12 Ingredients That Add a Savory Flavor to Any Vegetable Dish
I know some people are quite happy to eat a large stalk of raw broccoli, but I need a little more support in the vegetable-eating arena. Luckily, Lucky Peach has compiled a list of twelve flavored buffet foods to add depth, texture and flavor to all your favorite vegetables.
Click the link below for detailed descriptions and recipe ideas, but this should get you started:
- Breadcrumbs: Breadcrumbs are a great way to add crunchy texture, whether you’re preparing a can of store-bought groceries.
- Chili Crisp: This blend of roasted chili peppers and crunchy little soybeans contains a host of savory, onion and spicy flavors.
- Capers: These small, salty sweet-tasting pickled berries should be in your next salad.
- Curry Leaves : These leaves “provide a citrusy and resinous aroma and flavor unmatched by any other herb,” and according to Lucky Peach, should appear in your next carrot dish.
- Small Fish: Tiny fish (whole or in delicious fish sauce) are a quick and easy way to add a ton of complex, salty, umami-infused flavor to any vegetable, whether fried or raw.
- Garlic : I don’t think I need to tell you why there is garlic here.
- Hing: This dried and crushed vegetable gum has a rather intense scent, but ignore it and you’ll be greeted with a very umami seasoning that “literally adds flavor to a dish that resembles another dimension of flavor.”
- Kombu: Add this super sweet seaweed to your vegetable broth to enhance the flavor.
- Dried Shiitake: Like kombu, these dehydrated mushrooms increase broth in minutes.
- Miso: Miso oil mix is the best fried fried vegetables and it absolutely sings into hummus.
- Soy Sauce: Lucky Peach recommends uzukuchi soy sauce, which is “a lighter, slightly saltier soy sauce that has additional ingredients.” (The “additives” are sweetener and mirin .)
- Vinegar: A quick hit of acid can really lighten greens, and I always have at least four different types of vinegar at any given time.
- Power Triangle: If all else fails, you can always go back to fats, salts and acids. A drizzle of olive oil, a little lemon juice, and even a few flakes of some fancy salt can turn vegetables (or grains, or whatever) from meh to sweet.
In addition to the aforementioned flavor, I would also like to add nutritional yeast and parmesan to the list, because anything that can get me excited about kale deserves a mention.
Pantry Power Vegetable | Happy peach