Umami Bomb

Boom! Plant-based eating just got a hit of bold, savoury flavour! Umami Bomb brings the deep flavour of umami (the 'fifth taste,' along with bitter, sour, sweet, and salty) to vegetarian dishes with cheeses, miso, mushrooms, soy, and more, in 75 creative recipes.

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It’s time for vegetarians (and pescatarians) to enjoy the deep, soul-satisfying fifth taste of umami. Discovered in Japan in 1908 and accepted as a verified taste in the West in 1985, umami is the savoury dimension that makes food truly delicious. And though it’s most naturally found in animal proteins - hello, bacon - it turns out there are umami-rich, non-meat ingredients that have the power to transform the ordinary into the amazing.

Ingeniously built around the use of eight flavour bomb ingredients - hard cheese, tomatoes, miso, mushrooms, soy sauce, caramelised onions, nutritional yeast (don’t know it? you’re in for a treat) and smoke - from Raquel Pelzel, these 75 recipes are so surprisingly rich and tasty you’ll do a double-take. Here’s how to turn mushrooms into “lardons” for an authentically Southern-tasting dish of black-eyed peas and greens. Caramelise onions to use in the best grilled cheese ever. Add a secret spoon of soy sauce to the batter of your next chocolate cake - the soy taste disappears, but leaves behind an unexpected depth of flavour. Author Raquel Pelzel brilliantly combines umami flavours and techniques, doubling and sometimes tripling the umami bomb effect - adding miso to cacio e pepe sauce results in a vegetarian pasta on steroids. And she brings umami into a surprising direction - grilling the fruit first for an otherworldly Banana Split. Where’s the beef? Not here, and definitely not needed.