Help me develop a better taste for cuisine.

In My Humble Opinion
1

How do I put this…Well, let’s just say my sister has described me as one to “inhale my food.” She means this in two ways: I eat my food really fast, and I am unable to distinguish different types of tastes very well. This basically almost means that I don’t really care what I eat, so long as it’s edible.

For example, I recently had the pleasure of drinking some hot chocolate made from fresh cacao beans. When someone came over to ask me how it was, all I was able to mutter out was “different.” :rolleyes:

I rarely have any opportunity to cook myself, so do you guys have any advice to develop a finer appreciation for the different flavours that the world has to offer? What is considered “good food”? (yes I know this is subjective but I’m sure there is some sort of consensus as to what’s considered high-end cuisine). I’m anticipating advice such as “try different types of foods and try and pick out the different types of tastes,” but can you elaborate on this?

Someone had told me was that there’s a very large gap between regular food and fine food, while there’s a negligible difference (except to the trained…tastebuds) between fine food and exquisite food. What say you?

2

Yep, try different types of food, and see what you like. A suggestion on how to do this: Find some good restaurants/bars in your area. You can look online or talk to people who do appreciate good food. For me this means restaurants that serve well prepared food made from scratch. Once you have a list of places, look for their happy hour specials and try a few that have a selection of reasonably priced items. That will give you the opportunity to try multiple things at one sitting without spending too much. It’s fun to do that with multiple people, so you can “run the menu.” Hmm, I guess I’ve described tapas, but this certainly isn’t limited to Spanish restaurants.

Going along with the previous advice. Order things you’ve never tried before and don’t recognize. The worst that happens is now you know you don’t like calamari.

Another thing that might be worth trying, is get something that you eat often, but at someplace that makes it better. For example, if you typically eat fast food hamburgers, get a burger at a nice steak restaurant. That will give you a comparison you can think about. Your decision might be, “yeah the hand made steak place burger is better than McD’s, but for $15 more, I don’t care,” “where have you been all my life,” or “it’s not what I’m used to, therefore it sucks.” Try to avoid immediately jumping to the last conclusion.

As to what’s good food? To me it’s hand made food from quality ingredients. (The recipe or execution can turn quality ingredients into crap, but it’s a starting point.) I also don’t worry one bit about high-class or low-class. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no rule that fine food has to come from a waiter in a tux with a French accent. More expensive doesn’t automatically mean tastes better, but there is going to be a minimum price for hand made food from quality ingredients, and (except the fantastic happy hour) it’s going to be more than what fast food costs.

I’m pretty discerning when it comes to food and beer, but with wine I’m closer to how you are with food. After several years of eating with people who were wine aficionados, and taking their advice, I finally decided, I’m just not a wine person. For me, wine ranges from bad to fine. And once I’m up into the fine category, it doesn’t matter how much better it is (as rated by people who like wine), because I’m some combination of can’t tell and don’t care. So, you might not be a food person. The only way to know is to try different things and see if you care. Having along an entertaining partner of the preferred gender who has a more discerning palate might help. Or at least provide a fun evening.

3

Also, try simply eating slower and trying to taste your food.

4

A great deal of apparent flavor is really tied to scents. Do you have chronic sinus trouble, or other conditions that might interfere with your sense of smell? If so, that might contribute to your relative indifference.

If not, try this as an experiment: each time you take a bite of a different food, pause with it in your mouth, lower your jaw a bit, and inhale deeply. Hold it for a moment, then exhale. See if you get a more vivid impression of the flavor of the food.

5

EmilyG is on to something, start by not inhaling. Seriously. Put food in your mouth with whatever utensil, put the utensil down while still holding the food in your mouth. Taste it. Chew it several times. Count the number of times you chew it if that helps, for an inhaler like you, I’d bet 10 or 20 chews would be a challenge. Feel how the flavor and texture changes as you keep it in your mouth and chew. Then swallow and don’t pick up your utensil until after you’ve swallowed.

Start trying individual ingredients, so you can taste them each when combined. How could you possibly know if there’s a good olive oil in that pesto if you haven’t tried some different olive oils on their own? A nice market may have different oils you can taste - there’s one I go to that keeps different oils in large steel dispensers with small spigots and tasting cups. Even the difference between iceberg and romaine on a sandwich - if you’ve never just tasted a leaf of each, I suggest you give it a try. Hellman’s or store brand? How do you know? Rather than just slurping up a whole sandwich, taste each ingredient to see what each is like individually so you can appreciate the way they combine in your mouth.

Start with the most basic individual ingredients, and start by actually tasting them.

6

Unfortunately, the more likely conclusion would probably be somewhere along the lines of “it doesn’t really taste much different to me, so what’s the point?”

Beyond this, great advice, echoreply. I’ll be sure to keep everything you’ve said in mind. :slight_smile:

Well…let’s just say that I have a terrible sense of smell as well. Probably a constant mild allergic reaction type of thing, but I don’t imagine it’d be THAT big a factor.

Uhh…I guess I’ll consider that? :confused: I’ll have to make sure I do that in an area where I’m not judged as crazy, but I’m not sure if any vividness would help my cause if I don’t know what I’m supposed to be tasting to begin with.

While I appreciate the humour (wait, was this even meant to be funny?), that statement about me inhaling my food was pretty tongue-in-cheek hyperbole. I don’t literally inhale my food. :smiley: She just threw out that remark as a response to how I ate a LOT faster relative to her; might have to do with how she considers herself a supertaster and finds a huge majority of foods unlikeable though…

And I’ll hold my utensil while chewing whether you like it or not, thank you very much. :mad:

This probably boils down to me believing that this would be too time-consuming a task, plus I’d probably quickly forget what many things taste like after trying to sample so many individual ingredients. Likewise, I’d most likely end up simplifying things and erring on the side of “well, this whole group of foods taste the same to me.”

Well that, and given my complete lack of knowledge in the culinary field, I’d probably end up shoving poison down my throat.

7

And to use all your senses. Look. Smell. Touch. Taste. And yes, even hearing. The tongue is even more touch-sensitive than the fingers, learn to pay attention to it.

I inhale my food but I usually can describe what I’ve been eating, I simply have an unusually good bite so I can chew faster than most people. In fact, I hate it when food is cooked in a way that doesn’t allow me to identify what went into it (either something is too dominant or things have been boiled to the point where you wouldn’t be able to get enough DNA for an ID).

8

Eat when you’re not hungry.

Let me back up…
Eat when you’re not so hungry that the primary goal is to fill your stomach. A good way to do this is to eat more frequently but in MUCH smaller portions, then TAKE YOUR TIME, don’t gag down huge bites of food but take smaller bites and try to identify each flavor, texture, scent, etc.

Another strategy is to find like mined people near you and make it a point to go out to places you wouldn’t normally go and share several dishes between you (our group calls this “ordering power” because going with a group allows ordering a bunch of different dishes without having more food than you can possibly eat).

Lastly, have fun. This is a huge one for me. Don’t expect to love everything you taste but be willing to give everything a shot (really you should give any new food at least 2 or 3 tries before writing it off completely). Enjoy yourself.

9

It’s not an obtrusive behavior (at least, it’s not supposed to be). I’m not suggesting that you sit there with your mouth open–just that you relax your jaw (to make the air space inside your closed mouth a bit larger) and take a quick, deep breath. It should result in more of the fragrance of the food reaching your olfactory receptors. The only way to learn the flavors is to taste them. It doesn’t matter what you’re “supposed” to be tasting; it only matters if you like what you taste.

And yes, a poor sense of smell can be problematic. A former coworker of mine is entirely anosmic–he has no sense of smell at all, and it has a huge effect on his ability to taste stuff. It might be worth seeing an otolaryngologist, if you can do so affordably, just to see if you have some trouble that could be resolved.

10

See that’s the thing: I’m hardly worried about if I LIKE what I taste, since I am tolerable of the vast majority of foods. What worries me is that can include stale or (mildly) burnt food as well; I’ve eaten green ham and never would have known until I was asked if I checked the contents of the sandwich.

So I am very much concerned about the things I’m supposed to be tasting, so I can develop a better sense of well…good taste perhaps? I know it’s subjective, but again, there’s some consensus on that type of stuff. While my sinuses may provide some inconvenience, I don’t believe that it has too much effect on what I AM tasting.

11

I’d suggest that “supposed to” come a lot later, after you’ve shaken your pre-conceived notions out of your head. (Obviously, don’t make a habit of eating things that are a month beyond their expiration date.)

From the way you describe your eating habits, your biggest issue seems to be that you can’t be bothered to pay attention. You’re so impatient to get to the end… the end of the meal, or even the end of this process of learning taste. There’s an old adage in writing: some people want to write, and they commonly succeed; some people want to have written, and therefore never write a thing.

So, dude, calm down and enjoy the ride. Slow down and pay attention to what you’re eating. If this means eliminating distractions (TV, internet, the paper, or even a conversation), then do that, and do it consistently for long enough that you notice you’re actually noticing your food. It could help to find a friend, very preferably a foodie, who can help redirect your attention if it wanders. The two of you eat together, and talk about nothing but the food you’re eating right at that moment. Live in the moment. Forget about the future, forget about “having developed” good taste, forget about “should,” focus on right now because you’re sabotaging yourself otherwise.

You need to crawl before you can walk. Do the first steps before stressing out about the tenth.