Umami is one of the five basic tastes that your tongue can detect, alongside sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. It often gets less attention, but once you notice it, you start to see it everywhere in your cooking.

The word “umami” comes from Japanese, and it roughly means “the essence of deliciousness” but that definition can feel a bit abstract at first. A better way to understand it is through experience: when you sip a rich chicken broth, or eat a slow-cooked stew, or taste a piece of aged cheese, that deep and lingering flavor you notice is umami.

Umami comes from naturally occurring compounds in food, especially glutamate, which is found in ingredients like tomatoes, mushrooms, meat, and cheese. When you cook, roast, ferment or age these foods, their flavors concentrate and become more intense, which makes the umami stand out even more on your palate.

Your body is wired to recognize this taste, with specific receptors on your tongue that respond to it, so this isn’t a food trend or a chef’s trick. It’s a fundamental part of how we experience flavor, and it often signals that a dish contains protein and nutrients your body wants.

As home cooks, we can use umami to make our food taste more satisfying without making it more complicated. You can build it by layering ingredients, like adding mushrooms to a sauce, using broth instead of water, or finishing a dish with parmesan or a splash of soy sauce.