The Fifth Taste

Japanese Restaurant By Alva Pratt

Sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness, these are the tastes we commonly talk about but is that it?

You might say, spiciness, but WRONG! The spiciness is not a basic taste, it’s not a result of the taste buds sensing the flavour of the food, but instead, spiciness is a form of pain sensation. Interesting, right? So, what is the fifth taste we are talking about?

Umami

Umami, うま味 or 旨味is a Japanese word but also the official name of the fifth taste, and it’s only included as part of the taste sensations besides the four common tastes by scientists recently. Umami is sometimes described as meaty or fishy, it’s because umami is commonly found in stock and fish soup. The chemical produces umami is glutamic acid, and it’s found in meat, fish, tomatoes and mushrooms etc.

Miso

Japanese people discovered and utilized umami thousand years ago, the iconic umami dish is Miso Soup. Miso soup is cooked with the stock called dashi, seaweed, soybeans, and other ingredients, these ingredients are rich in umami.

Miso Soup By Taste.com

The stock or dashi is cooked dried bonito flakes and seaweed. To make a dried bonito (called Katsuobushi in Japanese), a bonito needs to be cooked, deboned, dehydrated, reshaped, aged and sun-dried, these procedures get rid of other flavor and extract the purest umami flavor out of the fish, and the fish will finally be turned into a hard, dried and wood shape material, when needed, the cook need to shave the Katsuobushi into flakes with a dedicated shaver.

Ummm… it sounds so complicated and unachievable to cook Miso at home. Not at all, nowadays there’re many products available allowing you to cook Miso at home, you need:

• Miso paste
• Bonito flakes
• Dried seaweeds

Now to cook Miso, you need to:

1. Boil 500ML water
2. Put Miso paste in a strainer and immerse it in the water, use a spoon gentle dissolve the paste into water
3. Add bonito flakes
4. add dried seaweeds when served

Posted by Joe Zhou