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by kdheiwns 61 days ago
If you lick plain MSG, it tastes bitter. Add it to something very sweet and it just tastes bizarre. Sprinkle it on fried chicken and it tastes like you just dumped chicken gravy on it and pumped up the taste. It really does mainly amplify flavors.

And while MSG tastes very wrong in sweets, sweets generally always taste better with a bit of salt. Salt is its own flavor and a flavor amplifier.

1 comments

Plain MSG absolutely does not taste bitter. I just tried some (again) to confirm, it's not salty & not bitter. Just a strong flavor of its own.
Yeah it just tastes like straight up "savory."

Almost tastes like fat more than anything.

> Almost tastes like fat more than anything.

Probably because a lot of fat sources have high levels of glutamates in them. You're not tasting the fat, per-say, but the other stuff that isn't fat. It's why beef tallow is so much tastier than neutral oil. Same level of fat.

Yeah, I also just tried it, it doesn't taste bitter at all. It tastes like clear soup broth, which usually contains a lot of MSG.