods pleasant, especially in the presence of a matching aroma.

Health Benefits

Some population groups, such as the elderly, may benefit from umami taste because their taste and smell sensitivity is impaired by age and medication. The loss of taste and smell can contribute to poor nutrition, increasing their risk of disease. Some evidence exists to show umami not only stimulates appetite, but also may contribute to satiety.

For those concerned about monosodium glutamate (MSG), fear not: because Umami occurs naturally in mushrooms,

Creating Herbies Umami

Umami … you may have heard of it, you may not know what it means. Umami is a Japanese word which applies to a certain delicious tastiness, a moreishness, that cannot fit with any of the other flavor descriptors: sweet, sour, salty, or bitter. Think if a fresh ripe tomato, warm from the sun, or Vegemite, or a mouth-wateringly delicious barbecued field mushroom.

Umami is naturally present in garlic, mushrooms, tomatoes, and capsicums, so it seemed a good idea for us to create a Umami blend, using, among other ingredients, black garlic powder, porcini powder, tomato powder and paprika.

This is not a complete spice blend like a curry or a barbecue rub, where no other input is needed, but, just as you would add a squeeze of lemon, or a pinch of salt, so you would add a little Umami blend to whatever you are cooking.

For instance, in an Italian-style chicken fry-up (onion, garlic, bacon, chicken, capsicum, olives, tomatoes), we added a tablespoon of Italian Seasoning (of course), then to go that extra bit further, we tossed in a teaspoon of Umami blend. Yum!

Fresh, natural, pure herbs and spices blended and packed in Australia from imported and local ingredients then flown directly to our California Epicurean Kitchen.