Can You Taste MSG? I Put It to the Test with 3 Recipes (and a Weird Bonus)
So in this video (above), I set out to properly test MSG — monosodium glutamate — and see what it actually does to flavour. There’s been a lot of mystery and, frankly, a bit of unnecessary fear around it over the years. Some people claim it’s magic. Others say it’s nonsense. So I cooked three everyday recipes (plus one very odd bonus), to get to the bottom of it — and the results were honestly a bit wild.
Recipe 1 – Egg Fried Rice: A Game-Changer
This was a simple test — I made one batch of egg fried rice, split it in half, and stirred MSG into one portion.
The difference? Genuinely mad. With MSG, it was like someone took a flavour highlighter pen to the whole dish. The egg tasted eggier, the rice had more depth, and the soy sauce somehow stood out more without being saltier. It didn’t add a weird new flavour — just lifted what was already there. I didn’t expect it to be so obvious.
Recipe 2 – Mac & Cheese: Sauce vs. Pasta
Next up: mac and cheese. I made the cheese sauce as normal, then split it. One had MSG, the other didn’t.
Tasting the sauces on their own, the MSG one was, no exaggeration, on another level — richer, fuller, more rounded. But here’s what really caught me off guard: after adding the pasta, the non-MSG version lost a lot of its punch. It got muted. But the MSG version? It held its flavour. It cut through the pasta and kept that satisfying cheesiness. That surprised me more than anything.
Recipe 3 – Tomato Sauce Showdown: Plain vs MSG vs Natural Umami
For the final test, I made a very plain tomato sauce — garlic, tinned tomatoes, a bit of seasoning. Pretty watery and bland on its own. I added MSG to one portion, and it instantly turned into something you’d actually want to eat — more like a rich tomato soup. Not salty, just full-bodied.
Then I went full flavour mode: grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, an anchovy fillet, a bit of grated parmesan — whizzed it all together into a homemade umami bomb. It was rich, complex, absolutely banging. And then… I added MSG to that.
I’m not joking — it was like restaurant-level. It went from “that’s tasty” to “that’s something I’d pay for.” Even when I added spaghetti (which normally waters the sauce down), the MSG version still carried loads of flavour. The homemade “whizzy one” clung to the pasta better because of its texture, but the one with both the umami ingredients and MSG? Honestly, that was the dish of the day.
Bonus Round – Strawberry Yoghurt
I tried stirring MSG into strawberry yoghurt… and yeah, it was not good. Really bitter, almost metallic. I was curious whether MSG could enhance sweetness or creamy flavours — turns out, not in this case! Still, worth the experiment.
Final Thoughts
MSG isn’t magic, but it’s definitely a powerful tool. It doesn’t make everything taste the same — it makes what’s already there taste better. In savoury dishes, it adds a kind of savoury fullness that’s hard to get otherwise unless you load up on cheese, fish sauce, or mushrooms. In sweet dishes… maybe not.
If you’ve ever been curious about MSG but weren’t sure what it actually does, give it a try — in the right recipes, it can completely change the game.
Watch the Video Here
You can watch the full video embedded above, or click here to view it on YouTube:
Watch: Can You Taste MSG? 3 Recipes, 3 Comparisons!
Related Video – Multi-Texture Muffins
If you liked this, you might enjoy the Multi-Texture Muffin video — where I show how dehydrating fruit leather and other layers builds complexity and adds naturally deep flavour, similar to umami, using texture and contrast instead of seasoning.