Watching an S4C programme re. tasting, the word ‘umami’ cropped up. I can’t find the meaning in my Welsh dictionary or in online dictionaries. Can anyone translate please?
Umami describes a savory taste.
Its a loanword from japanese.
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Specifically, it’s the flavour added to a food when you add certain types of seaweed to food. The bit of the seaweed that provides the flavour is commonly extracted and mixed with sodium to create a salt called monosodium glutomate - which incidentally is why MSG is (unless you’re part of a very small minority of people) no more bad for you than table salt.
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Now that I know that umami isn’t a Welsh word (remember thinking that it sounded like a Japanese word at the time) @Pete2 @hectorgrey, I googled it. I wasn’t aware of the fifth taste. Oddly enough a week or so ago I bought some Dulse on line. Hadn’t eaten any before and yes - it’s very umami I should think. Rather like eating bacon. Perhaps I should get out more. 
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The only seaweed I have ever liked is laverweed, cooked as bara lawr!
My host in Mongolia would add it to some of the meat soups and a couple of times I had a simple salad wrapped in a sheet of it. Where this extremely land locked country got a taste for seaweed from is beyond me.
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The umami taste isn’t just from seaweed, it’s available in other forms too. Examples of umami foods include seared and cured meats, aged cheeses, fish sauce, green tea, soy sauce and cooked tomatoes. So yes…bacon!
It’s one of the five taste sensations, the others being sweet, sour, bitter and salty though some argue there are more. For example the metallic taste or the taste of CO2 in soft drinks.
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Yes @Pete2. I’ve been Googling umami since my first inquiry and there is some interesting (and enlightening) info re. taste. Also of course the impetus to add a few more Welsh words (nouns especially) to the vocabulary. For anyone interested, here’s a link or two that I have looked at:
www.rd.com/umami
www.cookscountry.com/how_tos/8173-getting-to-know-umami-powerhouses
www.umamiinfo.com
PS
@CatrinLliarJones may be especially interested. Unless of course she’s already familiar with this stuff. Which she probably is!?
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I think the revolting (to me) artificial sweet taste of aspartame is one of the ‘more’! It’s a good job I’m skinny because every time anything is labelled ‘low sugar’ or 'sugar free;, I end up having to avoid it and go for the ‘high sugar’ option!
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