MSG Taste Test – Putting MSG on Everything

In this MSG on everything taste test, I decided to see what would happen if I put MSG on everything I ate for a day.

If you’ve seen my other video where I tested five dishes MSG is supposed to improve, you’ll know I’ve become a bit obsessed with the stuff. So this time I took it to the extreme — I wanted to find out what happens if you put MSG on everything you eat in a day. Coffee, cornflakes, toast, salad, even dessert. Mrs B refused to add it to dinner, so I did what any reasonable person would do… I sprinkled it on everything I could find.

The Breakfast Experiments

Breakfast was off to a questionable start. The coffee — even with milk — tasted like a mug of salty vegetable broth. The cornflakes were worse, like soup made from regret. Both had that odd “stock cube” taste that MSG brings out when there’s no savoury flavour to latch onto.

Toast, though, was surprisingly okay. Plain toast with MSG wasn’t bad at all, but when I mixed it into butter? Wow. The butter tasted richer, rounder — like it had a proper glow-up. If I could be bothered, I’d probably season my toast like that every morning.

Lunchtime Wins

The Caesar salad was where MSG really started to shine. I made a batch with MSG in the dressing and a small bowl without, and the difference was wild. The non-MSG version tasted fine, but side by side it suddenly seemed flat — like all the brightness and bite had been dialled down. The MSG one, on the other hand, tasted restaurant-quality.

Afternoon Chaos

At this point I started to get bold. I sprinkled MSG on an apple (terrible idea — it was like fruity gravy), then tried it on a tangerine segment… and somehow it worked. The MSG mellowed out the sourness and actually made it taste sweeter. I even tried a glass of water which, no joke, tasted exactly like chicken stock. The MSG diet: one sachet away from a very strange soup cleanse.

Dinner & Dessert

For dinner I made a fish pie using supermarket frozen fish mix and split it in half — one with MSG, one without. Both were tasty, but the MSG pie had a bit more depth and savoury warmth. The non-MSG version suddenly felt milkier and muted when I went back to it.

Then came dessert: a chocolate cake with MSG in the buttercream. Cocoa naturally contains glutamates (that umami element MSG boosts), so in theory it should make it taste even chocolatier. And honestly? It kind of did. Richer, smoother, almost like dark chocolate without the bitterness.

Final Verdict

MSG didn’t win every round — coffee, cornflakes, and apples were a disaster — but on the savoury stuff it really worked. The Caesar salad and buttered toast were my favourites, the orange was a freak surprise, and the fish pie proved just how subtle MSG can be.

So, should you put MSG on everything? Probably not… but when you get it right, it’s absolute magic.

Watch the full video above on  on YouTube

If you like kitchen chaos, food experiments, and the occasional scientific excuse to eat cake, check out my Rainbow Pizza post for another wild idea that somehow worked: Rainbow Pizza