The Yummy That Is Umami

With my appetite on the decline, I have been trying to find ways to make rice and veggies more flavorful. I was going overboard on the salt, then I tried using chicken bouillon cubes to add flavor - but basically, that's just chicken-flavored salt. Salt is not my best friend because I have too much Afro-blood in my ancestry.

This right here though... This makes any bland food so savory that it's should be a crime. It's umami seasoning (aka MSG):

Less than $6.50/16oz bag from Ajinomoto brand

And, yes, I have heard all the horror stories about MSG but I, personally, never had negative reactions from eating it in foods prepared in restaurants. I did have a co-worker once who said that MSG triggered her migraines. Do your research. I'm just here to talk about my experience using Umami as a seasoning.

So this is called umami seasoning but I just learned that what Umami actually means. 

Umami (/uːˈmɑːmi/, from Japanese: うま味 [ɯmami]) or savory taste is one of the five basic tastes (together with sweetness, sourness, bitterness, and saltiness). It has been described as savory and is characteristic of broths and cooked meats. (Thank you, Wikipedia)

Don't act like you knew that! Okay, maybe you did, but my ignorant self did not. I do know that whenever I tried to make my fried rice, there was always a little something missing from the flavors. It's the umami. As I joked to a friend, umami, my mami, I don't care, just give me the tasty flavors! (She thought the joke was corny, by the way...)

So, savory is the best word to describe this seasoning that I got (from Amazon, by the way). Instead of adding more salt to my fried rice (or whatever) and being disappointed with that something-is-missing feeling, just add some umami and boom, that's it. 

As I mentioned, I am eating a fairly simple diet of rice and veggies. I love rice and can eat it with just a little butter and salt/pepper seasoning, but that gets old after the first 6 or 20 days. I really needed to cut back on the salt but since I only rarely eat my rice sweetened, I had to change things up. What I've done the past couple of days is using the umami on the veggies that I eat. I can actually eat the rice plain and unseasoned as long as the vegetables have some serious flavor. The umami makes me go all Emeril and yell "Bam!" when I use it.

(By the way, when I was looking at customer reviews of this online, quite a few customers mentioned that this is their salt alternative. I forget that some people have many reasons - other than high blood pressure and weight issues - for cutting back on or cutting out salt in their diets.)

Now, the best thing, in my opinion, about the umami (aside from helping me cut way back on salt), is that I only have to use a little. I was worried that a six- or seven-dollar bag was going to look expensive as compared to salt. You know they practically pay you to take the salt out of the grocery stores. However, I put the umami in a little seasonings container and this small part of the 16-oz bag is going to last for months. 

That's what I'm guessing. I'll have to update this post when I have a better idea.

The grain of the umami is finer than salt and looks more like tiny crystal shavings if that makes sense. It's so fine that it's hard to see while sprinkling. I labeled the shaker just so no one mistakes it for salt or sugar. My family and friends are welcome to go into my kitchen like it's theirs so I don't want to accidentally make anyone sick.

This is the size of the bag compared to a standard AA-sized battery.

Back to the main reason that I switched to umami and away from salt. This umami has 125mg of sodium per 1/4 teaspoon compared to 590mg in the same amount of table salt. And umami packs so much flavor that I don't need to use as much. I doubt that I have used a quarter teaspoon of umami all day. 

The umami here on the left and the table salt (Hy-vee brand) on the left:

Keep in mind, ladies - less sodium equals less water retention... I'm just saying.

I found this teaspoon serving guide on the back label of the bag and laughed. I seriously do not use that even that much umami.

So, I guess I can just sum up by saying that this stuff came into my kitchen at the right time. This umami even makes eggs taste great. I was so tired of plain rice (and rice that I couldn't season quite well enough) that I was cheating and making rice pudding. Talk about calories... Now I am back to the rice with veggies and other mostly-healthy stuff. The umami (I refuse to call it MSG) is making food good again. Savory is definitely the word here.

At any rate, be sure to make sure that you can tolerate MSG/umami before you go out spending your money. You know better than to dive in unawares.

Peace
--Free





And because I have been so sedentary the last few days, I exercise vicariously through these dancing machines...

choreography by Keone  (and Mari, maybe?) Madrid

And my favorites, the Jabbawockeez

If I could move like this, I'd never stop dancing