How Umami Works!

good one and it actually oh you saw that? You watched this? Of course I do. I had no idea. I'm your biggest fan. You're one of the well no, I'm one of those people. It's like this, guys so dumb, what kind of it? I don't get it. Get through the boy? Is he acting like that? But I just keep watching them. I can't help it. So you saw the one about Ketchup, and you know about catchy Up, the Vietnamese fish sauce that actually serves as the basis

for Ketchup. Yes, the American condiment which is not the number one selling condiment. In America. No, what is it mayonnaise? Oh? Yes, did you know that? Manaise clearly didn't. What kind dukes is your brain? Right? Well, I'm dukes, But I'm just I'm gonna I find myself a defender of mayonnaise because my whole life people have just thought it was gross. Not everyone you would do well in like France or Belgium. Buddy, Yeah, like on a hamburger and hot dog people like, because

I don't like ketchup and people think I'm weird. Oh no, you need some ketchup too, Not that much. I've also found recently, as a grown up adult, a real live one that like, you can replace ketchup with tomatoes and it tastes maybe even better, depending on the ketchup you mean on a burger, Yes, instead of both, you just mean no ketchup. Yeah, you could put in both. I'm

not I'm not opposed to it. No, it's just it I've found and it was a big surprise to me, a really big surprise that if you just put tomatoes, a good tomato on and no ketchup, you're actually creating the taste that you're looking for with ketchup. That just misses it slightly because it's gotten more than tomatoes in it. Right. It's really, again, very surprising to me, even though I realized, of course that tomato is made from ketchup is made

from tomatoes, Like, I haven't made that connection. I just didn't realize how good just tomatoes were on a burger without ketchup. I don't like raw a tomatoes either, so I wouldn't do that. And you can't dip our French right in a tomato. Well, no, I'm not opposed to catch up. I'll still use ketchup not here, especially for dipping fries. I'm cool with that. I'm not down and ketch up here is what I'm trying to say. I

just think that tomatoes are great on a burger. But I also like mayo too, I think is ultimately the point that started me off on this. Yeah, I like tomato sauce, like red sauce, but I don't like raw tomatoes or just whole tomatoes. They're slimmy, and I'm not supposed to eat them like an apple or anything. If you've been doing that, I can understand why you don't like raw tomatoes. Some people do. Some people to slice them in the amount plate. They're not just holding it

in your hand eating it like an asshole. Look at a monster does that? That's what I'm saying, a monster becaus are well Helm the second Yeah, he was, he was known, all right. So all of that to say, mommy, oh mommy, Oh mama, this one's about o mommy. The fifth flavor, the fifth beetle, out of what they now say is six fat fat carbon dioxide is also one too.

We supposedly they've found receptors that are tailored specifically to sensing carbon dioxide on the tongue, and that ultimately that makes it qualify as so they're gonna be seven now, I think way more. I don't know why science has been so stingy 're so reluctant to accept the idea that we have more than four flavor receptors, or more four taste receptors. But oh mommy, was isolated in the in the beginning of the twentieth century, and it wasn't

for almost eighty years before the West finally accepted it. Yeah. Part of the reasons because it was the research was written in Japanese. Well it's okay, that's maybe had something to do with it uh. And part of the issue was that um, it's you Mommy is very mild and taste, and when you have um high concentrations of it to increase set flavor, you've got salty and sour mixed in.

So I think it just confounded the West. They're like, what we get sour, we get salty, we get sweet, for sure, why we even get bitter, but we don't get this other thing. Nope, and we're not going over five. So you better make the summi stuff good. That's what the West said, dumb Western scientists and food scientists. So chuck, I think we let the cat out of the bag a little bit. Um. The Japanese are the ones who first discovered ummi's right comes from the word um i uh,

roughly translated as delicious. Uh. Chefs, if you talk to a chef and mommy's a big hot thing right now, they'll say, maybe it's like a mushroomy thing, it's like an earthy it's it's it is very subtle. Like I said, it's musty. Yeah, musty, which doesn't sound appealing, No, but it also makes sweet different. That's ou Mommy's big, great quality, And I think that's probably one of the reasons why it was hard for the West to accept it is ou Mommy's big thing is synergizing. It's a supporting cast

member almost. Yeah, it takes, Yes, it is. It's like, um Bud Bundy not a leading guy, but you put him in an ensemble, He's gonna bring everybody else up. It's what he's known for. I would give a million American dollars to be inside your brain during that five ish seconds of your spinning around searching for supporting cast member and ending up at Bud Bundy. Will you come back in twenty years and give me a million dollars and I will let you man. That would be amazing.

So um with like salty sour, we get again, we get those things. They stand on their own. Umami actually has a very mild and not necessarily like pleasurable flavor on its own. Yeah, you don't want something that's like, oh, this is just umami flavored, right, but it is almost like it's designed to interact with other flavors, especially salty and especially sweet. Agreed, and ummmy can even interact with itself.

And all of a sudden, it takes what was just like home day and turns it into the greatest day of your life with one bite of cham with some hot umami on umami action. Uh. So it is nothing new, obviously, It's not like you can just identify new taste. Um. It's been around. Um. The Romans and the Greeks before them enjoyed something called garum and that is a sauce that. Boy, you want to talk about how you find something weird

food wise? They were gutting fish and they said, let's take this fish cuts and blood and let's salt it and leave it out in the sun for three months and see what happens. See what happened, and you have to eat it, eat it you uh, and someone eventually ate it. They strained the liquid from the top of it and they said, boy, this sauce is this is garam sauce. This good stuff is delicious. Garam means delicious in ancient Romans. I think so. And it is uh

that was mommy personified um. Because how umami was discovered. Uh. In nine seven there was a brilliant chemist name uh Kikunai Aikita sor right that a e. It's got to make you a little pop to it got you. But yeah, you did it, thank you. So he was a chemist, and uh, he worked at the Imperial University. I'm sorry he was. Yeah, he was a professor at the Imperial University of Tokyo. And he was perplexed that he tasted something one day and said, this is not any of

those four flavors. No, no, no, I know this is different. He was all about the dashi. And dashi is the basis of miso soups, lots of other stuff, but basically it's a fish stock made from I think tuna flakes and um coombu which is dried kelp yes, and the're

all kinds of recipes for a daschi base. And it's in a lot of things from sauces and like sober noodle sauces to like you said me, so um really really big ingredient in Japanese cuisine, right, And this guy was like, this little boy loves this dashi and I want to know exactly what is making it so wonderful. So, since he was a chemist, he took I think something like twelve ms of dashi and boiled it down ten

of them, isolated some stuff. The first thing that came out were some obvious ones that he clearly discarded is not responsible for your mommy, because there were salts. He's like, no, it's not that. It's not salt. We understand salt. It's not salt. I know for effact it's not salt. What else is in here? He starts sorting through it. Right, Well, didn't he separate the dashi into its parts and then break those down? Yeah? Okay, I just I jumped ahead

of step to make a terrible chemist. He's on he's on kelp at this point, one of the ingredients. Okay. And so with the kelp is where he found the two salts and your right. He was like, well, I know these flavors and they're not what I've been experiencing on my tongue now. They're old news. So he looked a little further and he found well, wait a minute, what is this. It's glutamic acid. And he's like, maybe, but glutamic acid has a sour taste, and that's weird, Like,

it can't be glutamic acid. It doesn't quite make sense. So he added some more stuff, came up with a chemical reaction, and what popped out on the other end is what you and I call monosodium glutamate m s G. And he figured out that it's not glutamic acid. It's not the salt, but it's actually glutamate. But then he figured out even further, it's like glutamate that doesn't make any sense, like glutamate. Glutamate doesn't work. Then he realized

it's not the protein that's giving it the taste. It's the amino acids that actually make up proteins that give ou mommy its taste. Boom, So glutamate, I'm sorry, isn't amino acid right? Right? Right? And that's one of the things that gives you mommy's tastes. This is the first thing that was discovered, um, to give you mommy it's taste. Yeah, And that was the kelp. So you know, Dashi has a different components. So he had a student. He said,

you know what, let me get that the dried tuna flakes. Um, yeah, bonito delicious. There's different kinds, but bonita is definitely one of them. Um. And he says, let me identify these components. And what he found was something called uh, you want to try that one and the sianate is that right? Yeah? I think that is right? Man, it's a nucleic acid. Like you say, yes, So he's like, boom, I've got number two. And then in nineteen sixty another scientist named

Akira uh Kuni Knaka. He worked for Yamasa, the famous soy saucier And now you're just showing off. He was, um and he went on to work in pharmaceuticals. It was interesting, oh the chemist. Yeah, but it's like you work for soy sauce and then you go to work for a pharmaceutical company. Right, I'm good at both things. But you're right, it's all this chemistry. Um. So he said, you know what, I can identify a third thing called guanilate.

It's another nucleotide in those shataki mushrooms you were talking about. Yeah, and it's not like just bonito flakes, combo and saki mushrooms are the only things that produce a mommy taste. These are just the three things that those guys went to town and isolated different stuff out of right. Yeah, I always want to see Bonita apple bum when you say Bonita tribe called quest After all these years, they keep making reference, they keep making appearances in episodes lately.

Oh yeah, they have been. Huh you mentioned him in Hula Hoops. Yeah, this one, you can't remember which one. We talked about the scenario, what's the what's the what's the scenario? You know what? My friend Justin whom you also know, his mother actually left her wallet and els a gun no way, And he even called me. He was like, dude, guess what happened? My mother left a wallet and elsa gundo. That's crazy. Yeah, it was pretty remarkable.

We should probably take a break, Yeah, and then we'll talk a little bit more about the science of taste right after this. So we have done an episode on taste that was great. It was great called Taste and How it Works from July right, highly recommended. Yeah, but we're gonna go over a little bit more here. Well, yeah, I think if we're gonna talk about mommy, we'd be big jerks if we just assumed, you know everything there is to know about. Yeah, we got to talk about

what's called the gustatory system. Okay, So, um, when we're talking about taste specifically, that's separate it from flavor, which we'll get to. But taste begins on the tongue, right, and on the tongue you're gonna find what we like to call taste buds or pepilla. The pa have taste buds on them, right, Yes, there are three main types of papia. You have the fun fungy form, mushroom shaped,

the foli eight. Those are the ridges and grooves at the back of the tongue, and the circumvallate and those are circular at the front front end of the tongue, right. And then some papi a have a couple of taste buds. Some have hundreds of taste buds. And then when you look into the taste buds themselves, um, they have receptor cells.

And what's interesting is when you think about a taste buds, you'd be like, oh, well, there's a salty taste bud, sweet taste bud, ou mommy ou mommy, sweet, sour, bitter, right, carbon dioxide. So that's not the case. As a matter of fact, taste bud has different recept our selves, and these different recept our selves can be tuned to accept or sense different types of taste. Wasn't it the shape if I remember correctly that, well, that was with the smell.

Smell and tasted closely related, and we should say that the spoiler alert for the taste episode. We're not a harm percent sure how we sense taste or smell um, but yes, the the predominant theory is that the a specific type of odorant or taste molecule will interact with a specific type of receptor and when it does, the chemical in that molecule, that food molecule um unlocks that receptor and by doing that, it's translated into an electrical impulse. Boom.

So you chew your food up, gets spitty and saliva covered, and it breaks it down, cut your tongue and that's when that transduction. Uh, those electrical impulses are sent to the n st the solitary tract of the brain, sorry, the nucleus of the soliditary tract of the brain. Yeah, that's where it all happens. That's when it puts all these different tastes together and says delicious, I like this or more to the point, and that's probably going to kill you, so stop eating that. And like we said,

taste is different than flavor. Taste is just one aspect of flavor for a food item or really anything to have a flavor, It includes not just the taste but also the smell, the side of it, the temperature of it, how it feels, the firm is it a little too gelatinous? Um. These are all things that your brain takes into account, um, including things like memories that you form from having it before.

Cotton candy when I was a kid gives me great memories. Yeah, So that plays a part in flavor exactly, like you can like it releases some different aspect of it that only you can experience that flavor. Yeah, Like if you had a cotton candy jelly bean, it would conjure up that memory and that would be part of the flavor r experience yea, or if it's one of your past lives. So that's kind of the science of taste and with

your mommy specifically. Um. Again, one of the things that the West was having trouble with this accepting that ou momi was a real thing was that there wasn't any um what's called psychophysical evidence that oummi was its own taste. Right. For a long time, they thought it was just a component of salty taste because monosodium glutamate is a type of salt, Right, It's a salt protein combination that makes MSG and for many many years this was the only

um this is the only source of oummy taste. But finally in the eighties, once they had the first international symposium on New Mommy, it was a real thing. Um the I'll bet it was too because it was in Hawaii, and the Japanese and Americans love Hawaii, so I bet everybody was partying down there. They started to do studies in the early eighties and they found oh, actually no,

there are specific receptor cells on the human tongue. And it turns out not just in human tongues, but mostly human tongues that are designed or geared towards accepting we're sensing umami tastes. That's right. Those are the g protein coupled receptors g pc rs, and that is for sweet, bitter, and umami and uh, sour and salty those a little different. Those sort of flow through ion channels, which is way

over my head, to be honest. Well, it's just like if a molecule is a positive charge of a negative charge. If it's if it's a positive ion it has positive charge, it's not gonna make it through all sorts of the channels. It's only gonna make it through positive channels. It's not it's simple, I know, but as far as relating that to a taste, it's just sort of I can think of his manage. Well that's the whole thing. It's like you said, it's like it's like your brain just turns advantage.

It's transduction is taking in a chemical and turning it into an electrical charge. I just think that's endlessly fascinating. Oh sure, the senses and how they work, it's like it's amazing, But not just that electricity an electric electrical generation, like you remember that episode Electricity maybe one of our best if you ask me. Agreed, alright, So what way, what we have here are three kinds of receptor cells that they know are h that that respond to this

combination that makes up what MSG is. I'm sorry, what UMMI is. It's that the gwenny late and the MSG. And what they think is that they actually hold on to these these compounds hold on longer, which is why you get these interesting combinations. When you have like, uh, cheese with an apple or cheese on an apple pie. It takes sweet and like doesn't just make it sweeter,

it makes it like sweet in a different way right exactly. Um. And the same thing again when when you mixed together different types of either amino acids or nucleic acids that create a new mommy taste, they magnify this ummmy nous of this is meatiness of the whole thing. And um also with I believe salty too, Oh mommy and salty mixed together. Um. The fact that it it hangs onto that that molecule longer and it just leaves that charge going. Then that sweet can come and go, but it's it's

affected by it. Food science is so interesting, it is. And we're gonna talk a little more about food science and evolution right after this. All right, So here's one thing I didn't get, and I reread this a few times. I get the first part of this, which is as follows, is that people have long thought that tastes had a part in evolution and that we were just wired to know that if something sweet is probably okay to eat and that will give us nutrition, something really bitter may

be dangerous to eat, that might be poisonous. And of course there's exceptions to all of this. Those are pretty good general rules when it comes to uh evolution. Right, that that was the evolution explanation for the sense of taste, right, yeah, But what I don't get and is where in here does it explain the evolutionary uh method of umami? Like what role it played? I got this, you're ready? Well, is it this part about cooking? Yes? Oh it was

very poorly stated, it really was. But it's really interesting that what you realize this that so you said that ou momi is is like one of the newer tastes or something like that, it actually is. Yeah, they couldn't figure out like what part did this have an evolution? No, but even before that, like if you look at it evolutionarily speaking, it's it's actually very old. Supposedly the receptors are very old, like four million years old or something

like that. But the idea that we can taste you mommy, or us tasting you mommy is very actually fairly recent, because ou mommy is released by cooking food. Like if you eat a bunch of raw hamburger, that's that's not gonna be umami tasting. It's not gonna taste very good. But you cook that hamburger and you have molecularly changed its composition. You've unlocked some of the proteins into its constituent amino acids, and all of a sudden, you've got

umami taste. It's like a caramelizing an onion is completely different than the taste of a raw onion or even a just regular grilled onion. Yeah, and the big mystery of all this, evolutionarily speaking, is that what you're gaining or one of the biggest sources of umami taste is glutamate. Well that's great, but the human body produces tons of glutamate, so it wouldn't make sense that we would have a taste receptor to find it in nature because we got

enough in our body. Well, you need other essential amino acids. And if it figures that the best way to get amino acids is to cook or ferment food, you want, you need you need fire because amino acids can be bound to proteins and we don't absorb them as well, or our body spends a lot more energy of breaking them down and digesting them than if we cook them or if we ferment them. So man invent fire, man

starts to cook food, man advances more rapidly. Yes, that's one of the ideas that um why our brain developed as well as it did, or we'd be came as intelligent as we did was from cooking food. So we were able to um break down our food a lot more easily and gain from it, absorb it, and um basically grow huge brains that it came from cooking. And where where do we get O mommy taste from cooked or fermented food where these proteins have been broken down

into much more easily absorbed amino acid constituents. Man, I like that. I agree. I feel like I just made it confusing, though, did it come across No, it's it's totally makes sense. We learned how to cook food and that put us at the head of the evolutionary ladder. Right and OUMMI tastes comes from cooked or for many food? Yeah, very clear? Uh? What is not clear or maybe it

is clear? Is MSG bad for you? A lot of people say it makes me dizzy, or it makes my heart flutter or or you know the MSG crash after you go the Chinese food buffet. Well, there's actually something called Chinese food syndrome. Not not true. Apparently it's a myth, supposedly culturally bound syndrome where like very few other cultures outside of the United States or the West even think of the idea that MSG can make you sick, and that it's apparently a psycho somatic reaction where you expect

MSG is going to make you sick, so you get sick. Yep, that's one explanation. Maybe your body or our bodies are just different in how we process and metabolize MSG, or maybe you have oded a little bit too much of anything could be a bad thing, right, Uh, it could be all these things. But what science is saying is there's no evidence that MSG is bad for you quote unquote right, And apparently study after study found that people

that that MSG doesn't cause these things. Yeah, it's it's weird, So get off the couch, lazy, you're just looking for excuse to not cut the grass. And so MSG again, it has kind of a bad has kind of a

bad rap here in the US, but it's everywhere. And it was actually one of the first things that Um, yeah, professor Akita Um did was he figured out a way to patent extra thing monosoda imglutamate from wheat, which is where it sound much more abundantly than in like kelp, and package it into a seasoning, and he he had no ill will. He's like, this is great. This can make that boring dish like taste better that healthy boring

dish tastes better. So it's not it's ironic then that people think it's bad for you, when in fact, when he packaged it, he was like, this is gonna be good for you. It's gonna make this thing that's good for you taste even better and our country is going to be very healthy. Right. Yeah, but it's hard to find, he said. It wasn't everything, but it's disguised and ingredients. Yeah, against stealthily because MSG has a bad rap here in the West. Yeah, they should just put MSG right. They do.

Sometimes for the most part, though, they will call it something like hydrolyzed wheat protein because remember it can be extracted from wheat um. Sometimes they'll call it just natural flavors, yeah, because all these things are natural. What else texturized vegetable protein, autolized yeast extract right, uh yeah, or just natural flavors. So if you see that, that can be a lot of things though, but just natural flavors, you don't know what you're eating. But there are some upsides to using

this MSG. It's actually it actually can be used in the way that Professor A. Keda envisioned it, which is taking stuff and making it slightly healthier. Actually, when you have UM, when you use certain like a potassium chloride rather than sodium chloride to make MSG, you can actually replace the sodium in UM a dish. So if you have a sodium problem, you can use some of this stuff. Hey, how about that, Uh, low fat food that didn't taste

so good? A little MSG it tastes better, right, Although recent medical research suggests that you should be not eating low fat food, that regular fat food is not bad for you. Or hey, old person, you don't taste so good anymore and need medication that even dampens that. Right, Why don't you throw some MSG on there? Why why don't you back to life? You know? Yes, so chuck um. Whether MSG is a bad rap or not, it's definitely

all over the place. Uh, and it is making things taste good in my opinion, Moms here to stay it is. But there's other ways to to get an umami flavor out of food. And this this article actually has some helpful tips for your cooking. If you want to go and cook and get a umami taste. Have you ever been to umami Burger? No? I haven't. It sounds awesome, it's good. I like it. It sounds like you can make one at home with some mushrooms. Yeah. Umami Burger

is a chain. Uh. I don't know where they have them, but I had in Los Angeles and they add a powdered mushroom and seaweed to the beef with little soy sauce. You don't even know what you're eating except that it tastes good. You know, you're like, hmm, detect the mushroom and seaweed in this burger, all right, it's just umami flavored um And you know it's interesting. There's this uh I think it's called like Umami Information dot Com or

something like that, really interesting site. But they point out that um while you associate umami with Asian cooking, it's actually found all over the world, like in Italy with tomato sauces and catch up in the United States. Uh, in cheeses in Europe. Um. In West Africa they have something called um oh what is it called sambara. I think it's kind of like a miso in West Africa that sounds kind of delicious. Sombala that sounds good, just

like the sounds of it exactly. So it's it's interesting that like people have been cooking with ou mommy stuff long before we ever knew the word U mommy um. And it's been around the world too. Uh, carmelzing onions we mentioned in like butter nothing better? Um what else? Um? You can put parmesan cheese rinds into a super stew and it'll o mommy. That thing up. That's a good one. If you're making a stock, use bones of an animal

and suppose against that kind of thing. The guy who invented veal stock is reputed to have believed that there was a fifth taste that had yet been unidentified back in the nineteenth century. He's like, I just boiled this calf. He's like that there's something going on here besides the Big four. Wow, nobody believed. Uh. If you're cooking with mushrooms, and I recommend this with all vegetables, roast those things a little bit first. It brings out all kinds of

flavors and it makes your brain bigger. Like if you if you got to make an omelet, don't just throw raw peppers and stuff in there, cook that stuff up a little bit on the side, then add that to the egg mixture. It makes the world of difference. You know, everybody should watch Internet Roundup just just to get an idea of what like our little gesticulations are. Like when you're talking about like cooking peppers on the side and throw them in there, like just the you're making very

cute little hand gestures over there. We'll always joke with Emily that I'm gonna open an omelet stand on the beach one day. It's my retirement job. She's like, why an omelets stand on the beach. I was like, because no one's ever done it. No, they really haven't you ever go to the beach. You're laying there in the hot sun. Like I could use an omelet every time. I think. I just want my retirement job to be very slow paced and not busy, and you'll get to

eat omelets. You got anything else? Um, cooking with wine is a good one too, Yeah, that's o Momi City. Um No, just go forth and try O mommy ng up your dishes and you will be happy. You will be happy. It's it'll be an indefinable quality, but you'll know it's you, mommy. Yes, should be something about it. I can't put my finger on it. You'll say this stuff is ouh my, which again means delicious roughly in Japanese.

If you want to know more about ouh mommy, you can type that word in the search bart how stuff works dot com. Uh. And since I said, oh mommy, it's time again for a listener mail, I'm just gonna call this a nice, simple thank you from a listener. Those are nice. Uh, sometimes it is nice. You know. It's for Meredith from Granite Falls, Minnesota, and she's just thanking us because she has a boring summer job. She said, I work at a hospital and I scan a bunch

of old files into an external hard drive. That's what I do is I remove a lot of staples, stare at the scanner, and a wait works to be done. I'll or and over. Yeah. Can you imagine there? It's like, oh, we need to ditchitize all these records. Let's hire someone to do that. Yeah. So God bless you Meredith for doing that. I found listening to eight hours of music just wasn't doing the trick anymore. Then I discovered the wonderful world of podcasts, and you guys are my all

time Thames. You guys are so funny and I love all the dumb jokes you make. I don't know if they're dumb. I think like groundbreaking is a dog way. Yeah. Uh. They really make my day, guys. And even if I don't understand all the tangents you go off on because I'm only twenty one and don't understand most of these references you make the movies or pop culture things from decades gone by, I still enjoyed that the podcast is more of a conversation between you guys than just strictly

reading from a script. Oh yeah, we don't even have a script. Clearly, that would be the worst script ever. M One of these days I'll have a real story to share directly related to a recent show. But for now, I just want to say thank you so much and keep up the amazing work that is best wishes from Meredith. Meredith, thank you. And she's a PostScript that says, I absolutely love it when Josh Josh calls Chuckers. Don't even know why. I just mad, some smile, we nice and it just

has a ring. Suckers it's a fun word. It is. It's like ou mommy said, mommy a watch. I wonder how many times I don't know if we should have an umami counter on the website. You know, yeah, it would be cool. I don't know if we are familiar with the technology that could do that, though, And at the end it just turns into a big pile of salty dried fish cuts. I seriously am making some top notch me so soup. I've been inspired too. You've gotten

pretty good everything. Yeah, yeah, I've gotten pretty good at um hot and sour soup. But I make it from a mix and just add some stuff to it. This I'm going to make from like dashi and miso from scratch. Well, I'm not gonna like ferment the soybeans or anything like that. But you're gonna make your own dashi. No, I'm gonna buy dashi. You should make your own dashi. I'm not gonna make my own doshi. You know how bad my apartment would smell if I like fermented and then boiled

down fish just to make the stock. Need it crazy? You need a spice kitchen. I do need a spice kitchen, now that you mentioned it, um No, but I will let you know how the miso soup turns out. Okay. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff

you Should Know. You can send us an email, the Stuff Podcast, the house, Stuff Works dot com, and as always, join us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff Works. Dot com