When creating any raw recipes I discovered very early on as a raw vegan a brilliant flavour hack that I apply to almost all of my raw food creations. In this hack I will always combine a mix of Fats, Acid, Texture, Salty, Sweet and Spice (FATSSS). I will also often add a Bitter flavour to this mix as well. I discovered very early on when creating with raw foods that there was so many great flavours. I also realised that by using the FATSSS in any dish (and by varying the amounts of each of the FATSSS) that I could create different tasting dishes that all tasted incredible.
Why I feel the FATSSS work so well in raw vegan recipes is that this same principle was applied to most foods I ate growing up and before going raw vegan. If you think of food like a pizza (I use to eat) you have fats from the cheese, acid from the tomato, textures from the base and toppings. Then there is added salts and toppings like olives, cheese and tomato that add to the salty flavour . All this gives the pizza a salty taste.
The sweet taste of a pizza comes from the sugars in the base (crust) of the pizza and or any meats added. The spice would come from flavours added like garlic and onion. Then the bitter flavour comes from any herbs added or maybe from the side salad served with the pizza.
One of the main reasons flavour combo's like this pizza can be so satisfying and stimulating to a person is that we have designated areas of the tongue that taste different flavour profiles of foods. The human tongue has designated areas that taste our five basic tastes such umami (savoury), sweet, sour, salty and bitter taste sensations (refer to the picture below). What s interesting is that in nature most foods will only stimulate one area of the tongue for example:
Watermelon= Sweet
Lemon = Sour
Kale= Bitter
Celery = Salty
Mushroom= Unami
Chilli= Pain receptors (these are found t the front of the tongue)
So looking at the foods I listed above if you chopped these up as a salad and used the lemon as a dressing you would light up all area's of your tongue at once. This creates a very pleasurable and stimulating effect on the brain as it taste good. I love adding some coconut to this salad above as I find fats extremely satisfying. There is still some debate as to exactly where fat receptors are on the tongue, yet either way I know that I enjoy most recipes a little more if I add fats.
Since most of our life food companies use this technique of including the FATSSS combo in their recipes that will excite all areas of a persons tongue. I simply found I could use this same method of food combining of FATSSS with natural raw foods to create some very healthy recipes. If you head over to the Roar recipes you will see we combine many different types of produce, textures and raw foods to create many different raw recipes.
To help you learn about some raw foods and which of the FATSSS category they fall into. I thought I would list some examples below of raw foods by taste that you could combine to create your own recipes. To create a great flavourful raw food salad simply pick one food from each category below for a great FATSSS taste:
FATTSSS + Bitters
Fatty raw foods
Nuts
Seeds
Avocado
Coconut
Acidic raw foods
Lemon
Lime
Grapefruit
Orange
Tomato
Salty raw foods
Celery
Tomato
Cucumber
Sweet raw foods
Mangoes
Medjool dates
Cherries.
Pears.
Watermelon
Figs.
Apricots
Spicy raw foods
Chilli
Garlic
Onion
Bitter raw foods
Kale
Rocket
Spinach
Basil
Parsley
Use the FATSSS + Bitters categorised list above to create your own recipes. You can use the FATSSS + Bitters to create some really incredible salad dressings as well. So head over and look at how we mix some of the above ingredients in dishes such as the NEW raw. Vietnamese Salad with salty garlic dressing (no added salt), raw. Open lettuce burger , Veggie and "cheese" pizza other Roar recipes. Most of all have fun and feel healthy with raw foods!
I hope you enjoyed this blog post and all the recipes at Roar. Do not forget to subscribe to Roar. If you create any great recipes please tag me on Instagram in your posts!!
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