What is Umami?

The chefs featured in this book describe umami in many ways: a delicate taste, a mild, subtle taste, a taste that spreads across the tongue, enveloping it completely, lasting longer than other tastes, a mouth-watering sensation. Those of you that are just starting to understand umami and incorporate umami in your cooking may find it difficult to imagine just how umami tastes from these comments. But once you become acquainted with the taste, you will enjoy the challenge of combining umami-rich foods and extracting umami to make original broths and stocks. Umami not only helps us to create more flavorful dishes, but also to serve healthier foods with less salt or animal fat. We hope that by reading this book, you will understand the unique characteristics of umami, and by actually tasting umami through your own experiments, you will learn to use umami ingredients with more confidence.