'No Recipes' founder Marc Matsumoto tells Kristen about a brilliant, one-ingredient trick for making anything—from salmon to vanilla ice cream—taste more delicious.
Referenced in this episode:
Genius-Hunter Extra-Credit:
Special thanks to listeners Adiba (@thespiceodyssey) and Riha (@saltyshortbread) for your salmon ideas.
Got a lead on something genius? I'd love to hear about it—email me at genius@food52.com.
Kristen Miglore (voiceover): Hi, I'm Kristen Miglore, a lifelong genius hunter. For almost a decade, I've been unearthing the recipes that have changed the way we cook. Now on The Genius Recipe Tapes, we go behind the scenes with the geniuses themselves, and we get to hear from you. This week, we're trying something a little bit different. Instead of a straight-up Q & A with Marc Matsumoto, the founder of the long-running food blog and Youtube channel, No Recipes, and the Genius behind this week's recipe on Food52, I wanted to take you along with me; first, as I stumbled on Marc's brilliant one ingredient trick for making any salmon dinner more delicious. And frankly, just about anything more delicious, even vanilla ice cream. And then, with you still riding along, together, we'll get to hear more from Marc about what led him to this point of coming up with this move in the kitchen. This move may feel second nature to him but stands to make many people feel like they got a lot better at cooking fish–in one swipe. That's a clue.
Our podcast boss Coral Lee and I are having fun experimenting with this new storytelling format, and we would love to hear what you think about it at genius@food52.com. But for now, onto the story, buckle up, hop in the pouch and let's go.
So back in April, I was perilously close to the deadline for the Genius Beginners cookbook that I've been working on for three years and still hunting for a few last missing puzzle pieces. Things like the most foolproof way to fry an egg. Quick pantry pasta sauces that I could explain in 100 words or fewer. And desserts that require no special equipment whatsoever. I also wanted a few simple ways to dress up my favorite slow-roasted salmon method from Sally Schneider. And I got lucky. While most of the recipes that I saw out there were sprinkled with herb sprigs or citrus wheels, I saw something brand new on NoRecipes.com A heavy blanket of powdery dried shiitake mushroom with a Microplane grater resting nearby. The mushrooms had not been presoaked or pulverized in a spice grinder or bought already powdered at a fancy specialty food store. They also didn't even look like they required a recipe. All levels of planning that I assumed I would need to make the most of dried mushrooms well known but seemingly inaccessible umami and deliciousness.
No, Marc grated the shiitakes as casually as you'd sprinkle cheese over a bowl of pasta or lemon zest into a cake.
This shortcut meant that without having to run to the store or do much thinking at all. I pulled out one of the lonely dried shiitakes that I had leftover from some other recipe months ago, plus a hunk of Arctic Char out of the freezer. I was sure that the shiitake would be brittle and crumbly, but it grated beautifully. Just like parmesan cheese with tiny little curls falling from my Microplane like a thick flurry of snow. This slow-roasted fish was outstanding, but it didn't taste mushroomy. So I wondered if I had seasoned and cooked my fish well. And I felt cautiously proud of myself. To be sure, the next time I cooked salmon, I only coated half in the shiitake snow. And the difference was profound. The no-shiitake side tasted perfectly fine if a little bit bland and reserved, like healthy food that I should eat, but does not inspire me. The shiitake side still did not taste like mushrooms. Instead, it tasted like the best quality salmon, perfectly seasoned by a very confident, intuitive cook. Which when it comes to seafood, I am not.
So, I had many questions for Marc:
How exactly does this trick make salmon so good, so instantly?
Where else could we be using it?
How has this been on No recipes dot com since 2009, without getting everyone to start grating mushrooms over everything?
The internet was a very different place for starters when Marc began his career, not as a blogger, but in the first dot com bust years.
Marc Matsumo: As a kid. I was a geek and loved video games and got into tech through that. I grew up in Napa, which is not too far from Silicon Valley. As the dot com boom of the 90s was blowing up, it was this thing that I wanted to join. So after I graduated college, I moved down there and worked at several internet startups, one of which was Netflix. We were this small DVD rental company that no one had ever heard of, and people were like, why would I want to order DVDs online if I could go to Blockbuster and pick it up? And we all know how that turned out.
Kristen (voiceover): And it wasn't just Netflix where Marc was an early adopter. When he was still in middle school, he started a computer consulting business. He made his local bulletin board system or BBS, a non-networked precursor to the internet. Generally, Marc was always in the first wave of anything internet. So it’s no surprise that he became a food blogger before anyone knew that food blogger was a job that you could have. And he did it almost by accident.
Marc: So when I moved to New York, I had this tiny shoebox apartment in downtown Manhattan, and I'd invite over co-workers and get them to bring friends over and make a pasta dish or something. Everyone would always ask how I made the dishes. My answer was always; I don't use recipes. That's actually where the name for the food blog came from, No Recipes.
Kristen (voiceover): But pretty soon, Marc realized that more people were looking at his blog than just him and his dinner party guests. And then a lot more people.
Marc: Originally, the posts were notes to myself, so I didn't write many quantities. I had the ingredients and the process written down. But I quickly realized my friends reading it could not make the food because they did not know how much to add. Many of my friends are beginners in the kitchen and writing recipes for beginners; you quickly learn that you need to be very detailed. And over the years, my blog is gone from my personal food journey to helping people pursue their food journeys. And I believe the way to do that is to teach them techniques. Many recipes these days are like an IKEA manual will teach you how to make a particular desk, or in the case of a recipe, a specific dish. But it won't turn you into a carpenter; it won't turn you into a chef. The underlying things you need to know are like a tool chest of techniques. These techniques are evident for somebody who cooks often but often unknown by somebody just starting to cook. These are the little details that I tell people to do and explain why you need to do it. My background is in science and tech, and I hate doing something that somebody tells me to do without knowing why I have to do it. So I always try to explain the why behind cooking steps. For example, you’re browning onions because of the Maillard reaction, which reduces sugars and amino acids and creates new flavor compounds, which gives your dish more depth and more umami.
Kristen (voiceover): Marc is even more explicit about the whys and the hows behind recipes now, in both his writing on No Recipes and in his highly produced educational Youtube videos. But when he wrote about the salmon trick in his blog early days, the framework of the technique was there, just in a more straightforward form.
Marc: I was a little bit embarrassed by the quality of the photos, to be honest. I've elevated the level of the photography on the site, and I am providing a lot more details than I used to. My posts used to be much shorter, but in terms of the technique and the recipe, I think it's solid to this day, and it's something that I still use. I was happy to see that somebody is still finding value out of something I published so long ago. That was 12 years ago!
Kristen (voiceover): Hey, it's Kristen. If you're enjoying learning from Marc as much as I did, don't worry, he'll be back right after the break. And in the meantime, you can head over to The Genius Recipe Tapes and hit subscribe, so you don't miss out on other stories like this one. Like my recent conversation with Toni Tipton-Martin about her quest to connect role models with young Black aspiring food writers so they can inspire the next generation. In the second half of the episode, Marc tells us how scientifically mushrooms can work their magic so quickly and how it has a lot to do with breast milk. Really. Stay tuned.
Kristen (voiceover): So before Marc shared it to his quickly growing blog, how did he start turning to dry shiitakes to season his cooking as intuitively as if he was reaching for the salt?
Marc: I learned how to cook from my mom. She used to teach Japanese cooking classes to Americans in San Francisco. I was in the kitchen from the age of four or five. One of the core pieces of Japanese cuisine is Dashi. It’s stock, and there are many ways to make it, but the most common type is kombu kelp and katsuobushi, which is smoked, dried, and aged Skipjack tuna. But another potential source of Dashi is shiitake mushrooms, which have a ton of umami—so using dried shiitakes to make a very flavorful stock is a part of Japanese cuisine. I've always thought of shiitake mushrooms as flavor boosters. But broth limits what you can do with it because you have to integrate that liquid into something. So I’ve been grating dried shiitake mushrooms to create a powder for years. I do not remember when I thought of it; that’s how long I’ve used this technique. And that's something that you can use in anything, whether the food is dry or wet.
Kristen: Do you sometimes do it with a spice grinder or coffee grinder as well? What drew me to this recipe was that it never occurred to me that there was a lower-tech, more tactile solution like you have.
Marc: These days, if I'm only using a small amount or I want to create like bigger flakes, I'll use a Microplane. But, if I'm making a big batch for something, I'll use a spice grinder and turn it into a powder. It’s an effort formula for me. How much effort versus how much mess. Grating five shiitakes will take quite a while, so I'll use the spice grinder. But if I'm grating one mushroom, I would instead pull out the Microplane and grate it.
Kristen (voiceover): But how exactly is this quickly dispensed ingredient working such magic on salmon without needing to simmer or stew or even brown it? The answer is in our good friend in the kitchen, umami. But there's even more going on scientifically than that.
Marc: We have taste buds on our tongue, just like we have ones to detect salt, sweet, sour, and bitter. There's the fifth one–we have several different taste receptors that can pick up umami flavors. So what is umami? It's a variety of compounds. The most prevalent one is glutamic acid, glutamate. So, it may sound familiar from monosodium glutamate, MsG, a synthesized form of glutamate. Still, it’s one of the essential amino acids, and our bodies need amino acids to survive. Our taste buds are there to tell us we need to take salt to survive. We need to crave sweets because they are high in calories, and especially in the past, desserts were an easy source of energy. We need to detect bitter because bitter compounds are typically toxic. So it was a way of letting us avoid those things. In the case of umami, it tells us that the presence of protein. Amino acids are proteins that have degraded into their constituent parts. So there's a whole bunch of different amino acids. Our bodies can produce some amino acids but not all of them. In which case, we need to take them into dietary sources. I think it is genetically ingrained in our code to look for umami. But I also think a big part of it is breast milk, or the first food of infancy, whether formula or breast milk, is filled with amino acids; it’s a high source of glutamate. And so the first thing that we put in our mouth when we're born is loaded with umami. And I think that's something that we end up craving for the rest of our lives.
Kristen (voiceover): Okay. I will never forget this. Breast milk has come up a lot in my research, and I'll tell you more about it sometime. But only in the context of how it aligns with our preferences for sweets. I did not know that it was as loaded with umami as a bag of Doritos, give or take. Back to Marc on why mushrooms are even more magical than we thought.
Marc: Mushrooms generally have a ton of glutamate, but they also typically contain another compound called Guanosine monophosphate, a nucleic acid. It's different from an amino acid. But these taste receptors they're like a venus flytrap. The back part of the venus flytrap grabs onto glutamate molecules, and the front part can also glom onto Guanosine monophosphate, GMP. And when those two compounds enter our taste buds, it creates a synergistic reaction. It's like one plus one equals ten. And it amps up that taste of umami. And this is something that has been used in Japanese cuisine for years. People didn't know the science behind it, but as far back as the Japanese were making dashi, they used the kombu, loaded with glutamate. And katsuobushi is the fish packed in a similar compound called IMP, inosine monophosphate. So they combined those two ingredients to create a synergistic relationship to make more umami. Another combination that makes that synergy is kombu, glutamate, and shiitake mushrooms, GMP. A Japanese chemist Ikeda Kikunae discovered the compounds that were responsible for this taste in 1906.
Kristen (voiceover): And it doesn't end with shiitakes. This trick will work with lots of other dried mushrooms, right down to the stem. Porcini, matsutake, maitake, and even button mushrooms are rich in those umami compounds. Just avoid watery mushrooms like king trumpet, which are wimpier in flavor and may not even come in a dried form for that reason. An early adopter of food blogging, Netflix, and the very concept of the internet impairing surprising but super innovative flavors like ice cream with mushrooms, Marc is now working on something entirely new that might be the next big thing.
Marc: My latest passion is working with an agri-tech company that's created this new growing technology that I think will change the way food is grown. It's a soilless technology, but it's not hydroponic, aeroponic, or aquaponic. Those are technologically interesting growing methods, but they don't look at the physiology of a plant that evolved growing in soil. Our technology creates the conditions of growth in the ground where you develop a very healthy root system, and the roots are where plants absorb macronutrients and micronutrients into their leaves and fruit. If you don't have a healthy root system, you don't have a healthy plant.
Hydroponic is like putting a human on an IV drip–you can keep them alive, but just barely. And our system mimics soil-based growing, but it also has the benefits of hydroponic because it uses a lot less water than field irrigation. We are not tilling the soil, which means less disturbing the land. And we also have a much lower cost structure than a hydroponic setup. So I'm super excited about it. As climate change makes it difficult to farm in traditional agricultural regions, we're going to need new and innovative ways to grow produce. If we're going to the moon and going to Mars, we will need new growing systems that aren't resource-intensive. And I think this could potentially be it.
Kristen (voiceover): The other great thing about grating mushrooms is that you can control precisely how much you add. You might want less on a milder tasting fish, like sea bream or cod, than you do on salmon. He even told me to try greeting some into ice cream. You can see how that went in this week's Genius video on Food52. But here, I'll say: try it. And do mix it in, so the umami has a chance to get in and play. And now here are a couple more intelligent ways to season salmon from our listeners when you're in between sacks of dried mushrooms.
Listener Adiba Amene: Hello, my name is Adiba Amene, and I have a food blog called The Spice Odyssey. In Bengali cuisine, we have a popular dish called Shorshe Mach. The fish is gently poached in a spicy mustard paste along with a lot of green chilies. This recipe works great with fishes that are high in omega-three fatty acids like salmon. The mustard enhances the flavor of the salmon, and the result is so comforting and satisfying.
Listener Reha: Hi, this is Reha. We love our salmon up here in Seattle, and my favorite way to season it is with Khmeli-Suneli. It's a Georgian spice blend that I first found at a local spice shop, and I usually use it just as a dry rub with some salt. Sometimes I'll also add a bit of freshness with some ginger, garlic, and lemon. I love Khmeli-Suneli because it is a very fragrant mix. It still allows the fish to shine through, and it reminds me a lot of the variety of spices that I grew up with and still use pretty commonly in my Indian cooking. I hope you try it and enjoy it.
Kristen: (voiceover): Thanks for listening. And my thanks to Marc Matsumoto, founder of the long-running blog and Youtube channel, No Recipes, where he shares the hows and whys of cooking. And, yes, these days, plenty of recipes too. Our show was put together by Coral Lee, with support from Emily Hanhan. If you have a Genius Recipe to share from a hidden corner of the Internet from 1999 or 2009 or 2021,I would always love to hear from you at genius@food52.com. And if you like The Genius Recipe Tapes, take a second to rate us, leave a review, subscribe, maybe even blog about it. All of it helps us out. Talk to you soon.