General guideline is 1/4 to a 1/6 of the amount of salt you use.
So 24 grams of salt should be accompanied by 4 to 6 grams of msg.
You can premix your fave ratio and just season with a single shaker.
Taste the msg by itself. If you notice that flavor in your finished dish you've over done it. You can balance with other flavors to adjust if you go over.
done. Now what should I do with that white powder that was inside the jar?
Put a dash of it in anything with meat or cheese, put a bit more of it in places you need something savory.
Even just a pinch will make any vegetarian dish sing with ease. It's very nice when just vibing in the kitchen.
I 99% cook single-serve vegetarian dishes, and a pinch barely makes any difference IME. Heck, I've been upping it to 3-4 pinches lately and still have trouble discerning any difference.
Note: I use very little salt, but lots of red pepper, so maybe the MSG is being overpowered by the heat..?
With MSG, the answer to "how much" is "more than you first thought."
Source: Uncle Roger.
That dude's a meme chef [and imo a hack comedian] not a real chef. Yes MSG is good and underutilised in western cooking. No you don't need to add fistfuls to every dish. Other users are correct, about one fifth the equivalent in salt gives enough of an umami undertone without making everything taste like concentrated cheeto dust.
(tldr there's a reason why msg is referred to as a flavour enhancer and not a flavour. It should reinforce the savouriness of the dish not dominate it)
Use it in everything savory. I've got a pinch pot of coarse salt and a pinch pot of MSG.
Experiment with it a bit to figure out what works for you. You can use less table salt (sodium chloride) if you also use MSG, as it has kind of a similar effect flavor-wise (but not in terms of preservation). Grab a small amount of some broth/stock you like, warm it up, add some salt and MSG in varying amounts to little tasters to get a feel for how it effects flavors.
I use it whenever something tastes “flat,” when you are like this is missing something but I can’t tell what it is. A little goes a long way, 1/4 the amount of salt sounds right.
I treat it like salt. Not in quantity (because it's easy to overdo it) but I add a little, stir, taste, and repeat until I'm happy with where it's at.
If you add too much it will linger on your palate too long and sometimes in food where the flavours are unbalanced or somehow "off", I have found that the msg can exacerbate this.
I think that the best way of using it is to be sparing at first but you'll get the hang of using it quickly. Overdoing it a couple of times is probably the best way to figure out where the line between deliciously umami and too much msg is.
There are two ways to use MSG imo. Either you use it like a salt and add 25% more than you would regular salt. Or you can use it as a spice and add it like you would garlic powder.
Some flavors taste very good when they have an MSG taste but some things do better when it's just an accent. For example, I'll use MSG as a salt when I cook fried rice. However, I use it like a seasoning when I do stuff like fish with lime.
MSG is very good but it doesn't work as well with other non-umami flavors imo. Salt and lime tastes good, MSG and lime needs to favor the lime to come out tasting good.
