Maximize meals with the Flavor Star

Learn to balance your dish if one flavor is overpowering.

Illustration By Emma Quinn

The Flavor Star was created to help find a perfect balance of flavors. It’s built around five flavors, including salty/savory (or umami), sweet, sour, bitter and spicy. The chart shows which flavors enhance or balance each other. For instance, salty can balance bitterness and enhance sweetness (sea salt chocolate chip cookies, anyone?); sweet can balance sour, bitterness, and spice and enhance saltiness; sour can balance spice, sweetness, and bitterness and enhance saltiness; bitterness can balance sweetness and saltiness; and spiciness can balance sweetness. If you find your dish to be too bitter or maybe too bland, just reference the chart and see how you can improve the flavor.

Hot docuseries

The Netflix show “Salt Fat Acid Heat” features chef and author Samin Nosrat traveling the world and exploring how basic flavors work to make food as delicious as it can be. The four-part series takes you to Italy, Japan, Yucatan, and Berkeley, California, where Nosrat started her career. Viewers will take away how they can add these basic elements to their meals and master the art of flavor.

Help us help our neighbors

Eat and drink like a local with LOCAL Flavor, a LOCAL Life cookbook filled with recipes from local chefs and restaurants. Buy a cookbook for $15 and we will give $10 to the Lowcountry Community COVID-19 Response Fund. Purchase a copy online here.