This was serendipitous! I saw the notification for this video just as I was about to explore the chemistry of umami! Thank you, Marc, for a series that will answer questions about that amazing fifth taste in such an entertaining way. Looking forward to Episode 2.
Seems that RU-vid's algorithm is now able to read minds 😆 I'm so glad to hear you found this helpful! In episode 2, coming out next Wednesday, I'm interviewing professor of microbiology who explains the chemistry of the fermentation process that creates umami in sake, miso, soy sauce, etc.
@@NoRecipes OMG, NO! So far, YT's algorithm is doing a pretty poor job of guessing my ad preferences. 😅 🤣 Episode 2 sounds great, Marc! I'll be there. I hope this series does well for you--I'd like to see more like it. 👍😊
I loved the first episode and can't wait to watch the rest of the series. You've included history and science in such an exciting way. Students in food science, chemistry, and history classes could watch these and learn a lot. I hope this is the first of many series that will bring the science of food to life as everyday common knowledge.
Thank you Doreen! I believe that becoming a good cook involves having a well rounded understanding of food so I'm always trying to expand my own knowledge, and this seemed like an area that others could benefit from as well.
👏👏👏 This is one of the reasons why I love this YT channel! Great content, superb video editing and I really learn alot! not just about recipes but kitchen hacks, history & science! Great job chef!
Exceptional video, Marc! You made the science very easy to understand. The graphics were super fun and cute! I do hope you can make this into a series; I would love to take that journey with you. Is NHK interested? Bento Expo is so popular, and you are already known by their audience. Your charisma and knowledge should make it a hit!
Thank you Kathy! I'm so glad to hear it was easy to understand. I've been working on this for months so it made sense to me, but I was worried that I was starting to get tunnel vision. Also glad the graphics were helpful. I had a designer illustrate them, but ended up doing all of the animation myself because hiring an animator was cost prohibitive. As for doing a show I'd love to be able to do it on RU-vid (though I wouldn't turn down an offer from NHK if it were offered 😆).
These are my passions and it what I would love to do more content about. So far this video hasn't been doing as well as I'd hoped, but hopefully things turn around over the next week so I can continue doing these.
This video is really needed for wide distro as umani has been overused and commercialized. I lived in Japan for 5 years and did not see umani being used until I saw it in a restaurant in NY. Look forward to the coming episodes. Thank you!
I don't have an issue with the word being used a lot, it's great to see Japanese loan word make it into the English lexicon, and its always good to have more words to describe the taste of food. The issue is that a lot of people using it don't seem to know what it means, hope this is able to do a small part in correcting that.
I'm really looking forward to this series. Thank you for defining "umami"; it is bandied about so often, but I agree that people do not use it specifically enough.
You're welcome Kathy! It's definitely a buzzword in the food industry these days and understandable why it gets misused since most people didn't learn about a 5th taste in school.
This is such a wonderful video, full of great information about umami. Thank you for all of your hard work on putting the video together, Marc. You did a great job! I'm really looking forward to the next episode!
Thank you Erin! I'm hoping this series turns out to be popular because I want to do more of these kinds of food-science-meets-ingredients kinds of videos. They're a lot of work to research and produce, but I think there's a lack of this kind of information and I think understanding the backstory helps find practical uses in the kitchen.
Notification just popped up in my inbox to watch this. Thanks! Note to viewers, try cooking with sake proper not "cooking sake." Cooking sake is filled with salt to prevent it from being classed as an alcoholic beverage and you won't get any of the aromas or umami of drinking sake. Cooking sake is ok to rinse meat with but for marinading and cooking - use sake, even cheap box sake which I use.
Yep absolutely on the salt. I never recommend cooking with "cooking" anything because the added salt will throw off recipes. But as I was researching this series I found out cooking sake does actually contain more umami. The reason is because breweries ferment whole grain rice for cooking sake (i.e. they don't polish away the outer layers). This makes for terrible drinking sake, but because the outer layers of rice contains more protein, it will also contain more amino acids. This also applies for drinking sake. Sake with less polishing (i.e. the cheap stuff) has more umami.
@@NoRecipes I also think it depends on the quality even if cooking sake. I’ve used cooking sake in Japan and I could deal with it, but this 20L box I got in the UK was so salty I have to cut it with drinking sake - 1 part cooking sake, 2 parts cheap drinking sake.
@@siegeism I've seen restaurant bulk packages of cooking sake that aren't even brewed (grain alcohol and flavorings), this might be what you ended up with. Either way, I always recommend using drinking sake because of the salt issue.
Sir great content and superb video. You really put a lot of effort in making these videos one of the reasons I love your channel. Thank you very much Sir
Hey Marc! Loyal follower here 🤗 I hope this is allowed, just wanted to say I recently started playing around with video making because I have some friends requesting some of my recipes. I just made a vegan kimchi one and it's obviously nowhere near as good as yours (plus I'm awkward and camera shy), just have a phone camera and the basics. I'd love your approval/opinion if you get the chance, of course. Everyone is busy nowadays so it's perfectly fine if not! Keep putting out the great work!
interesting series..when I first had sake it was served warm..it is good. Now I want to try to add to different foods..thanks Marc. really wanted to know what umami was.
Hi Carol, I'm glad to hear you found this helpful! In the next episodes I'll be covering how sake is made as well as how to cook with it, so look for them over the next few Wednesdays😀
Thanks Ben! If there's an interest here I would love to do more content like this! With enough money I can get access to pretty much anything here in Japan, but I think the thing I miss the most good Mexican food. I got used to making my own when I lived in New York, but the ingredients were a lot easier to come by there. Getting basic things like dried chilies and tomatillos is a big challenge and they're super expensive.
Ok, so I have a few questions. -If sake is boiled, Only liquid which contains amino acid is left there? Is the alcohol completely (like become zero%) gone? -I still don't get what umami is😂? Is it like those compounds, like gmp imp amino acid?is there any other words equivalent to umami? Sorry if I ask to much 😅 I'm still confused cause chefs been saying umami this umami that, and it confuse the hell of me Appreciate it if anyone answer this, especially Marc 笑 Edit : oh wait, I think I'll figure out my second question on the next vid
When sake is boiled the first thing to evaporate is the alcohol. The heat also destroys compounds called esters, which are responsible for some of the fragrance in sake. But you still have other things in the sake like residual sugars, water, and other aromatic compounds. But yes, the main reason for using sake is because it contains a lot of glutamate (this is the same reason we use konbu in dashi). Umami is one of the 5 basic tastes and amino acids (such as glutamate) and nucleotides (such as IMP GMP) are the trigger that make you sense the taste. To use an example the taste of salty is to salt as the taste of umami is to glutamate. I hope that helps, and yes there will be more details about why sake creates the taste of umami in next Wednesday's episode.
@@kevincarlson7148 Ah, gotcha, yea, that'll definitely increase the umami of food you add it to. But keep in mind that MSG is just glutamate. There are other umami compounds in sake (other than glutamate), and you do get some of the aromatic compounds.
Savory overlaps with umami in definition but the problem is that the word "savory" is also used to describe foods that are salty. Umami is registered by different tastebuds from salt. So for example you wouldn't normally describe a piece of chocolate or a pound cake as savory, but these both contain high levels of glutamate which give them the taste of umami.
hi! what happened? i heard your voice then no more and i can not even rehear or see you i never chat but even that has been disabled!!! Good luck in the future. Yummy umami :)
Sorry to hear you're having troubles watching this. The Live chat is only doing the premier (it started around 7:45am PT and lasted till around 8:10am PT). Once the premier is over, RU-vid locks the chat. As for the video, you should be able to watch it anytime after the premier. Have you tried to reload the page?
@@MidoriOtoko "Saki" is the most common mispronunciation I hear. I've gone with "Sakay" just to make it easier for non-Japanese to hear. Pronouncing things properly to English speakers is kind of like pronouncing "California" properly to Japanese people. You get a blank stare until you say "Karihorunia"😆
@@NoRecipes funny!! I asked for "saki" on my return flight from Japan and of course the flight attendant had no idea! We finally worked it out and I learned!
@@bootuppa When Japanese is transliterated into English it's usually done phonetically and there are no weird rules like "silent e" so you should be able to sound it out without overthinking it. For example "Saki" is a name in Japanese but it would be spelled "Saki". The one exception is the l/r sound (like in "ramen") which is somewhere between the two English letters in Japanese. This is why Japanese have a such a hard time differentiating "grass" and "glass".
