Are you sure your soups are as rich as the ones in restaurants?
Chef Anna Brown of New York's Le Coucou restaurant made a shocking statement in an interview with Bon Appétit:
"Salt should be added to the broth not at the beginning, but 10 minutes before it is ready. Otherwise, the vegetables will give up all their moisture and become tasteless."
This was confirmed by an experiment in the magazine Culinary Science Today : two identical soups were cooked with different amounts of salt added.
In the first case, the carrots and onions turned into a “rag”, in the second, they retained their aroma and texture.
"Salt destroys cell membranes," biochemist David Arnold explained in Liquid Intelligence. "Add it too early and the vegetables will 'slam' and not impart flavor to the broth."
But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Chef Oleg Tinkov of the Moscow bistro Sol has revealed another trick:
"Before cooking, sauté the onions and carrots in bone broth instead of butter. It will evaporate, leaving a caramelized crust - like in French onion soup."
But chef Ivan Dubkov on the show Kitchen Inside Out advised adding a pinch of sugar at the end:
"It doesn't make the soup sweet, but rather balances the acidity of the tomatoes and the bitterness of the onions."
The most unexpected life hack came from Japanese chefs. The documentary Ramen Heads showed how dried sardines are added to ramen broth.
"They contain sodium inosinate, a flavor enhancer that is 100 times more powerful than glutamate," explained chief researcher Hideki Oono .
User Sergey from Vladivostok wrote on the forum Cooking at Home: “I added a couple of anchovies to the chicken soup - my wife didn’t believe that it was my recipe!”
Scientists from the Food Chemistry Journal confirmed: “Inosinate stimulates umami receptors, creating the illusion of a ‘restaurant-like’ taste even in simple dishes.”
