FOOD NEWS
Punch Up Your Spaghetti Sauce With This Secret Umami Ingredient
BY CEARA MILLIGAN
Miso is a common ingredient in Japanese cooking, but it works just as well in dishes worldwide. It is especially useful for giving spaghetti sauce a rich, umami flavor.
Miso is a paste made of fermented soybeans. Its robust flavor adds rich depth and velvety smoothness to the pasta sauce and amplifies the tangy tomato flavor.
As the sauce thickens, miso gives it a creamier consistency and helps it coat the pasta more evenly, enhancing the overall taste and texture.
You can use white, yellow, or red miso. White miso is milder and sweeter; yellow is a balance of sweet and salty, and red miso is the most intense.
A little miso goes a long way, so taste as you go. Dissolve a bit of miso in a separate portion of sauce before integrating it into the whole pot to ensure it blends in seamlessly.