Bitterness Boosters

While we typically don’t seek to add bitterness in the foods we cook, we do cook and eat foods that feature this taste, and it’s more common than you might expect. Several spices, such as cinnamon, taste bitter but we don’t notice them because they’re used in very small doses and their taste is masked by other dominant tastes in the dish. Flavor reactions like caramelization and the Maillard reaction are used to add a complex note of bittersweet flavor in almost every recipe that uses heat. Let’s look at some of the more common ingredients that supply bitterness.