Secret weapons.

I must be getting better.
Although I'm not entirely out of the weeds yet on my back injury, something must be going right, because I've started to cook again.

I made a beef stew this week, and it was delicious, and we ate it over egg noodles, and my husband licked the bowl.

This post is not about that.

It's about secret weapons.
Secret ingredients: that thing which makes a recipe a well-needed tweak, maximizes flavor and gives the dish a certain, I don't know what.

The reason I've been thinking about this is that I made the aforementioned beef stew, and while it WAS good, something was just a bit off. I chalked it up to the fact that I didn't have any red wine handy to de-glaze the pot, nor had anything for liquid other than some boxed chicken stock. Obviously, something was lacking.

Salt? No, there was plenty.
Acid, then? Adding cider vinegar or lemon would have taken it in the wrong direction; it was already too bright. No, no, what it needed was the exact opposite, some depth. But how?
The entire point of me making this pot of stuff was that I really, really didn't want to leave the apartment for things not on hand. Which, sadly included tomato paste, my go-to for depth.

QUICK, I thought. TO THE INTERNET!

Twitter suggested a number of ingredients that might round out the flavor and add some richness, depth and, well, beefyness. I would say umami, except I think umami is a stupid sounding word and one that's annoyingly overused.

What worked, in the end, to turn my blandish beef stew into something utterly delectable?
one squirt of ketchup. One bay leaf. Three drops of soy sauce. One tiny drop of fish sauce.
The end result tasted like none of these things; it only tasted beefy and incredible.

THATS what I mean by secret weapons.

Now that I know the soy/fish sauce thing, I'm never going back. (thanks to Ron Zimmerman, @herbguy, for that little trick)

I've compiled a few secret weapons, perhaps not so secret now.

Baked goods and other things -

• Tea masala
• Cardamom
• Ginger-brew (essentially ginger sugar)
• Chinese slab brown sugar
• espresso powder
• Sadaf cardamom tea (to replace liquid) or Good Earth herbal tea
• Bacon grease (savory pastries)
• Greek yogurt
• Hawaiian sea salt

Spice:

• Yank Sing chili sauce (either the oil off the top or a bit of the mixed in detritus)
• Sriracha
• Garam masala
• Dave's Insanity ghost pepper sauce (never more than a drop!)

Brightening:

• Cider vinegar
• Fresh lemon or lime juice
• leftover white wine
• Tabasco

Deepening:

• Tomato paste
• Black soy sauce
• Fish sauce
• Parmesan rind
• ketchup
• dutch-process cocoa powder

I'm sure there are a ton more - after all, everyone has a favorite secret weapon.

Anyone willing to share some of theirs?