- Rovin's car audio - wrote:eh , ppl avoiding msg but u adding it
i like to bun my brown sugar too but d bottle browning does be decent as well
try a tiny touch of 5 spice powder , its strong so use a tiny amt
'''''''I'll also add chopped onions, garlic and chives when it's almost done cooking, the flavour doesn't get lost from all that time boiling.''''''''''' ....good man - when u do it cover d pot so d flavor doh escape , plenty ppl doh do dat & it does taste bland like it boil
i use to make a mean pelau long time in fact alot of cooking but i get lazy ....
People misunderstand msg, I own the modernist cuisine set of books and they dedicate a chapter that point out actual scientific studies and not hearsay. I always cover my pelau when it's boiling and with a hot pepper but adding it right before it finish, also leaves the color and crunch of the chives and finely chopped onions. It's prettier
I always thought 5 spice was overpowering until I tried an actual chinese blend, there's a grocery around cunupia opposite a bar where I found it (along with sand ginger powder and white peppercorn powder). The flavour is completely different (authentic) and you can really lay it on heavy. I'll take some pics of the packaging when I take it out of storage to refill bottles.
Heres the msg article in Modernist Cuisine.
Hold That MSG?
During the past 40 years, one of the most interesting popular
concerns about a food ingredient has centered on the
common additive monosodium glutamate (MSG)-despite
the fact that scientific research has repeatedly failed to
confirm the concern.
Glutamate is an amino acid that has a savory umamitaste
(see Myths About Taste and Flavor, page 4·341). It mimics
flavors found naturally in tomatoes, soy sauce, and cheese,
among other foods. It was isolated in 1907 from fermented
wheat and patented soon after as a food additive by a Japanese
company formed for the purpose: Ajinomoto. The
company, whose name means "essence of taste," has been
a leading producer of MSG ever since . (More recently, Ajinomoto
commercialized the enzyme transglutaminase; see
page 3·250).
As it was invented in the 20th century, MSG is hardly
a "traditional " food. It is quite tasty, however, and has found
its way into most processed food formulations in both Western
and Asian countries.
Chemically speaking, the safety of MSG ought to be a slam
dunk. The sodium part is also found in common salt. Glutamate,
a salt of glutamic acid, is an amino acid and thus is
found in many foods. Like other amino acids, it is a fundamental
building block of protein; it also acts as a neurotransmitter
in the brain and nervous system . It is so common that Europeans
and Americans get an estimated 1 g a day of glutamate
from natural food sources .
All was fine with MSG until a 19681etter to the editor of Th e
Ne w England journal of Medicin e described "Chinese restaurant
syndrome," whose sufferers complained of numbness,
palpitations, and other symptoms after eating Chinese meals .
By then, MSG had become popular in Asian restaurants. To
this day, most people strongly associate MSG with Asian food,
although it is used in virtually all fast foods and in ketchup and
other condiments.
In the years following the article, MSG has been investigated
many times to uncover harmful health effects; these
studies invariably have found the compound to be safe.
Vindication by science has done little to quell the controversy,
however. It is still common to hear people claim that
they are sensitive to MSG and suffer a raft of pernicious
symptoms when they eat it. Self-diagnosis of MSG intolerance
is so common that many Asian restaurants place notices in
their windows or on their menus that pledge "No MSG."
What makes the case so puzzling is that extensive research
has yet to identify a test subject who can reliably distinguish
food with or without MSG in a double-blind study (i .e., one in
which neither the subject nor the researchers know the
answer in advance). That is true even for studies that have
focused exclusively on people who claim to have MSG sensitivity.
Alas, the bottom line is that science has found no health
effects due to MSG consumption at the levels in which it is
present in food. Self-diagnosed sufferers are mistakenly
blaming MSG for symptoms caused by something else. But
good luck persuading them of that.
The influential food critic Jeffrey Steingarten once tackled
the topic in an article titled "Why doesn 't everyone in China
have a headache?" Steingarten pointed out that the food with
the second-highest concentration of glutamate, the natural
form of MSG, is Parmesan cheese. Sun-dried tomatoes and
tomato paste also have large amounts of glutamate, "and yet
I have never heard of a Parmesan Headache or Tomato-Paste
Syndrome," he writes .
Still, MSG remains non grata in the popular imagination .
Ironically, because it tastes good, it also remains in our diets.