Balancing your meals, in a way that always tastes good, can be a tricky thing to pull off. You can pull a few ingredients out of the cupboard and think they’ll work wonders baked into a pan together, but in reality, the taste is rather off putting and definitely missing a bit of salt!

But you can always bounce back from a cooking mistake like this, and make sure that in the future, you’ll always serve up something that tastes great. It’ll become second nature, and you’ll feel like a natural chef when standing at the stove. With that in mind, here’s what you need to know about your typical mealtime flavour palette. 

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Know the Primary Flavours

There’s 5 of them, and they can be easy to forget about! After all, unless you’re a professional chef, you’re not really thinking about what flavours are called and how to mix them well together. You just know that rice and chicken work wonderfully!

The primary flavours are as follows: Salty, Sweet, Bitter, Sour, and Umami. Our mouths have taste receptors for these flavours, and they make up the base of all foods we consume. But they need balance! Too much sweet? Add salt. Too much Bitter? Add Umami. It helps to enrich our meals, and make them far better, especially if guests are coming over! 

Take Inspiration From Other Cultures

There are a lot of cultural dishes out there, and they always taste great! So why not take a leaf out of their book, and serve up a meal or two with their typical flavour profiles in mind? It’ll be less boring to throw a meal together night after night, and you’ll discover a few ingredients you never thought you’d like. 

And some nights, when you don’t feel like cooking, you won’t have to either. You can also try out some tai pei frozen food, which takes inspiration from Asian recipes to bring a more balanced and nutritious plate to your dinner table. So think about how Indian or Chinese cuisine makes a mean dish; we all love takeout from these style restaurants, and plenty of these dishes taste much better when made at home! 

Make Liberal Use of Substitutions

If you’ve taken something out of the meal, you’re going to need to add a similar taste/texture to make sure it still balances in the same way. For example, if you’re not a big fan of mushrooms for whatever reason, you’ll need to replace them with a food that has a similar profile, such as sun-dried tomatoes, chickpeas, and even Tofu. 

This will help the meal to come back together, and it’ll certainly be a lot more enjoyable for you to eat! You don’t want any flavours to wash straight out, so add them back in, and feel free to sprinkle a little more salt on top as well. 

How does your mealtime flavour palette stack up? Let’s make sure that dinner always cooks up a storm!