Just Bento

Here is the Wikipedia explanation of umami, which is pretty good. Umami is that 'yummy' taste you get from many foods; it's not salt, sweet, bitter or sour. As the Wikipedia entry says, it's the flavor that occurs naturally in meat or chicken or fish, as well as many vegetables. Soup stock is like liquid umami in a sense. In Western/European cooking, stock = umami is most often extracted from meat, bones and vegetables; in Chinese cooking the base of many dishes is a good rich chicken and/or pork based stock. In Japanese cooking, umami = stock is dashi, usually made from konbu seaweed and dried bonito (fish) flakes or dried anchovies (niboshi). (In recent times, most people no longer make soup stock, but rely on readymade 'umami' in the form of stock cubes or canned stock. A lot of prepared savory foods contain glutamates, especially premade soup and things.)

Umami is also strong in soy sauce and miso - as it is in things like Worcestershire sauce. I often talk about 'adding extra umami' to vegetarian or vegan dishes, since with the absence of meat and fish things are apt to taste flat or bland. So it's important to add umami from dried mushrooms, certain vegetables like onions and celery, miso, soy sauce, seaweed, etc.

Hope that helps!

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Umami.

I see... that's an interesting concept.