MSG-Free Catering

Glutamate is not an additive you can strike off a menu. It is already in parmesan, ripe tomato, mushroom, soy sauce, seaweed and cured meat.

So the only promise a kitchen can keep is no added MSG: no monosodium glutamate stirred in as an ingredient. Ask in those words and a caterer can answer plainly. Ask for MSG-free and a careful one hedges, because the honest answer depends on what you count.

Regulators treat added MSG as safe, and some people say it does not agree with them. Neither is the office’s argument to settle. Somebody asked, so book it that way, like anything else in the dietary catering directory.

The canister on a cook’s shelf is the smallest of the routes. Added MSG mostly arrives pre-mixed into what a kitchen buys: rub and seasoning blends, bouillon cubes and soup base, powdered gravy, bottled dressings, glazes and pre-made marinades. One scoop of base seasons a whole tray.

It does not sort by cuisine either. Ranch seasoning, canned soup, chip dust and a shelf of American pantry staples carry it as readily as anything else, so the useful question is about the products in the storeroom, not the food on the menu. Those same components are the ones our guide to low-sodium office catering flags.

Send the question to the kitchen, not the order form. Whoever takes your booking is reading a menu on a screen; the answer is on a tub in the storeroom.

Ask for two things in the order thread, so the reply comes back written down:

• Whether any seasoning blend, soup base or marinade on the line contains added MSG.
• Whether any of them list hydrolyzed protein or yeast extract, which do a similar job under other names.

Then give it a day. An instant flat no usually means nobody checked. A reply naming which products are clear and which the kitchen will swap means somebody did. Soy-free catering reads the same labels, since hydrolyzed soy protein turns up on both.

A roast chicken is seasoned by a person, with salt and herbs. A tray of glazed wings is seasoned by a bag.

Order more of the first kind: roasted and grilled meat, whole fish, vegetables cooked with oil and heat, plain rice and grains, salads dressed at the table. Order fewer gravies, cream and stir-fry sauces, soups, and anything a menu calls house seasoned.

Savory does not leave with the additive. Parmesan, roasted tomato, anchovy and slow-cooked onion carry a dish just as far. Give CaterAi the same instruction, no added MSG, and the menu it comes back with is already built to it.