Flavor Principles
Notes from the Kitchen
Cross-cutting rules that apply across recipes, independent of any single dish.
- 01
Salt stacking
Salt arrives from multiple components at once — dry brine, miso, adobo, briny garnishes like roe, pickles. Each reads reasonable alone; together they oversalt. Keep the low-salt components (crema, charred veg) near-unsalted and taste the assembled plate before any finishing salt. Fix for an oversalted purée: blend in more drained, unsalted beans rather than adding water.
- 02
Char as smoke vector
Aggressive char on corn and scallions, plus chipotle and toasted pepitas, stacks enough smoke to skip an actual smoker. Chipotle does the most work; the char is the supporting layer.
- 03
Sesame oil dominance
In umami-forward sauces, sesame oil overpowers smoky and fermented notes. Pull it from a scallion-miso sauce entirely, and hard char on the scallions becomes the primary depth source instead.
- 04
Marinade as brine
High-sugar marinades function as wet brines. This changes how later glazing and high-heat steps interact with the protein — surface moisture, sugar load, scorch risk.
- 05
Acid choice in sweet-savory glazes
Lime or lemon over rice vinegar. Rice vinegar's flatter, faintly sweet acidity blurs into a maple-miso base; citrus cuts it. Cider vinegar is the better acid when the target is BBQ rather than bright.
- 06
Miso selection
White (shiro) for glazes where sweetness needs to bridge heat and brine. Red/aka buries delicate components and fights chipotle.
- 07
Miso scorch
Miso proteins go bitter over direct flame before sugar caramelizes. Glaze over indirect heat; only kiss direct flame for the final set. A bitter edge usually means too long over the fire, not too much chile.
- 08
Ikura handling
Goes on last, off heat. Above ~110°F it turns rubbery and bursts early. Place it on rice and protein that have settled, not screaming hot.
- 09
Defaults
Dry brine all non-seafood proteins. Always measure internal temp. Thighs 175–185°F (collagen render), not 165.