UMAMI-The taste of Mushrooms

We are known with the 4 basic taste of food i.e. salty, bitter, sweet, and sour but after the discovery of mushrooms, a new taste sense has been introduced named “UMAMI-the savory taste”.
The delicious taste of mushrooms Umami is a combination of all four taste and is more likely to similar to the taste of cooked meat or broth.

The word umami typically means “deliciousness” in the Japanese language. Umami taste refers to the taste of the glutamate compound. The most important property of glutamate is that it stimulates appetite and makes you feel full and allows you to eat less salt.

The glutamate is a compound used commercially to enhance the flavor of recipes. So mushrooms are used as taste enhancers in various recipes of pizza/pasta or omelets. Umami brings balance in recipes, make them more delicious.

MSG (monosodium glutamate) or E numbers are the commercially available sources for artificial mushroom glutamate.

There is much food whose flavor tastes like umami such as meat extract, ripe tomatoes, celery, Chinese cabbage, soy sauce, fish sauce, yeast extract and of course mushrooms etc.

The glutamate is an amino acid found in mushrooms contains 3 components i.e. ribonucleotides, inosinate, and guanylate.  These compounds are synergists to glutamate and bring even more taste enhancement ability. This synergy brings 8 times stronger taste enhancement power.

There are many types of edible mushrooms including button, oyster, enoki, shiitake, king oyster etc. whose benefit is little different from each other but the taste is about similar to each other when cooked i.e., delicate, mild, meaty UMAMI-taste.