Umami is ineffable. Technically, it’s the fifth category of taste, next to sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. And technically, umami-rich foods have high amounts of the amino acid glutamate, often giving them a brothy or meaty quality. But spiritually, umami defies categorization.
For those of us who aren’t trained chefs or culinary scientists, it’s hard to quantify, much less explain. And while cooking with umami-packed ingredients makes pretty much everything taste better, I’ve found it also requires a dose of every Type-A homecook’s worst nightmare: guesswork.
I’m pretty far from Type A in other realms of my life, but in my early days of learning to cook for myself, I was a recipe-follower to a fault. Slowly over time, I noticed that most New York Times Cooking recipes need double the garlic, and occasionally I’d feel bold enough to eyeball my spices instead of carefully measuring them out. But few dishes that I would make for myself carried the same oomph of the dinners I ate growing up, made by my dad.
Little did I know, he had a few tricks up his sleeve.
When he was fresh out of college and living in New York, he went to culinary school – and my stomach has reaped the benefits ever since. It’s a cliché at this point that the great cooks all developed a love for their craft at a young age, watching their parents or grandparents in the kitchen. But for whatever reason, I never had much of an interest in cooking. I was spoiled by unmitigated access to my dad’s gourmet creations, and probably more than a little intimated to try my own hand at what everyone knew was his “thing.”
As much as I love to eat, it would be well into my adult years before I finally started to cook for myself on a regular basis. But now that I’ve mastered the basics – and can follow a recipe like nobody’s business – I’m realizing part of what takes a meal from good to great is the chef’s creativity and willingness to lean on umami-packed additions that provide just the right amount of balance to a complex dish. All along, my dad was adding hits of vinegar and soy sauce and anchovy paste to foods where they mostly go undetected, aside from that perfect savory note that rounds out each bite.
As I’ve done more cooking on my own, I’ve found the confidence to branch out and follow my dad’s lead, by building umami in my dishes with splashes and dashes and gobs of some of the most underrated and versatile pantry staples around.
Learning to trust myself and my palate has opened the door for me to experiment with flavors and textures, and create better meals with what I have lying around my kitchen. From miso paste in chicken soup to parmesan rind and soy sauce in my pastas, I’m learning to be less skittish with ingredients that don’t traditionally belong in familiar dishes, but go a long way in beefing up the flavor profiles of even my most beloved comfort foods.
The moment I started playing around with unexpected ingredients in my dishes, I knew I’d graduated from simply “making food” to actually “cooking.” Of course, everyone’s version of “unexpected” looks a little different, depending on cultural influences. In some households, these additions – some of which I’ve learned from my dad, others I’ve picked up on my own – might be totally normal. But for me, they’ve transformed my relationship to the food I make, and helped me unlock a new level of creativity in the kitchen.
Here are some (mostly) umami-packed ingredients that amp up the flavor of pretty much anything you’re cooking up. And remember: If at first you think it doesn’t belong in a particular dish, add a little and see what a difference it makes. That random addition might be exactly what you had been missing.
