Kombu

Inosinate meets glutamate: the multiplication a whole cuisine sits on.

An hour under kelp: sweetness concentrates, flesh turns translucent.

Guanylate meets glutamate: the vegan dashi that beats the other on paper.

One strip in the pot. Free glutamate and no visible seasoning at all.

Kombu depth, soy salt, mirin sugar. The base of every Japanese sauce.

Glutamate onto glutamate: it adds, it never multiplies. Steep the strip, do not boil it.

Two glutamate sources. The broth runs twice as long for no more salt.

Kombu water, hot tofu, ponzu. Three things and nowhere to hide.

Simmered until translucent, the radish takes on everything in the pot.

Sweetness against saline mineral. The standard Japanese proportion.

A strip in the cooking water leaves glutamate and nothing you can name.

Glutamate steeped cold overnight; it seasons without adding any colour.

Glutamate onto glutamate. They add, they do not multiply — dashi needs a fish for that.

Glutamate meeting glutamate. Two mild things adding up into something like broth.

A strip in the bean pot softens the skins and seasons the water at once.

Two glutamates from different oceans. Kombu-cured tomato reads as meat.

Two vegetarian umami sources, and neither one is trying to be meat.

Kelp glutamate under bird inosinate: the two-stock trick, from two oceans.

Glutamate times inosinate is multiplication, not addition. Broth gets huge.

Poach in kombu water: glutamate on inosinate, multiplication not addition.

An hour under kelp: glutamate walks in, water walks out.

Kelp-cured an hour: it firms up and stops falling through the pan.

Kelp-cured for an hour, it firms enough to survive a hot pan.

Glutamate doubling. Whisk it into dashi and the broth reads twice as long.

Kombu-cured berry is a Copenhagen habit. Salt makes the fruit taste redder.

Kombu-infused milk tastes aged. Glutamate does what months in a cave do.

Steep kelp in melted butter overnight. Glutamate with a marine tail.

Simmer with the seaweed: glutamate makes the pulse taste braised in stock it never met.