Adventurous dining was a trend that was growing prior to the pandemic. For example, Datassential reported that 73 percent of diners try something new at least occasionally when dining away from home, while 34 percent of consumers reported looking for restaurants that offer something new when they were deciding where to dine.
Those trends figure to explode in the coming months as diners return to restaurants and crave share-worthy experiences. In that way, foods that capture the consumer’s imagination are sure to help brands separate from the competition.
One way chefs are offering an indulgent and memorable experience is with “sweet meets umami” spins that use the two flavor profiles to create something that diners will love. The umami flavor profile helps enhance the way sweet notes hit the palette, says Chef Robert Danhi, a consultant to Lee Kum Kee, and an expert on all things umami.
“What’s unique about umami,” Danhi says, “is that it actually changes your brain’s perception of other tastes. It’s not balancing something else out. It’s literally activating a neurological function of your synapse and changing the way your brain perceives other tastes.”
One way to easily achieve the flavor combination of sweet and umami is with hoisin sauce, a Cantonese sauce generated from soybeans and other vegetables and spices. Hoisin is called out on 4.5 percent of industry menus, according to Datassential, a figure that grew 5 percent over the past four years, and is both familiar to, and favored by, diners who grew up eating American Chinese food.
“Hoisin is built for the American palette,” Danhi says. “It’s sweet and savory, the two things most quick-service sauces are built around if you think about it. It’s a stealthy sweet ingredient that you don’t need to call out because it delivers what American diners are looking for.”
Indeed, one of hoisin’s major strengths is that it can be used across a menu. Danhi says it adds depth, sweetness, rich color and overall flavor to various sauce-like components, such as marinades, dressing, sauces, dips, and spreads. The sweet umami flavors of hoisin are also found in American Chinese classics such as Mu Shu Pork—where hoisin is used on the pancakes—or even Chinese Roasted Pork, where hoisin is used in the marinade, or glaze, Danhi says. In a further testament to the versatility of hoisin, Danhi and other chefs find it to be a great addition to anything with chocolate, like a dark chocolate ganache for candies, glazes, or even cake layers.
Finding the right hoisin sauce to help create this wide variety of dishes is an easy choice for Danhi, who has always used Lee Kum Kee’s line of Asian sauces.
“Lee Kum Kee’s hoisin sauce has a perfect smooth and shiny texture that is achieved by their proprietary sweet potato starch, which adds not only a natural sweetener but a fine grain and spreadability to the sauce,” Danhi says. “In general, Lee Kum Kee is the gold standard by which all other Asian sauces are judged. Hoisin is a flavor and taste that American consumers know and connect with.”
For more on creating sweet umami dishes your customers will love, visit the Lee Kum Kee website.
