this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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Food and Cooking
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My own tips for simple chemicals:
Add MSG. Another meaning of MSG besides Monosodium glutamate is "Makes Stuff Good", because besides normal salt and fat, it’s another great flavor enhancer for anything savory. And no, it almost certainly doesn’t give you headaches, that was racist bullshit and has long since been disproven.
Baking soda and the Maillard reaction are friends. You know how they tell you, you can’t caramelize onions in 5 minutes? With baking soda, you can. Add a knife’s tip and bam. Just be careful, it also makes them burn far more easily. This also works with meat, where the meat keeps water better and browns more beautifully. One of my favorite uses is for roasting cauliflower, which gets a deeper brown and tastes so much better in cauli mash.
Sodium Citrate for cheese sauce. You want creamy cheese sauce? Like for Nachos? Add a teaspoon of sodium citrate to your cheese when melting, and it will all combine without any of the fat separating. It’s best for dips, but it can be used for something like mac & cheese in a pinch, but you’ll get better results there if you make a proper roux.
Regarding MSG. I'm convinced that MSG is a complement to salt. If I had to choose between adding just salt or MSG, I'd go with salt.
I make a "savory salt" mixture that I use in place of salt everywhere except for things like pasta water.
It's 90% salt. 7.5% MSG. 2.5% I+G. All by weight.
If I didn't have I+G, if just do 10% MSG. But the I+G seems to additionally boost the MSG.