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MSG has many hazards in urban legends, and its versions are different. Many people "believe" that monosodium glutamate is harmful, and an important reason is that it is a "chemical product".
Although monosodium glutamate shines like a chemical product, it is actually a brewed product like soy sauce and vinegar, which can stimulate people's appetite, improve their ability to absorb other foods and have a certain nourishing effect on the human body.
The birth and use of monosodium glutamate is only a hundred years old, but for a gourmet country with thousands of years of history, there is no monosodium glutamate, and the umami flavor can be presented by mixing various natural ingredients. It is said that the ancient word "fresh" was originally written in three fish characters. Fish is the freshest, but three fish are fresher.
In the Spring and Autumn Period, Yi Ya, a chef in Qi Huangong, pioneered the dish "Mutton with Fish Belly Hidden", thus creating a method of mixing and keeping fresh with natural raw materials. Cooking fish and sheep tastes delicious and has been passed down through the ages, which became the origin of the word "fresh", so the word "fresh" was written as "fish" and "sheep".
The most common thing used by the ancients was to mix and cook the ingredients to make the soup fresh. As the saying goes, "the artist's cavity is the cook's soup", and making high-quality clear soup or milk soup is the best means to make dishes fresh. Before the invention of monosodium glutamate, broth was a necessity for almost every professional kitchen in the world. Replacing water with broth is a sharp weapon to make dishes more delicious.
Chinese cabbage and shark's fin are fished for chicken leg broth and chicken feet pork thick soup; Japanese sukiyaki and steamed tea bowls need the "juice" of chai fish and kelp soup; Italian stew needs chicken soup; Paella needs fish or seafood broth; Of course, there are vegetarian soups from various countries and so on.
In addition to refreshing with broth, the ancients often "refined" crab meat, crab oil and crab roe with lard and stored them, commonly known as "crab oil" for cooking.
This method is still popular among the people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Whether it's cooking, stuffing or the following strips, you can put a proper amount of "crab oil", which is delicious beyond words. In addition, fresh shrimp seeds are also commonly used. When making soup, add shrimps first, fresh and tender as monosodium glutamate.
In addition, the ancients often ground some delicious food raw materials into powder to make the original "monosodium glutamate" to add flavor to dishes. For example, in "Yang Xiaolu" written by Gu Zhong in Qing Dynasty, it was recorded that bamboo shoot powder and mushroom powder were used to extract freshness.
Shandong cuisine became an important reason of court cuisine in Qing Dynasty. Chefs of Shandong cuisine can bring out the umami flavor of various seafood, such as drying seaweed and grinding it into powder, and sprinkling it when cooking. This primitive "monosodium glutamate" makes ordinary dishes come alive immediately.
There is no need to put monosodium glutamate in umami food. Many ingredients are delicious, such as fish, shrimp, seafood, eggs, meat and so on. Glutamic acid is an important source of umami flavor of these components. When it meets the salt in the dish and is heated, it will naturally produce the main component of monosodium glutamate-sodium glutamate.
You can't put monosodium glutamate in fried food. MSG has the best solubility at 80℃- 100℃. When the temperature is higher than 100℃, the umami flavor will be weakened; when it is higher than 120℃, it will produce sodium pyroglutamate, which is toxic. Therefore, you can't put monosodium glutamate in fried and grilled foods, and you can't add monosodium glutamate to ordinary cooking dishes until the dishes are about to leave the fire.
Sweet dishes don't use monosodium glutamate. The flavor of monosodium glutamate is delicious only in salty dishes. If monosodium glutamate is added to sweet dishes, it will not enhance the umami flavor, but will inhibit the original flavor of sweetness and produce a bad smell.
References:
People's Network-The Mystery of Fresh MSG on the Tip of the Tongue