Food additives

What is your opinion on Sodium glutamate and other flavor potentiators?
I was shoked when the chinese clerk at my local supermarket told me he and many chinese people buy it and add it to their home made foods instead of salt or spices.

It's not dangerous or toxic or anything, but I find that it doesn't taste as good as the traditional shit it intends to replace. I'd rather use fermented black beans, dobanjiang, soy sauce, hard cheeses like Parmigiano-reggiano, fish sauce, etc, for that taste. Those are more flavorful than plain 'ol MSG.

i tend to throw up if i eat it. same thing happens to me when i eat peanut oil for some reason.

This pretty much. If you're strapped for time and cash and don't really give a fuck, go ahead and use it, but a spoonful of fish sauce or a stock made with parmesean rinds or somesuch will get you further in the flavor department.

One thing it is really good for is seasoning your dredge for fried foods. Fried chicken, queso frito, scotch eggs and the like all benefit from it.

My parents were allwasy eco-nuts and I we never had any processed or canned food at home, only raw vegetables, different grains, flours, etc. to do all the food you want.
Now when I try some snak or junk food it's too salty for me and has this same weird flavor like soy sauce.
I avoid it because I don't like the taste, don't know if it dangerous.

I always use MSG-based seasoning, like MSG-containing stock powder and sauces (Maggi, soy etc.), there's also shit like Aromat but pretty expensive. Pure MSG is cheaper but the combination of MSG, modified/fermented proteins, salt and spices at the right concentration is better imho
Helps cut down sodium intake and taste is fantastic, everybody should have MSG in their home

i just dont rly see the point

just spend more money on your ingredients, think of creative ways to add fat that isn't just adding a stick of butter, think of creative ways to add or substitute salt for fish sauce, squid sauce, soy sauce, soybean paste, condensed stocks, any veg with sodium, play around with different forms and varieties of salt like crystals, flakes, coarse ground, fine ground..

up your spice rack, get really high quality spices, pan fry them or heat them up another way to release oils, get a good mortar and pestle, make all your spice mixtures and pastes yourself..

it just seems like a cheap copout. sure, you could also add cream to every fucking sauce and give it more fat as a 'flavor enhancer', but why not actually try to improve your cooking?

i want to have better techniques, better recipes, better balance of flavors, better presentation, better execution, all of which can improve taste. sure i love butter and salt and cream, but they're not for everything.

i'm sorry, but if you're using maggi you're just a shit-tier cook. i don't mean to be condescending, or be a dick, but it's the truth. maggi is for people who can't season properly. if you really have to drown all of your food in cheap disgusting sauces do yourself a favor and substitute for worcestershire sauce and quality salt.

you should be grateful. once you have been exposed to a diet with too much salt it is very hard to get off. you have to slowly reduce your salt intake and most food will taste bland to you. the past few years i've slowly but surely reduced salt intake every day until i'm now at a point where i never really feel like i need seasoning in, for example, a restaurant.

>What is your opinion on Sodium glutamate

Shits pretty cash

I can't season my food because I'm effectively borderline homeless so I only ever use other people's kitchens and don't have spices at my disposal. So I rely on my trusty MAGGI® sauce to breathe some life into the endless rice + beans + vegetables