Umami and Kokumi are the foundation for plant-based success

The plant-based revolution is growing rapidly nationwide, and adding fresh and intense flavors can help your company’s vegan and vegetarian products stand out. It all starts with taste!

Umami and kokumi can improve the flavor profile of your plant-based products. In food products, it imparts fullness and impact on flavor and provides rounded and complex flavors.

Freshness

Freshness is a flavor profile that is naturally present in many savory foods. Taken as a whole, umami is necessary in a variety of foods and dishes to provide balance and flavor. In English words, there is no word with the same meaning as umami, the closest related terms are savory, meaty and broth-like.

There are many ways to bring freshness into vegetarian and vegan recipes and product formulations. Using foods that themselves contain high levels of glutamate (e.g., dried mushrooms, tomatoes, fermented products such as soy sauce, aged cheese) is one way to add freshness to a recipe. There are other ingredients that can bring freshness. Monosodium glutamate, MSG, the purest freshness, yeast and yeast extract are some of the ingredients that can provide much-needed umami to plant-based recipes.

Kokumi

Kokumi comes from the Japanese words meaning “rich” (koku) and “flavor” (mi). While kokumi itself does not impart flavor, it works by enhancing other flavors and aromas through a specific set of receptors on the tongue, called calcium-sensing receptors. Through these receptors, kokumi improves the continuity, texture and mouthfeel of vegan and vegetarian products.

Similar to umami, the concept of kokumi has been around forever, but it wasn’t until researchers at Ajinomoto Tokyo discovered the substance we now know as kokumi in the 1980s that we gave it its name. In garlic extract, two compounds were identified that provide the intense flavor we now know as kokumi: S-allyl cysteine sulfoxide (alliin) and glutathione (gamma-Glu-Cys-Gly). When added to plant-based applications, these compounds significantly enhance continuity, mouth fullness and thickness.

Fresh and strong flavors for sodium reduction

Consumers pay close attention to sodium levels, which are quite high in many plant-based foods. One of the main challenges in reducing sodium content is that when salt is reduced in plant-based recipes, the overall flavor becomes bland and tasteless. Decades of scientific research have shown that adding fresh and strong flavors can help restore richness, complexity, and even the perception of more salt present in a reduced salt system.

Conclusion

Fresh and strong flavors are critical to the balanced flavor and satisfying taste in savory applications. Hiyeast’s broad portfolio of high-quality ingredients, such as Umami and Kokumi yeast extracts, can help provide freshness and kokumi flavor depth and great taste in most plant-based applications.