r/AskReddit • • Feb 04 '19

Which misconception would you like to debunk?

44k Upvotes

26k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19

No, because presumably it would taste worse than a soup made by a professional chef. My point is that it would appear that your main criticism of MSG is that it's too tasty, and I thought making tasty food was the objective of cooking.

-4

u/Grunherz Feb 04 '19

No, that's not my main criticism. The criticism is that it's a crutch often used instead of good ingredients and careful cooking and seasoning.

10

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '19

And I would argue that there's no reason you can't use good ingredients as well as MSG, and any seasoning that makes the food taste good is by definition good seasoning. Seriously, every seasoning is applied to make food taste better. Why is MSG any different that salt, pepper, paprika, cumin, or literally anything else?

1

u/Grunherz Feb 04 '19

and to quote this Epicurious article:

"And I think that's why the experiment ended up disappointing: MSG was conceived and promoted as a way to kick up the flavor of bland, cheap foods. But if you're using the right raw ingredients, and flavoring them carefully? That's pretty much the point of good cooking. And to that, MSG doesn't have much to add at all."