I didn't know what umami was, exactly; I thought of it like a magical elixir, the culinary hero pumping up food's "yum factor." It's savory and salty, like a ramen made of long-simmered bone broth.

An umami Mexican food staple, chapulines – grasshoppers – are being added to food and drinks in Hong Kong. We learn how, and find about their rise in popularity.

Umami seasoning is a powder made from ingredients such as dried mushrooms, garlic, tomato powder, seaweed, miso, nutritional yeast, and other umami foods. You can buy it premade or make your own.

Umami is present in almost all savoury foods and is one of the five primary human tastes, along with salty, sweet, bitter and sour. It is often conspicuous by its absence, like the lack of meat ...

Foods rich with umami flavor include: Aged cheeses: Blue cheese, gouda and cheddar are some of the most umami-packed cheeses due to the breakdown of proteins that takes place during the aging process.

FoodNavigator was roaming the show floor, noting eye-catching innovations from an exciting cohort of newcomers. From umami flavouring made from split peas to herbal medicine-derived functional ...

This complexity of umami's might also explain why it wasn't isolated and recognized as a taste until relatively recently in Western culture. It was a Japanese man, inspired by his wife's rich kelp ...

Umami functions more as a complementary taste, heightening the saltiness or sweetness of other foods. This subtle role may be why it has eluded widespread recognition for so long.

Umami From Scratch at Monday Night Foodball Mon 6/23 at 6 PM, ... Mike Sula (he/him) is a senior writer, food reporter, and restaurant critic at the Chicago Reader.