Expand Your Palate: Wolfgang Puck’s Tips

In the culinary world, expanding your palate involves stepping outside your comfort zone and trying new foods. Chef Wolfgang Puck argues that everyone interested in cooking should learn to train their palate. Wolfgang suggests experimenting with different seasonings, oils, vinegars to learn how each ingredient interacts.

“Musicians have to train their ears to listen to music; painters have to train their eyes to learn about perspective and how to mix colors. We, in the kitchen, have to learn how to train our palate and how to season things properly because without that, you can buy the most expensive ingredients, and the food will taste flat.” — Chef Wolfgang Puck

Your tastebuds can detect five tastes: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami (savory). These different flavor profiles send a message to your brain to help your body recognize what you’re eating. Umami can be the hardest to pin down. “The umami taste, you can find it in, for example, soy sauce,” Wolfgang says. “You can find it in dried mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and Parmesan cheese.”

Here are some tips from Chef Wolfgang Puck for training your culinary palate:

1. 1. Season food gradually. Always start with just a small amount of salt in your dish. Remember, you can always add salt, but you can never take it out. The same goes for pepper. You should use fresh ground pepper whenever possible, starting with a little and adding more if needed.
2. 2. Toast your spices. Wolfgang recommends toasting your spices to enhance their flavor. Lightly toasting peppercorns in the oven before grinding them will release oil and maximize flavor and fragrance.
3. 3. Invest in good olive oil. High-quality olive oil and vinegar go a long way in enhancing the flavor of the dish. “Get a good bottle, but don’t cook with the really expensive olive oil, with the flavorful olive oil, because olive oil, when it’s really cold-pressed and the first press, it has little particles in it and they burn when you heat them up,” Wolfgang says. “So use the good olive oil for salad, for your fish dish, or wherever you drizzle a little olive oil on it.”
4. 4. Create balance. Wolfgang’s secret weapon is a touch of honey in his pea soup. To balance the flavor, Wolfgang adds a little lemon juice for acidity. Look out for any seeds you might have accidentally squeezed into the soup.

Become a better chef with the MasterClass Annual Membership. Gain access to exclusive video lessons taught by the world’s best, including Wolfgang Puck, Gabriela Cámara, Chef Thomas Keller, Massimo Bottura, Dominique Ansel, Gordon Ramsay, Yotam Ottolenghi, Alice Waters, and more.