Do vegetarians still recognize/appreciate/cook with umami?

September 13, 2013 5:45 PM

If you're a vegetarian, can you please report whether you (1) know what umami is, (2) enjoy it, and (3) cook with it?

I was talking to a pescetarian who apparently does not know what it is. I've met lots of Westerners who don't have a word for it, but they do understand the idea. This one doesn't. I even brought up a bunch of umami-flavored things that he could eat, like dashi and kombu and cabbage and mushrooms and MSG, but he didn't recognize any of them as imparting any particular flavor. I'm trying to figure out if this is just an idiosyncratic gap in one person's palate or if in general people who don't eat meat don't appreciate meat flavor as much.

posted by d. z. wang to Food & Drink (45 answers total)

Yeah, I think it's just that guy. I've been a vegetarian for 14 years and am an umami believer. Miso, dude!
posted by c'mon sea legs at 5:48 PM on September 13, 2013 [10 favorites]

Vegetarian for 30ish years, and I can report yes, yes and yes. It seems like I first became aware of the term maybe 5-10 years ago, and it was like a light bulb went on.
posted by Empidonax at 5:51 PM on September 13, 2013

Definitely idiosyncrasy. One of my favorite vegetarian umami dishes is a Thai marinated mock duck.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 5:52 PM on September 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

I also think that if vegetarian palates did not appreciate meaty flavors, there wouldn't be such a huge market for fake meat in general (not just mock duck). I'm not sure if you've noticed the proliferation of fake meats available over the past few years, but as a vegetarian I can eat much more than just tofu and Boca burgers these days. There are several different kinds of fake chicken, steak, etc. to choose from (i.e. fake bacon, fake sausages) and the way these are made just keeps on getting better.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 5:55 PM on September 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Westerners do have a word for it, the word is "savory." There are a lot of things that would probably be more familiar to a Westerner as being savory than daishi and kombu. Gravy, for example.
posted by cairdeas at 5:56 PM on September 13, 2013 [13 favorites]

I think many Westerners in general, whether they eat meat or not, aren't super aware of it because they haven't heard about it. Like, they may be able to tell you that a particular dish falls short of their expectations (especially if it's a vegetarian soup and they're meat eaters) and that may well be because it has no umami in it, but they may not be able to articulate that.

To me "savory" is a broader term than umami - a category of things that include things with umami flavor but also other things that lack it.
posted by needs more cowbell at 6:06 PM on September 13, 2013

Dorito chips, addictive umami at its best!
posted by nanook at 6:07 PM on September 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh, yes, love umami flavor and deliberately try to cook with it.
posted by nanook at 6:08 PM on September 13, 2013

I'm a pescetarian and I've never heard of the word. (I'm in the UK, not sure how relevant that is.) However I get that it means savoury, and I get what savoury means.
posted by billiebee at 6:09 PM on September 13, 2013

Vegetarian for a about 15 years. Never heard of it.
posted by 4ster at 6:10 PM on September 13, 2013

I suspect that the term/concept has more traction in the US than other parts of the English-speaking world, and I think 'savoury' has occupied the spot in a less specific way.

But heh, Marmite.
posted by holgate at 6:15 PM on September 13, 2013

Yes, yes and yes. Vegetarian for 28 years (10 of those in the UK). I think if you have been cooking for a long time and/or take cooking seriously, you know what the flavour is and seek it when necessary, even if you don't have the name for it (I wouldn't call it savoury, it's more than that).
posted by goo at 6:16 PM on September 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Mix miso paste with veganaise, and use it as a dipping sauce for homemade french fries.

You will find that you are enjoying vegetarian umami.
posted by oceanjesse at 6:17 PM on September 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think awareness of the term in the west has risen sharply in the last ten years or so. I'm vegetarian and definitely know the term, was glad to acquire the term because it so neatly summed up a particular element that makes a dish satisfying, and deliberately seek this flavor in food I cook or buy.

Foods more familiar to western palate that have it -
parmesan or romano cheese
soy sauce
certain egg preparations
worcestershire sauce?
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:18 PM on September 13, 2013 [4 favorites]

I never thought of umami and savory as the same thing. Savory seems like a much broader category, whereas umami seems more of a specific type of taste.

I would guess that there wouldn't be a vegetarian / carnivore divide as much as an 'exposed to Asian cuisine' / 'not exposed' divide.
posted by kanewai at 6:21 PM on September 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

As a supplementary answer, given the examples above, (soy sauce, Parmesan etc) then I understand better what it means, and yum!
posted by billiebee at 6:22 PM on September 13, 2013

In my experience (I'm an American, and I've discussed this with people from the UK, but I can't vouch for the rest of the Western world), the English-speaking Western world conflates taste and flavor when it comes to "savory", which is why we've appropriated the Japanese word umami as a more specific word. Thyme is a a savory herb, but it has no significant umami. Cream cheese and other soft cheeses have some level of umami, but still lend themselves to desserts like cheesecake; likewise with, say, tomato jam.

The problem is that, in Western cuisine, ingredients with a lot of umami are rarely used in non-savory foods, where savory is dinner and sweet is dessert. It makes it hard to develop the idea of the separation between the two concepts. If umami on its own has never been demonstrated to someone, it's hard to describe it as "savory taste" and not have it intertwined with the idea of savory herbs and saltiness.

Likewise, someone unaccustomed to curry flavors may find the "sweet" spices in curry confusing and offputting at first, as they try to reconcile the idea of cloves and cinnamon in dessert with the garam masala in their curry.

This is more a question of lack of exposure to the ideas and the separate component of umami than whether or not someone eats meat. Vegetarians are still exposed to plenty of umami flavor from lots of sources.
posted by WasabiFlux at 6:22 PM on September 13, 2013 [5 favorites]

Nutritional yeast is full of umami flavor, and also a staple of vegetarian and vegan cooking. There's a certain kind of dish that, as a friend of mine once said, just "tastes vegan;" something about the combination of nutritional yeast and salt or soy sauce, the flavor combo you might otherwise call umami. Vegan faux mac-and-cheese with lots of nutritional yeast would be a good example.
posted by ActionPopulated at 6:25 PM on September 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

It's a new term. It's not weird your friend doesn't know it.

I remember hearing about it in the mid-90's when it still was not accepted as the 5th taste, along with sweet, salty, sour, and bitter.

Chef and former vegetarian here.
posted by jbenben at 6:25 PM on September 13, 2013

I'm a vegetarian and I love umami. Thyme is a good herb for adding a bit of umami flavor to plain vegetables, like potatoes. I'm also a fan of shallots. And mushrooms. And Parmesan cheese. Doesn't everybody (who is not a vegan or allergic to milk, I mean) eat Parmesan cheese?

Maybe your friend is just not very into considering and describing flavors.
posted by BlueJae at 6:43 PM on September 13, 2013

It's a Japanese word, usually used to mean good flavor, deliciousness. As a "fifth taste," it refers to the flavor of glutamates, like MSG.
posted by xo at 6:43 PM on September 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Porcini mushrooms and chanterelles are such great umami goodness!
posted by Yavsy at 6:45 PM on September 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

Umami isn't really something you cook with, it's more of a characteristic of things you cook, or dishes you make. Things that are high in glutamates are typically considered to have a strong umami character, but this does indeed

My all time favorite umami flavor? Shiitake mushrooms, sautéed in butter if you swing that way.

Other things that have lots of glutamates, some of which have been mentioned;

Tomatoes, mushrooms, seaweed, peas, walnuts, soy sauce, miso, blue cheese.
posted by furnace.heart at 6:45 PM on September 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Vegan faux mac-and-cheese with lots of nutritional yeast would be a good example.

The golden bowl at The Grit in Athens, Ga. -- fried tofu coated with nutritional yeast on brown rice, topped with yeast gravy -- is basically a umami bomb. That's at a pretty well-known vegetarian restaurant.
posted by holgate at 7:00 PM on September 13, 2013 [4 favorites]

I've been a vegetarian for something like 11 years. I couldn't identify umami if you asked me to, but I think that's unrelated to being a vegetarian and just cultural. I'm vaguely aware that there is/was some kind of umami fad in American restaurants, but a) I don't go to that sort of restaurant and b) it seems to be a meat-focused fad (well, there's totally a miso in/on everything fad that I do get as a vegetarian).

I don't associate a common taste/sensation/whatever to mushrooms, seaweed, parmesan cheese (which is frequently not actually vegetarian, by the way) and so on. I'll guess that umami is the thing that makes those dried seaweed snacks so appealing, but I don't personally identify that as something specific, probably because menus weren't telling me how umami my food was or whatever.
posted by hoyland at 7:06 PM on September 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

It's a Japanese word, usually used to mean good flavor, deliciousness. As a "fifth taste," it refers to the flavor of glutamates, like MSG.

And in about twenty years of speaking Japanese, I've never heard a Japanese go on about umami like North American foodies do. In Japanese, it's a much more generic term. In fact, the Japanese word for MSG is "the source/essence of taste/flavor".

I am an omnivore, and I do not taste "umami" as a particular taste. I frankly think there is a fair amount of emperor's clothes going on with it in the west. For example, foods like mushrooms and tomatoes are said to be "umami" but I have never heard anyone describe green tea as "umami" even though it has a much higher glutamate content. If people realized the "umami" of green tea, I should think that I'd see it consumed plain a lot more, but instead it's almost always adulterated with sugar or honey or some sort of fruit juice.
posted by Tanizaki at 7:43 PM on September 13, 2013 [12 favorites]

You have to distinguish between knowing about a word and knowing about the thing described by that word. I've been a vegetarian for over 20 years, and I keep hearing about "umami" but it strikes me as a trendy synonym for "savory." So I don't use the word, but that doesn't mean I don't know about "umami" foods. A lot of people don't know what "philtrum" or "aglet" mean, but they know what those things are.
posted by John Cohen at 8:06 PM on September 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

I am a vegetarian going on about five years and I have no clue what you are even talking about. I absolutely avoid MSG and meat-flavored or savory foods are all good with me. Seriously, never heard of "umami" and don't really care to.
posted by AppleTurnover at 8:16 PM on September 13, 2013

I hadn't heard of the word until today, but I'm a 20-year vegetarian and I love most of the non-meat foods mentioned in the link.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:41 PM on September 13, 2013

I think "umami" is a term that people who enjoy reading about food would know, and people who don't read about food would never encounter. I know "umami" because I love reading food lit and crit and it gets discussed a lot in that kind of material; it's not like it's printed on the steak packaging at Trader Joe's.
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:07 PM on September 13, 2013

I frankly think there is a fair amount of emperor's clothes going on with it in the west. For example, foods like mushrooms and tomatoes are said to be "umami" but I have never heard anyone describe green tea as "umami" even though it has a much higher glutamate content.

Vegetarian here. I think Tanizaki is spot on. Upper middle class foodies and hipsters have assimilated "umami" as a concept and like to throw it around liberally these days. Personally I'm skeptical that they would all pass a blind taste test if they had to tell low and high MSG foods. Identifying and cooking with umami seems more about social status than anything else ("I'm culturally sophisticated enough to use this foreign and relatively new food concept that many people aren't aware of").
posted by dontjumplarry at 9:50 PM on September 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Having said that, I am aware of a definite meaty savoriness that is in high-quality vegetarian mock meats, but not in poor-quality ones. Whether that's "umami" per se, or something rather more complex that glutamate is just a part of, I'm not sure.
posted by dontjumplarry at 9:53 PM on September 13, 2013

FWIW, I'm a meat eater, have heard of umami and read what it's supposed to be, but I still have no idea what it is, so it's not just your vegetarian friend. I can't think of anything that tomatoes, Worcester Sauce and all the other things listed share in the way I experience their flavour/taste.
posted by penguin pie at 1:55 AM on September 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Hoyland, you are aware, I hope, that there are such things as vegetable and microbial rennet? I buy most of my umami-ish cheese at Trader Joe's, where these ingredients are fairly common.

I will admit to occasionally cheating and eating animal rennet based cheese myself (it's not like you can always figure out where your cheese comes from when you are, say, at a restaurant), but vegetarian cheese, even artisan vegetarian cheese, is getting much easier to find! So I assume there are plenty of vegetarians out there who have tasted Parmesan without cheating.

Different people taste things differently (c.f.: cilantro). So I think it's quite possible that some people do not really notice umami as a thing, because their tastebuds just don't respond that much to it. But I can absolutely personally find a distinct flavor similarity between a really good tomato, a portabella mushroom, and soy sauce. I noticed it myself well before I had figured out the name for what it was (I've been a vegetarian since before umami was a trendy thing, and found myself seeking out just those foods to replace a flavor I found myself missing from meat). I don't think it's particularly logical, given what we know about genetic tasting differences in people, to assume that because someone can taste a flavor that doesn't really figure for you, that person must be imagining it. That's like saying red is probably imaginary just because you yourself happen to be red-green colorblind.
posted by BlueJae at 7:17 AM on September 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

Vegetarian (with vegan leanings) here.

1) Yes - though this is a term that I learned maybe in the last 10 years; once I heard the term, I knew exactly what it was referring to.

2) Yes, I do love the umami experience, and it is something that vegetarians have to work harder than meat-a-tarians to get (yes to parmesan*! yes to yeast! yes to soy sauce/miso paste!)

3) I don't consciously make a point of cooking with it, but sometimes if I haven't had the umami experience for a while and I happen to make something super-umami, then I eat gobs and gobs of it; and then realise I was missing it.

P.S. Popcorn w/ brewer's yeast and the 'spike' seasoning -- yum!

*There is a 'parmesan-type' cheese we can buy here made without rennet.
posted by Halo in reverse at 8:04 AM on September 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

I can't agree that umami is the same as savory. It's my observation that "savory" is used to indicate "not sweet" ie salty -- as in savory pies being meat pies, to distinguish them from the sweet default that is a pie with a fruit filling. Early on, I heard "umami" defined as "tastyness" or even a fifth flavor, distinct from sweet, salty, sour or bitter. Of course, YMMV.
posted by Rash at 9:27 AM on September 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

I feel like the old saying about distinguishing pornography from art applies to umami vs other tastes as well--something along the lines of "you know it when you encounter it."

I was a vegan for almost a decade and I understood the concept of umami right away when it was popularized a while back.

Nutritional yeast gravies always seemed to have an umami taste to me.
posted by dottiechang at 10:19 AM on September 14, 2013

For those who are unsure, taste some MSG right out of the shaker. This is almost a pure 'umami' taste, in the same way that sodium chloride is almost a pure salty taste and sugar an almost pure sweet taste.

Once you know the taste it's easier to pick it out in other foods. Though green tea baffles me - I don't taste it at all, though all the books say it's there.
posted by kanewai at 10:33 AM on September 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

"Westerners do have a word for it, the word is "savory.""

No, it's closer to unctuousness or brothiness. Savory just means having a salty or herby flavor.

I heard about it around the late '90s, when there was some sort of research released about the umami tastebuds, though I couldn't tell you what that research was today. It made for a bit of a fad though.
posted by klangklangston at 1:23 AM on September 15, 2013

Oh, yeah, and I'm a lifelong vegetarian, and know what it is and where it comes from.
posted by klangklangston at 1:24 AM on September 15, 2013

Not vego but just thought I would chime in because indeed, the way people experience certain tastes may vary a lot. Soy, miso, parmesan, mushrooms, nuts (even when not salted) all taste umami to me; tomatoes and peas do not. Green tea, if it's genmai sencha with the roasted rice grains in it, is very umami and I love it; green tea plain is just meh. (Sweet green tea isn't nice at all.) So even with people who recognise what it is, there's differences with how people perceive tastes which might also be a factor for your friend.

And how's his sense of smell? I have a personal pet theory which is in no way scientific that people who have a not very good sense of smell or merely average sense of smell don't appreciate the complexity of tastes the way people with a good sense of smell do.
posted by Athanassiel at 1:58 AM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

I’d be another that has no idea what umami is referring to, although I’ve known of the word and idea for at least a decade. The foods described have nothing in common to me. Not a vegetarian.
posted by bongo_x at 10:01 AM on September 15, 2013

Guinness-flavoured crisps = Umami

[Evidently I was craving umami the day we bought these, as I nearly ate the bag of them in one go]
posted by Halo in reverse at 10:41 AM on September 15, 2013

"I’d be another that has no idea what umami is referring to, although I’ve known of the word and idea for at least a decade. The foods described have nothing in common to me. Not a vegetarian."

One of the major places that Americans will encounter umami is in ketchup (which, to upthread, if you're having trouble finding the umami of tomatoes, a good ketchup will help). There's even more in fish sauce, which is where ketchup mutated from.
posted by klangklangston at 1:50 PM on September 15, 2013

Oh, and just had some black sesame ice cream, which reminded me that umami can be sweet as well as savoury.
posted by Athanassiel at 8:52 PM on September 15, 2013