How to cook delicious food without MSG

Use sea salt

In the past, housewives often used old salt to last through the year; the longer it was kept, the more flavorful the salt became. Place coarse salt next to the stove, add a little lime to absorb moisture so it doesn't become watery. Traditional pho restaurants also reveal that when cooking the broth, they only add coarse salt to create a sweet aftertaste.

According to research, sea salt contains many micronutrients such as sulfate, carbonate, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron, zinc, so when cooking combined with other ingredients, in addition to the salty taste, it will have a sweet aftertaste, soft taste, mineral taste, and iron taste.

Nowadays, there are various food sources of iodine such as sea fish, crab, seaweed, chicken eggs, cabbage, celery, cereals... in the daily menu, so housewives should balance and add salt when cooking without using MSG.

Use fish sauce properly

Regarding cooking methods, there is an old saying that a dish will taste worse if 'meat without onions, soup without fish sauce', meaning that pork dishes go well with onions, soups and dishes that need a little fish sauce to round out the flavor and make them naturally sweeter.

In addition, the amino acids in shrimp paste react with lactic acid from the yeast to create amino salts with a lingering sweet taste, helping to harmonize the flavors of the dish, bringing a relaxing feeling to the taste buds.

Fermented fish sauces (traditional fish sauce, shrimp paste, fermented fish sauce...) help break down proteins into amino acids (amino acids) to create a sweet aftertaste that even flavor enhancers (MSG, MSG) find difficult to achieve.

That is why many Northern noodle dishes and soups are often seasoned with a little shrimp paste such as eggplant soup, snail stewed with banana and bean curd, vermicelli soup, sweet potato leaf soup; the Central region often seasoned with fish sauce or fermented fish sauce; the South seasoned with linh fish sauce at the end of sour soup to create a very unique sweet aftertaste.

Note that amino acids are sensitive to high temperatures and easily decompose, creating a sour taste, so they should be added near the end of the cooking process to retain the best flavor.

Use bone broth, boil meat

According to research, glutamate - the main ingredient of MSG is found in many natural daily foods such as meat, bones, seafood, vegetables and fruits. 100 grams of meat and bones of all kinds contain 10 - 20 mg of glutamate.

Cooking broth, bone broth and using boiled meat is to bring natural sweetness to the dish. Depending on the type of bone, the simmering time is different, when simmering, the temperature should be low. If the broth needs to be clear, open the lid to break down the collagen structures from cartilage and ligaments in the bones into gelatin, not making the water cloudy.

Depending on the type of bone, the simmering time is different. Fish bone broth is 20 - 30 minutes, chicken bone broth is 2 - 2.5 hours, pork bone broth is 3 - 4 hours, beef bone broth is 6 - 8 hours to achieve a delicious sweet taste and ensure nutrients.

Use vegetables, tubers, fruits

Vegetables, tubers, and fruits also contain a lot of glutamate such as: Cabbage contains 50 mg, tomatoes 250 mg, dried shiitake mushrooms 1,060 mg, seaweed and algae from 1,200 - 3,000 mg....

While bone broth takes a long time to make, the Japanese create dashi broth with umami flavor from seaweed and dried bonito in just 10 minutes.

Many Vietnamese soups and vermicelli dishes from North to South often add tomatoes to the broth to both increase the eye-catching red color and add a naturally sweet glutamate flavor.

Nowadays, many vegetarian dishes such as hot pot, noodles, many chefs instruct how to cook delicious sweet broth from mushrooms, nuts, fresh coconut water.

For vegetable broth, choose vegetables that are naturally sweet and have few leaves, such as radish, jicama, carrots, onions, sugarcane, squash, pears, apples... If using vegetables, use the hard stem (core), do not use leaves because when stewed for a long time, the vegetables will turn rancid, ruining the flavor of the dish.

This broth is suitable for vermicelli dishes, soups, noodle dishes... With broth stewed from various types of seeds (sweet corn, red apples, beans, coriander seeds) depending on the type and dish, grind or roast until golden brown to cook.

Use seafood

Bivalve mollusks such as clams, scallops... contain up to 140 mg of glutamate per 100 grams. That's why clams are often added to sweeten the broth in hot pot dishes.

Be careful to put it in quickly and take it out to get the juicy and sweet clam meat, just enough time to absorb the sweetness into the hot pot broth. Do not leave the clams in the hot pot for too long because the hot pot broth boiled for too long can easily spoil, producing nitrite when eaten, reacting with amino acids in the body to form nitrosamines compounds that are not good for digestion.

Soups made from shrimp and squid are also very sweet without MSG. Even fish soup cooked in a fishing boat style is the same.