Umami Bites: Introducing the All New Umami!

We’re very excited to introduce the brand new Umami!

Over the past three months, we’ve rebuilt the entire site from scratch for your reading pleasure.  While we could spend hours boring the pants off you with details like the number of hours it took, how many times we saw the white screen of death or the plethora of behind the scenes changes that will make everything better, we’re going to skip all that and jump right into the things that matter.

Things like bigger, better pictures, new layouts designed to make everything easier to read and a lot more fun to click around on when you’re looking for something tasty for dinner. We also built a brand new market that will eventually have everything you need for a good time in the kitchen.

A big reason for the redesign is we wanted to make it easier to use our recipes. Take a look at our delicious Bacon Infused BBQ Ribs or Classic American Taco recipes, and you can see how the new format makes the recipes easier to read with slideshows that expand to show important steps, like where the bacon goes.

We’re also embedding pins like this Ancho Chili Rubbed Chicken (below) right in many of our recipes to make it simple for Pinterest fans to save the recipes they love.

If you’re someone who’s always scaling recipes to make a lot or a little, we’ve got you covered.  Just click on the serving amount and a slider will pop up letting you scale the recipe up or down.

If you’re old school and want to print out a recipe try our new print button for a crisp, clean version with lots of white space around the edges for spills.

At its heart, Umami is about good story telling.  You can read through The Sleepover: Hiking Pictured Rocks National Lake Shore for a great example of our travel writing and see why you should take a road trip along the Great Lakes this summer.

We’ve also gathered some of our best stories into a new Learn to Cook collection. From How to Use the White Bread Test to Grill Better Food to Getting Started with Sous Vide this section is all about helping people in the kitchen.

One of our biggest frustrations shopping kitchen stores is how much clutter there is and how hard it is to find the right stuff. With Umami’s new Market we’re creating a curated online store that includes our favorite cookware, kitchen gadgets, grill tools, and much, much more.

So instead of having to navigate through thousands and thousands of items to find the one thing that works. You can shop in Umami’s Market and know we’ve done the hard work for you. All you have to do is pick what you want, add it to your cart, and click through to make your purchase with Amazon.

So take a peek at some of the latest cookbooks, our favorite kitchen timer, or that new Instant Pot you’ve been eyeing.

The great thing about shopping with Umami is the money we earn from your purchases directly supports our contributors.  So the more you shop with us, the more ads you click on, the more tasty recipes and interesting stories we’re able to create for you. So don’t click on that ad just because you need a new Mercedes, click on that ad because you want us to be able to show you how to make moonshine at home.

Now that we’ve got the new Umami up and running, we’re looking forward to clearing the cobwebs out of the kitchen and getting back to the fun stuff. Which in the next few weeks will include a tasty biscuit recipe, how to make great cold press at home, and trying to figure out what natural actually means on all those boxes at the grocery story.

So please take the time to check out the new Umami and let us know what you think.  Good, bad, or indifferent we’d love to hear your feedback.  And, of course, if you really like what you see take a moment to share some of your favorites on social media to help us grow.

Also, Now that the new Umami is up and running we’re back on the look out for some new contributors – if you’re interested or know someone who’s interested in writing about food or developing new recipes check out our job posting.

Thanks as always for reading Umami – we appreciate it!

Umami Bites is our somewhat regular newsletter that we try and send out every couple of weeks with all sorts of tasty recipes and interesting stories.  You can check out past issues here and sign up for future issues below.

Mark Hinds

A passionate writer, overly curious cook, and Umami's founder. Mark can often be found cooking for friends.