this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
86 points (96.7% liked)
Asklemmy
43963 readers
1231 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm sorry for offending your ancestors. I hope they can find it in their hearts to forgive me lol
Tbh, I'm not very good at cooking and I rarely add salt to my food. If I want saltiness, I usually get it through ingredients like soy sauce, for example. I guess I don't mean that I use the msg instead of salt, but I do use in foods where you might add salt, and I just happen to not since I added something else that serves a similar purpose. Does that make sense? But then, like I said, I'm not good at cooking and I just try to make things and experiment a bunch (a lot of experiments have failed horribly)
Also - maybe it also makes a difference that I eat vegan/vegetarian and I don't always know how to fill in the "meaty" gap that I feel like can be missing.
The purpose of salt in cooking is as a flavour enhancer. It brings out the other flavours that already exist in the food. Salt is not a flavour. It's why a lot of recipes call for salt to taste, as how much you add can vary a bit. Next time you cook something that tastes a bit dull, try adding a small amount of salt and note what it does to the flavours as you add more. If it tastes "salty" you probably added too much.
Source - I was a chef/cook for 9 years
They seem to be a lot more confused than angry, lol!
But yeah, thanks for the explanation about your use case. This, and your comment about using MSG on tomato-ey stuff has clarified things for me. The reason I brought up soy and fish sauces earlier is because they too, have MSG, and depending on the flavor profile I'm after, I might elect to use one or the other. That usually takes care of MSG in a lot of cases.
.... Taken that way, we both do a similar thing.
Ah, that explains a lot, thanks! And I don't really have experience in vegetarian/vegan cooking so I am afraid I can't help with that. There are meat substitutes, of course, but the one I had experience with relied on gluten to achieve a meat-like texture. I've heard, too, that mushrooms can used to give that earthy taste that can be enhanced with MSG. Tofu as well. But please take these with a pinch of... MSG, lol!