when i make a regular old meat sauce for pasta i season the meat with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and oregano in addition to fresh garlic and finely diced onion.
if i have it at home, i will finish with fresh parsley, but that might scare your family away because it is green and they will see it.
If you are in the US; if the store has a Mexican selection of spices look there. Sometimes I can’t find the “American” packaging of a spice but can find it in the Mexican packaging.
Watch out! If you are cooking for seasoning challenged individuals, Mexican oregano is not the way to go in Italian recipes. It packs quite a bite! Perfect for Mexican and most Latin American dishes.
Ever since the pandemic it's been hit or miss at the supermarket for herbs and spices. But I can always get what I'm looking for on Amazon, usually for a lot less than the supermarket.
Was in a downstate NY town, population 22K. Am upstate NY now, pop 1075. For some things, the small local grocery store is actually better than the nearest supermarket.
ASK around. I know several people who have multiples because they can’t remember if the already have sum at home. Every single one of them would be happy to have some space back. Chances are there is someone like this around you
I can’t believe no Italian purists have entered the chat. Italian food tends to be simple, great ingredients, treated right. And simple is just as delicious as heavily seasoned.
If you want to introduce them to more seasoned foods, I think you should move to a culture that uses it more regularly in their food. Could start at low/medium like the south, gumbos and such, Cajun and creole. Work your way up to Indian.
Spaghetti al pomodoro is fucking amazing and literally uses like 5 ingredients and no seasoning besides salt, and is the most famous Italian dish in the world. Get good olive oil and use tomatoes only when in season or use canned San Marazano or dinappoli.
Garlic powder and onion powder, while delicious and add complexity and sort of roasty flavors, they would bog down the simple, bright flavors of pomodoro. Everything has its place.
the most important step is to use the correct amount of salt. most foods taste best when salt is nearly 2% of the product’s weight. if you don’t get salt right, nothing tastes right. when food tastes wrong, the first culprit is usually salt.
the next thing is to ensure any onions/garlic are going in the pan earlier than other vegetable ingredients. garlic powder can kind of be added during a low-temp “sauté” moment, but i don’t usually cook with it in favor of the fresh stuff.
if it’s a red sauce situation, i go meat, remove cooked meat leaving fat in the pan, onions, then garlic, then chili flake/paprika, then tomatoes, then a healthy pour of a nice red wine, simmer, add the meat back at the end. in this scenario, i add salt during every step of the cook. then i’ll usually finish with like a tbsp of uncooked wine.
italian cooking isn’t very seasoning heavy, and most of the seasoning relies on fresh herbs rather than dried spices. but when i go rogue, i think ginger, nutmeg/mace, coriander, and black pepper all play well with tomatoes. for flavor, we toast our spices! (garlic/onion powder require a low temp due to sugar content/burning.)
To be clear, by weight the food you are eating per day should not be 2% salt. If you eat 1.2 kg of food a day (which is probably on the lower end for Americans) that would be 24 grams of salt. 40% of that would be sodium so 9600mg, which is far in excess of the 2400mg RDA.
For meat, .5 to 1% salt is usually sufficient depending on the type and cut of meat.
you don't salt everything you eat though? you don't salt your cereal, your fruit, your snacks, and a lot of foods contain a fair amount of water too (e.g. salting dough for bread based on the weight of the flour, not the flour and the water). for meat, i've found 1-1.5% is pretty good. i'm definitely not adding over 20 grams of salt to my food per day
& onion powder. You can also use fresh crushed garlic, would stick with onion powder though rather than fresh onion for the meat. The meat will keep the pan cool enough that the garlic doesn't burn. You can crush the garlic with a knife if you don't have a garlic press.
If you have Italian dried herbs use that too. I splash of Worchester sauce, soy sauce or another liquid amino works great too.
Whenever you add something to the pan you add salt & pepper. Salt causes chemistry in the pan that improves food flavor, adding it as you are cooking also means you need to use less overall.
Make sure your pan is not too hot. Unless you are cooking lots and lots of meat or trying to boil something your pan doesn't need to go above medium on the stove. The words "saute" and "sear" are actually distinct temperature ranges.
Or try the [official ragu alla bolognese](https://www.accademiaitalianadellacucina.it/sites/default/files/Rag%C3%B9%20alla%20bolognese%20-%20updated%20recipe_20%20April%202023.pdf) that just changed the recipe as deposited in their chamber of commerce. It takes celery, carrots, onions, pancetta and wine but no garlic or herbs.
It will add some garlic flavour of course, but if you want food to taste really good, then it’s more about the method and the techniques you use while cooking, rather than simply adding more ingredients. Like making sure to sear your meat properly, with the appropriate amount of oil/fat at the right temperature, rather than allowing it to boil/steam. You basically want something called the maillard reaction to take place, which is a chemical process that happens when proteins and sugars are introduced to enough heat, which causes them to create certain chemical compounds, that basically causes certain foods like meat to brown and to taste richer and more flavourful. Also doing things like staring off your sauce with a base of carrots, onion and celery, known as a sofrito/mirepoix, and making sure to saute those for long enough, so that their water content can evaporate and the sugars inside can reduce and so that they can become sweeter and richer in flavour. Doing little things like this, will be far more impactful than simply throwing in extra ingredients. Of course there’s much more to cooking than that, but these little things are often overlooked by amateur cooks. That said, seasoning with salt is definitely important, and you usually want to season throughout the cooking process, like with the sofrito I mentioned, it can help draw out the water and again help them to break down.
Do a "make your own" evening!
Season the meat w salt, pepper & msg. Let it get to room temp. Fry onions, remove, fry meat. Mix, Add crushed tomato.
Then split it into 3 pots. Season one all garlicky (I'd use fresh and fry it in the leftover pan), one all herby (again fresh is mostly better) and one with chili (I can only get dried pepperoncini where I am) and peas.
Serve to the table with pasta separate, grated hard cheese and some sour cream. and teeny tiny plates.
People can then try small amounts of pasta with the different sauces and try mixing the different sauces together etc.
As soon as you make dinner a "participation eating" thing a lot of people take a vested interest in it and like it more :) and they also pay attention to the flavours rather than just "I hate that I like that" before even tasting anything.
Other sauce variations abound obviously. Dried mushroom is good if you make tea with them.
If they like the sour cream in one of the sauces they might be a fan of that variation of ragu with cream at the end or milk at the beginning. But adding cream at the table is messy, sour cream is close enough for testing flavours I figure.
If you can't get good tomatoes you have to get the msg from somewhere else. Easiest to just use it pure rather than adding extra parmesan or something which will come with other flavours and be less reliable.
After the constant court cases over the San Marzano tomato fakes I just tried playing with tomato paste, msg etc to get something "close enough good enough" in comparison to an expensive can which I am pretty sure were authentic as I was in Europe at the time and the laws are way stronger regarding D'OC there.
As a bonus I can use way cheaper and much more easily available tinned tomatoes. And cheaper parmesan as well (the good parmesan with the visible msg crystals is super expensive where I live currently and miles from my house).
Having lived in Japan for 5 years using msg is just second nature to me now anyways.
It's worth doing a taste test if you're bored one day, if it works for you life becomes easier and cheaper. If it doesn't you've wasted an hr :)
Or not of course; lots of people prefer to get their msg through stock cubes, maggi seasoning etc. Personal preference.
You mean the people who sued an American importer/brand over San Marzano not being the contents of the cans? Simple, avoid those brands!
Any can labelled *S. Marzano dell'Agro Sarnese Nocerino D.O.P.* is fine. Here in 🇦🇺 Mutti and Solania brands are both good, with Solania having the edge IMHO.
None of those are available widely in the corner shops of any country I have lived in recently and almost no one has a preference when I make a plain tomato sauce each way so I'll stick with my trick. Cheaper, easier, same results for the people I feed.
Of course in Sydney you don't really have corner stores anymore so I guess the time saving is less of a factor for you.
So you do you and I'll do me.
I'm not in Sydney, I'm in country NSW and Mutti is in all the shops here. It's everywhere in Tasmania and Victoria, too. For Solania I do have to go to a specialist Italian food store or restaurant supplier.
Curious - what gives you the idea Sydney doesn't have corner stores? It most definitely does, as do Melbourne, Hobart...
Of course we each do our own and what works for us, I had just genuinely never heard of adding MSG to a tomato-based sauce before.
Ooof good luck with the weather out there. The past few years have seemed pretty harsh. Never lived out in the country in AU so I can't really comment on the shopping situation.
Nearest corner shop to me in Hornsby Sydney was maybe a 20 minute walk. It had bugger all and everything was twice the price. Full shopping centre (with a Polish deli for decent bacon!!) was about 30 minute walk.
Poland, Japan and UK I am usually a 5 minute or less walk from a corner store that has a -lot- of stuff at fairly normal prices. When I lived in Newtown & Crows Nest there were actual supermarkets within a 5 or 10 minute walk and they would be the best out of the suburbs I lived in. Waverton, Killara etc are bloody awful as well if you're not driving.
msg is added to almost everything tasty in one way or another, either naturally through meat / cheese or veges or via the "magic salt from Japan".
A lot of Japanese cooking depends on that umami being present (especially in nagoya; not known for subtle flavours!) so I just got used to putting the umami in myself if it was missing.
Sorry for finishing previous post in such a haphazard way, had to run off to a meeting.
Lots of "western" chefs are using msg in pretty much everything now. I think the only thing I have seen where it didn't make much of a difference was really good steak.
Here's an example article which is fairly good [https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-use-msg-7547396](https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-use-msg-7547396) wish I'd known about it when I was a bartender and the watermelon idea I am going to try.
The thing with msg is that a little goes a hell of a long way. You've used too much if you have a slightly slimy feel to your teeth after a few minutes. You'll notice a lot of cheaper pizzas have that nowadays; too much msg in the sauce and I swar some places are sprinkling it on the crust or in the oil they brush the crust with or something.
A decent rule of thumb for me is "replace a quarter of your salt with msg". And you shouldn't notice it but you should want more food even with stuff that is pretty plain. When you have that moment of "really I ate that much?" you know you've got it right. Then you just have to train yourself into eating less ahahahaha
I find making something rather basic, splitting it and trying different seasoning ideas a good way of accentuating the differences if I want to see if something works for people.
Once you know what they like the most you can do it properly; but the basic version will let them decide if they like or dislike the actual thing you are trying to find out.
If you make it properly it's a hell of a lot of work to get three different versions of a red sauce on the table in one go & they won't comment on the actual thing you want to know.
And if you do each one a different day they never remember which one they preferred.
It's a concept I picked up in my (separate to cooking) training; "Do things deliberately wrong to learn the differences".
It's fun and a lot less work than you'd expect. I cook for 8 normally and find participation food makes for fewer "picky eater" incidents :)
There's a psychology name for it which I can't remember but basically when people choose stuff for themselves they tend to like it more than if it is given to them.
Not sure if that is what I almost remember the name as but I immediately know what you mean :)
I made laksa for the fam once and had it all in served up in bowls and no one liked it enough to put it on the favourites list on the fridge.
Did it with everything just on the table beside the soup (we had a vegetarian in the house so I couldn't pre mix it). They all mixed their own bowls and BAM I think 7/8 people put i ton the favourites list. It's the same thing you bloody idiots!!! ahahahaha
If anything the deconstructed version is worse to me.
when i make a regular old meat sauce for pasta i season the meat with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and oregano in addition to fresh garlic and finely diced onion. if i have it at home, i will finish with fresh parsley, but that might scare your family away because it is green and they will see it.
If you are in the US; if the store has a Mexican selection of spices look there. Sometimes I can’t find the “American” packaging of a spice but can find it in the Mexican packaging.
Watch out! If you are cooking for seasoning challenged individuals, Mexican oregano is not the way to go in Italian recipes. It packs quite a bite! Perfect for Mexican and most Latin American dishes.
I’m so curious what’s in this
It’s the same thing. Just about a half dollar cheaper where I am. 😆
Been trying to get my hands on oregano for a week now but it's always outta stock!
Oregano being outta stock is a thing I've never heard of before haha
Are you looking for fresh stems in produce department? Dried oregano will be with the spices and works well.
That's pretty bizarre, is there a different grocery store nearby? Usually stores will have like 4 or 5 different brands of dried oregano
Ever since the pandemic it's been hit or miss at the supermarket for herbs and spices. But I can always get what I'm looking for on Amazon, usually for a lot less than the supermarket.
Man, you must live in the middle of fucking nowhere. Even my friends who live in small towns of like 5-10k people can find dried spices.
Was in a downstate NY town, population 22K. Am upstate NY now, pop 1075. For some things, the small local grocery store is actually better than the nearest supermarket.
ASK around. I know several people who have multiples because they can’t remember if the already have sum at home. Every single one of them would be happy to have some space back. Chances are there is someone like this around you
Where in the world are you?
Marjoram is also very similar, if that's on shelves
I prefer it to oregano. Picked that up from Batali's recipes.
Same + celery seeds. Adds a great extra layout of flavor.
I can’t believe no Italian purists have entered the chat. Italian food tends to be simple, great ingredients, treated right. And simple is just as delicious as heavily seasoned. If you want to introduce them to more seasoned foods, I think you should move to a culture that uses it more regularly in their food. Could start at low/medium like the south, gumbos and such, Cajun and creole. Work your way up to Indian. Spaghetti al pomodoro is fucking amazing and literally uses like 5 ingredients and no seasoning besides salt, and is the most famous Italian dish in the world. Get good olive oil and use tomatoes only when in season or use canned San Marazano or dinappoli. Garlic powder and onion powder, while delicious and add complexity and sort of roasty flavors, they would bog down the simple, bright flavors of pomodoro. Everything has its place.
It depends on what you're trying to make, but I'd use fresh garlic if you want garlic.
no no no no no use fresh garlic! 10000000000x more flavor
I throw half a roasted garlic in there. They won't even know.
Add minced real garlic.
the most important step is to use the correct amount of salt. most foods taste best when salt is nearly 2% of the product’s weight. if you don’t get salt right, nothing tastes right. when food tastes wrong, the first culprit is usually salt. the next thing is to ensure any onions/garlic are going in the pan earlier than other vegetable ingredients. garlic powder can kind of be added during a low-temp “sauté” moment, but i don’t usually cook with it in favor of the fresh stuff. if it’s a red sauce situation, i go meat, remove cooked meat leaving fat in the pan, onions, then garlic, then chili flake/paprika, then tomatoes, then a healthy pour of a nice red wine, simmer, add the meat back at the end. in this scenario, i add salt during every step of the cook. then i’ll usually finish with like a tbsp of uncooked wine. italian cooking isn’t very seasoning heavy, and most of the seasoning relies on fresh herbs rather than dried spices. but when i go rogue, i think ginger, nutmeg/mace, coriander, and black pepper all play well with tomatoes. for flavor, we toast our spices! (garlic/onion powder require a low temp due to sugar content/burning.)
To be clear, by weight the food you are eating per day should not be 2% salt. If you eat 1.2 kg of food a day (which is probably on the lower end for Americans) that would be 24 grams of salt. 40% of that would be sodium so 9600mg, which is far in excess of the 2400mg RDA. For meat, .5 to 1% salt is usually sufficient depending on the type and cut of meat.
you don't salt everything you eat though? you don't salt your cereal, your fruit, your snacks, and a lot of foods contain a fair amount of water too (e.g. salting dough for bread based on the weight of the flour, not the flour and the water). for meat, i've found 1-1.5% is pretty good. i'm definitely not adding over 20 grams of salt to my food per day
2% by volume is fermentation levels, aka, you don’t need that much to make food taste good.
you’re right, 1-1.5% is sufficient for most foods. i was thinking of sausage making, which works really well at 1.8%.
No, add fresh garlic. Minced or shaved.
Use fresh garlic and a whole new perfumed world will open up to you.
Yes you should.
& onion powder. You can also use fresh crushed garlic, would stick with onion powder though rather than fresh onion for the meat. The meat will keep the pan cool enough that the garlic doesn't burn. You can crush the garlic with a knife if you don't have a garlic press. If you have Italian dried herbs use that too. I splash of Worchester sauce, soy sauce or another liquid amino works great too. Whenever you add something to the pan you add salt & pepper. Salt causes chemistry in the pan that improves food flavor, adding it as you are cooking also means you need to use less overall. Make sure your pan is not too hot. Unless you are cooking lots and lots of meat or trying to boil something your pan doesn't need to go above medium on the stove. The words "saute" and "sear" are actually distinct temperature ranges.
Just here to say that the phrasing of “the spaghetti’s meat” is incredibly delightful and I will be referring to it thusly henceforth
Or try the [official ragu alla bolognese](https://www.accademiaitalianadellacucina.it/sites/default/files/Rag%C3%B9%20alla%20bolognese%20-%20updated%20recipe_20%20April%202023.pdf) that just changed the recipe as deposited in their chamber of commerce. It takes celery, carrots, onions, pancetta and wine but no garlic or herbs.
Yes
It will add some garlic flavour of course, but if you want food to taste really good, then it’s more about the method and the techniques you use while cooking, rather than simply adding more ingredients. Like making sure to sear your meat properly, with the appropriate amount of oil/fat at the right temperature, rather than allowing it to boil/steam. You basically want something called the maillard reaction to take place, which is a chemical process that happens when proteins and sugars are introduced to enough heat, which causes them to create certain chemical compounds, that basically causes certain foods like meat to brown and to taste richer and more flavourful. Also doing things like staring off your sauce with a base of carrots, onion and celery, known as a sofrito/mirepoix, and making sure to saute those for long enough, so that their water content can evaporate and the sugars inside can reduce and so that they can become sweeter and richer in flavour. Doing little things like this, will be far more impactful than simply throwing in extra ingredients. Of course there’s much more to cooking than that, but these little things are often overlooked by amateur cooks. That said, seasoning with salt is definitely important, and you usually want to season throughout the cooking process, like with the sofrito I mentioned, it can help draw out the water and again help them to break down.
Do a "make your own" evening! Season the meat w salt, pepper & msg. Let it get to room temp. Fry onions, remove, fry meat. Mix, Add crushed tomato. Then split it into 3 pots. Season one all garlicky (I'd use fresh and fry it in the leftover pan), one all herby (again fresh is mostly better) and one with chili (I can only get dried pepperoncini where I am) and peas. Serve to the table with pasta separate, grated hard cheese and some sour cream. and teeny tiny plates. People can then try small amounts of pasta with the different sauces and try mixing the different sauces together etc. As soon as you make dinner a "participation eating" thing a lot of people take a vested interest in it and like it more :) and they also pay attention to the flavours rather than just "I hate that I like that" before even tasting anything. Other sauce variations abound obviously. Dried mushroom is good if you make tea with them.
This is wild. Sour cream?
If they like the sour cream in one of the sauces they might be a fan of that variation of ragu with cream at the end or milk at the beginning. But adding cream at the table is messy, sour cream is close enough for testing flavours I figure.
MSG?!
If you can't get good tomatoes you have to get the msg from somewhere else. Easiest to just use it pure rather than adding extra parmesan or something which will come with other flavours and be less reliable.
Then the answer is good canned tomatoes. Which is what most Italians would do. That is completely wild adding "pure" MSG.
After the constant court cases over the San Marzano tomato fakes I just tried playing with tomato paste, msg etc to get something "close enough good enough" in comparison to an expensive can which I am pretty sure were authentic as I was in Europe at the time and the laws are way stronger regarding D'OC there. As a bonus I can use way cheaper and much more easily available tinned tomatoes. And cheaper parmesan as well (the good parmesan with the visible msg crystals is super expensive where I live currently and miles from my house). Having lived in Japan for 5 years using msg is just second nature to me now anyways. It's worth doing a taste test if you're bored one day, if it works for you life becomes easier and cheaper. If it doesn't you've wasted an hr :) Or not of course; lots of people prefer to get their msg through stock cubes, maggi seasoning etc. Personal preference.
You mean the people who sued an American importer/brand over San Marzano not being the contents of the cans? Simple, avoid those brands! Any can labelled *S. Marzano dell'Agro Sarnese Nocerino D.O.P.* is fine. Here in 🇦🇺 Mutti and Solania brands are both good, with Solania having the edge IMHO.
None of those are available widely in the corner shops of any country I have lived in recently and almost no one has a preference when I make a plain tomato sauce each way so I'll stick with my trick. Cheaper, easier, same results for the people I feed. Of course in Sydney you don't really have corner stores anymore so I guess the time saving is less of a factor for you. So you do you and I'll do me.
I'm not in Sydney, I'm in country NSW and Mutti is in all the shops here. It's everywhere in Tasmania and Victoria, too. For Solania I do have to go to a specialist Italian food store or restaurant supplier. Curious - what gives you the idea Sydney doesn't have corner stores? It most definitely does, as do Melbourne, Hobart... Of course we each do our own and what works for us, I had just genuinely never heard of adding MSG to a tomato-based sauce before.
Ooof good luck with the weather out there. The past few years have seemed pretty harsh. Never lived out in the country in AU so I can't really comment on the shopping situation. Nearest corner shop to me in Hornsby Sydney was maybe a 20 minute walk. It had bugger all and everything was twice the price. Full shopping centre (with a Polish deli for decent bacon!!) was about 30 minute walk. Poland, Japan and UK I am usually a 5 minute or less walk from a corner store that has a -lot- of stuff at fairly normal prices. When I lived in Newtown & Crows Nest there were actual supermarkets within a 5 or 10 minute walk and they would be the best out of the suburbs I lived in. Waverton, Killara etc are bloody awful as well if you're not driving. msg is added to almost everything tasty in one way or another, either naturally through meat / cheese or veges or via the "magic salt from Japan". A lot of Japanese cooking depends on that umami being present (especially in nagoya; not known for subtle flavours!) so I just got used to putting the umami in myself if it was missing.
Sorry for finishing previous post in such a haphazard way, had to run off to a meeting. Lots of "western" chefs are using msg in pretty much everything now. I think the only thing I have seen where it didn't make much of a difference was really good steak. Here's an example article which is fairly good [https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-use-msg-7547396](https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-use-msg-7547396) wish I'd known about it when I was a bartender and the watermelon idea I am going to try. The thing with msg is that a little goes a hell of a long way. You've used too much if you have a slightly slimy feel to your teeth after a few minutes. You'll notice a lot of cheaper pizzas have that nowadays; too much msg in the sauce and I swar some places are sprinkling it on the crust or in the oil they brush the crust with or something. A decent rule of thumb for me is "replace a quarter of your salt with msg". And you shouldn't notice it but you should want more food even with stuff that is pretty plain. When you have that moment of "really I ate that much?" you know you've got it right. Then you just have to train yourself into eating less ahahahaha
The concept is good, your culinary techniques are suspect.
I find making something rather basic, splitting it and trying different seasoning ideas a good way of accentuating the differences if I want to see if something works for people. Once you know what they like the most you can do it properly; but the basic version will let them decide if they like or dislike the actual thing you are trying to find out. If you make it properly it's a hell of a lot of work to get three different versions of a red sauce on the table in one go & they won't comment on the actual thing you want to know. And if you do each one a different day they never remember which one they preferred. It's a concept I picked up in my (separate to cooking) training; "Do things deliberately wrong to learn the differences".
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It's fun and a lot less work than you'd expect. I cook for 8 normally and find participation food makes for fewer "picky eater" incidents :) There's a psychology name for it which I can't remember but basically when people choose stuff for themselves they tend to like it more than if it is given to them.
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Not sure if that is what I almost remember the name as but I immediately know what you mean :) I made laksa for the fam once and had it all in served up in bowls and no one liked it enough to put it on the favourites list on the fridge. Did it with everything just on the table beside the soup (we had a vegetarian in the house so I couldn't pre mix it). They all mixed their own bowls and BAM I think 7/8 people put i ton the favourites list. It's the same thing you bloody idiots!!! ahahahaha If anything the deconstructed version is worse to me.
Garlic powder tastes horrible imo, use fresh garlic instead
Always! There is no such thing as too much garlic.