When cooking, it is a good idea to start from the 5 basic tastes:sweet, salty, umami, sour and bitter. A well-composed dish can contain all the basic flavors. One of the most challenging flavors to work with is the bitter taste, which many actually avoid in the kitchen. But bitterness is one of the basic flavors that you should try to incorporate into your cooking.
Bitter flavors in the food make your mouth water and give a well-composed dish a special depth. It can be described as bitter vegetables that frame the flavors in a dish. They give the dish character and enhance other flavors. However, bitter flavors require a certain care from the chef, compared to, for example, sweet flavors that most people love.
While bitter flavors may not always be the most popular, many people like the bitterness of things like grapefruit, coffee, dark chocolate, cabbage, and rye bread. Bitter vegetables such as kale are also popular. The bitter taste makes the food more interesting and can contribute to a nice balance in a dish with small resources, for example by adding a blue cheese in the pasta dish or a little nutmeg in the béchamel sauce for a lasagna.
The bitter taste goes especially well with sour and sweet flavors. Bitter veggies are fantastic and, like any other veggie, they need to be cooked properly to take full advantage of the veggies' flavour. Bitter vegetables can in many cases be cooked and served warm. Here are some examples of how to use bitter vegetables in the kitchen.
Kohlrabi is a fantastic root fruit that can be unforgettably good if you give it a little time. Fry it slowly over low heat in a pan with a little oil. Subsequently, the sugars in the kohlrabi caramelize and a bitter umami taste is created. The kohlrabi is also delicious to serve, thinly sliced with a good dressing, roasted seeds and a bunch of fresh herbs. Try serving it as an appetizer the next time you have friends over for dinner. They will be impressed by the simplicity and the good taste.
Arugula lettuce or Frisée lettuce can be advantageously marinated in a mild mustard dressing flavored with honey and a little lemon juice or apple cider vinegar. The classic tomato salad with sweet tomatoes, arugula, parmesan, lemon juice and olive oil is also a good dish to prepare easily.
The bitter salad radicchio is delicious to eat, but perhaps even better to cook. Try frying the salad and squeezing citrus juice over it; for example from blood orange, the radicchio will be very tasty! Sprinkle with toasted pine nuts and fresh basil and you have a delicious lunch that you can serve with grilled fish, for example.
Pointed cabbage and Savoy cabbage are fantastic to bake on high heat or in the oven. Before serving, sprinkle with a mild mustard dressing and toasted almonds.
Grapefruit goes very well with hot dishes. Divide in half and fry on the cut side to caramelize the natural sugar in the grapefruit. Squeeze the juice from the grilled grapefruit over the broccoli shoots with fresh mint, coriander and toasted sesame seeds.
