Ways to include umami flavor to your meal

Many of us possess wandering taste buds and tend to get bored of eating the same type of food preparations over and over again. With the presence of so many lovely and flavorful ingredients, we can certainly add variety to our daily meals and make them less boring to eat. Read on to know how adding the umami flavored food products will make your meals delectable and interesting!

We have known four different types of taste since our childhood days, that is, sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. But, it is only until we attain some sense that we get comfortable with the fifth taste option, umami. The smooth, subtle and savory flavor of umami is known to increase the palatability of food preparations even when prepared in the low quantity of fats.

• Fresh tomatoes are easily found and are a commonly used ingredient that can be used to incorporate the umami flavor to your food preparations. It is advised to use the fresh or home made tomato sauces instead of making use of processed varieties. Red ripe or super ripe tomatoes are rich in glutamic acid, which is responsible to add the umami taste in tomatoes. The umami taste intensifies when the tomatoes are cooked with onion and fresh herbs.
• Mushrooms are naturally endowed with umami taste and can be used as a substitute for the ground beef and turkey. Of many varieties of mushrooms, shiitake and enokitake are the varieties that are pretty high in umami taste and can be added to meat loaves, meatballs or meat sauce when used in ground form. Mushrooms also add lovely umami boost to egg preparations, salads and pasta dishes.
• Seafood such as cod, tuna, shrimp, mackerel, shellfish, oysters etc., are loaded with lovely umami flavor and can be added or substituted in various vegetable and meat preparations.
• Nori is brimming with umami taste and this dried seaweed can be diversely added to various food preparations of your choice. Sweet potatoes are another commonly used food item that can leverage the dish with lovely umami flavor and fills the belly quite sooner because of its high fiber content.
• Sweet potatoes can also be used to various preparations such as soups and salads, to add interesting texture to these preparations.