6 ms·

How to grow monosodium glutamate (MSG) crystals

104 points by crystalchase21 5y ago

matthewfcarlson 5y ago
It’s cool but I was hoping it would talk about how to make your own MSG.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Yup, I'm sad that this won't further my dream of selling artisan MSG at farmer's markets. I could do a coarse "kosher" MSG, but that might taste terrible.
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    Just sell kombu salt like everyone else
  - thedougd 5y ago
    An MSG grinder! Burr mill of course.
    - EricE 5y ago
      ugh - grinding things that do not contain essential oils (like peppercorns = essential oils!) is worthless, annoying and bordering on pretentious.
      - utucuro 5y ago
        Powdered sugar is produced by grinding, as is table salt... So, add trying to achieve a specific texture, or melting property to things with essential oils and you're fine (Though I cannot help but smirk at the idea of using a sugar grinder for your tea)
        schwartzworld 5y ago
        Op means grinding fresh. You can buy salt in a plastic spice grinder, for example. It's cute, but doesn't improve the salt like grinding does for spices.
  - hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
    You can buy in bulk at chinese store and add some smoke flavour or paprika and wham! New Product! (Oh No!) :)
- user_7832 5y ago
  Probably not what you were looking for, but you can use yeast extract as a source of MSG. If I'm not mistaken some companies like McDonald's use this as a work-around. Edit - apparently it is not banned in the US, though it is limited to 10g/kg of food in the EU. Sorry for the mistake, I could've swore I saw it banned somewhere. Edit 2 - I think I was thinking about Sodium Cyclamte instead, a sweetener in the Non-US Sweet n Low variants amongst other uses.
  - arsome 5y ago
    What? MSG is very commonly used in popular American snack foods, like Doritos, no need for a workaround and there's no ban on it.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    Fun fact - MSG is completely banned in the US for use in food Where did you read that? It would be all over the news if it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given MSG its generally recognized as safe (GRAS) designation
    - user_7832 5y ago
      Thanks, I've corrected it. I don't know why I remember reading that because I used to wonder what might have caused such a reaction from the FDA. I suppose I'm misremembering with some other compound. Edit: I think it's Sodium Cyclamte I was thinking about, a sweetener in the Non-US Sweet n Low variants amongst other uses.
      - mprovost 5y ago
        I feel like this is a reenactment of how MSG got a bad name in the first place. Someone mistook it for a different compound and here we are decades later.
        user_7832 5y ago
- OJFord 5y ago
  According to Wikipedia, modern industrial production is actually mainly by bacterial fermentation (perhaps because the earlier method produced hydrogen chloride), and it sounds probably doable: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jgam1955/3/3/3_3_193/_pdf https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jgam1955/3/3/3_3_193/_p... Hard if you want to optimise yield (as you would industrially), but seems not so hard to happen across a yeast strain that will produce some glutamate.
ToniCipriani 5y ago
Uncle Roger's favourite science experiment.
- jbirer 5y ago
  Fuiyoh!
rob74 5y ago
Interesting - however I don't think I have ever seen "pure" MSG for sale here in Germany. Due to its bad reputation, it's only available as a part of various products which come either in liquid form (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi-W%C3%BCrze https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi-W%C3%BCrze) or as "spice mixes" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegeta_(condiment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegeta_(condiment)).
- Faaak 5y ago
  I got mine from amazon. It's perfect for asian/stir-fry dishes
- myrmidon 5y ago
  You can typically get this in most Asia shops, e.g.: https://goasia.net/onlineshop/sauce-oel-und-gewuerze/2728/mononatrium-glutamate/geschmacksverstaerker-200g-ajinomoto https://goasia.net/onlineshop/sauce-oel-und-gewuerze/2728/mo...
- krageon 5y ago
  Any asian store will have it (as vetsin, for example). If you're really hard-pressed, you can go to the netherlands and buy bulk amounts from an asian store there.
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  Supermarkets don't have a lot of things here in Berlin. But there are plenty of Asian stores. I bought some MSG a few months ago in a Pakistani shop that also sells a lot of other nice things that you are unlikely to get in most German supermarkets. If you are in Berlin, the shop is called Tariq and it is near the Gesundbrunnen station.
- janfoeh 5y ago
  I could have sworn that one of the usual suspects - Ostmann, Fuchs.. - used to sell it in small shakers you'll find in supermarket spice racks, but those seem to have disappeared. You can buy it by the kg from Metro/Selgros, though.
- newaccount74 5y ago
JRKrause 5y ago
Coming from a semiconductor crystal growth background, I really love these articles. I wonder what could be accomplished by further controlling the growth environment. From my understanding, the growth-rate of these crystals is limited by the availability of mass i.e. the slow evaporation of water out of the suspension liquid increases the MSG concentration which in turn makes condensation of MSG onto the seed crystal energetically favorable. Generally, the most energetically favorable outcome is for these condensing molecules to incorporate into the 'ideal' location within the crystal lattice, forming a single-crystalline mass. From the images we can see condensation on walls of the container which indicates that 'non-ideal' incorporation is prevalent. One way to combat this is to the raise the growth temperature, such that molecules that condense into non-single-crystalline locations are more likely to just dissolve back into the solution. Finding this optimal temperature where molecule-glass condensation is unlikely but molecule-crystal lattice is likely is, naturally, difficult. Lots of nobs to turn in a process like this. It's fun to imagine how you might construct a proper growth reactor that allows more precise control of temperature and mass flux.
- EricE 5y ago
  Reminds me of stuff I have seen in the 3D printing groups for controlled drying of 3D prints. With the plethora of sensors and cheap programmable controllers you could probably whip up a chamber that could control both heat and humidity without much trouble. A quick web search turned up this page: https://reprap.org/wiki/Heated_Build_Chamber https://reprap.org/wiki/Heated_Build_Chamber I'm sure with some more digging others already have designed chambers for controlling heat and humidity. Might be fun extension/dual use for 3D printing and crystal growing. Overlapping hobbies are the best!
abcd_f 5y ago
Yeah... about this whole crystal growing business. A salt crystal growing guide from the same site was on the front page a couple (?) of months ago. Looked interesting and easy enough, so I gave it a try. So far it has been a complete fiasco second in scale only to my attempt at making pancakes at the ripe age of 5. Pretty much I just got salt back so far, lol. So, caveat emptor.
- durkie 5y ago
  One very passive method that has worked well for me in the past was to prepare a highly-concentrated salt solution (5M -- 292 g salt per liter of water) and then let the water evaporate very slowly (like only slightly open to the outside world) and left undisturbed. This left me with a roughly 2cm x 2cm x 1cm crystal of salt that is incredibly transparent (save small impurities in the center) with nice cubic features on the broad face.
mchanson 5y ago
I use MSG in almost all of my savory cooking at home. Highly underrated flavor enhancer.
- smegsicle 5y ago
  does it provide any big opportunities if you've already got something like worchestershiresauce?
  - dekhn 5y ago
    yes, it doesn't contain 900 other things like sugar, rotting fish, extra flavorings so you can make things that are much cleaner tasting.
- hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
  OMG thats soo yummy!!! // Followed by a night of headaches and sleeplessness. I understand not everyone gets the side effects though.
analog31 5y ago
I know some synthetic chemists, and getting some new compound that they've made, to grow into a crystal, is a huge thing. With a good crystal, you can get a molecular structure from X-Ray crystallography. Also, crystallizing something and washing away the solvent, was a way to purify a compound. The chemists talked about all sorts of rituals and superstitions, to coax a compound to crystallize. Usually it was just in good fun, something to talk about when a particular compound was being stubborn. With drug compounds, a different crystal structure of the same compound is a different drug. And complicated compounds can have multiple stable structures. Getting particular crystal structures to grow reliably in large quantities is a big deal for the drug business. So it's definitely more than a hobby, but yet everybody enjoys seeing these nice big crystals.
JaggerFoo 5y ago
I can imagine the reaction from Venice Beach,CA vegans to an MSG crystal vendor on the boardwalk. First "Oooh cool crystals, I use crystals to keep my chakras aligned. What kind are they?" "MSG????" They quickly walk away, their sandals with white socks never moved faster. Cheers
hbarka 5y ago
How did MSG get such a bad rap? The anti-MSG marketing was really strong and even made its way into pop culture. I can think of a few other controversies where there was a corporate food lobby behind the marketing, whether to vilify or promote, with lasting effects for many years. What is good versus bad?Butter, Margarine, coconut oil, corn oil, vegetable oils, meat (keto), carbs vs no-carbs, milk protein as cancer catalyst. Coffee gets assailed every now and then, and then a counter study would appear. Blue zones, caloric restriction, etc etc.
- sosborn 5y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/dining/msg-chinese-restaurant-syndrome-merriam-webster-dictionary.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/dining/msg-chinese-restau...
- zackmorris 5y ago
  Another one I discovered is the glorification of almonds. Tree nuts are inflammatory, which I didn't realize could get me, and almond butter kicked off the digestive issues I started getting in 2018. I believe what happened is that I was chronically dehydrated, drinking too much alcohol due to work stress, and eating a harsh diet of legumes and nightshades as part of a low-budget workout diet. That weakened my gut lining enough that the bad stuff got into my blood while my body was trying to absorb water from the intestines, which triggered an autoimmune response. I believe a similar mechanism happens with gluten, which cascades into an autoimmune response to protein in the thyroid. So the cost difference between cheap foods made of fillers like gluten/sugar/etc and high end/organic food is eventual autoimmune disease and obesity. Pumpkin seeds are so much better. But of course, anyone can grow pumpkins. Where's the profit? $$$ For anyone dealing with digestive issues, this quite literally saved my health (no affiliation): https://www.naturespath.com/en-us/products/natures-path-foods/pumpkin-seed-flax-granola/ https://www.naturespath.com/en-us/products/natures-path-food... Brussels sprouts, switching from wheat to rice, digestive enzymes, psyllium husk capsules and cutting dairy and other inflammatory foods by half put my symptoms into remission. I took the Everlywell (again no affiliation) test of 200+ foods which showed the smoking guns of almonds and dairy in my immune response: https://www.everlywell.com https://www.everlywell.com
EricE 5y ago
That whole site is very well done and worth exploring. I'm pretty sure a previous HN story lead me to it last year and even inspired me to grow a few sugar crystals.

matthewfcarlson 5y ago

It’s cool but I was hoping it would talk about how to make your own MSG.

pessimizer 5y ago
Yup, I'm sad that this won't further my dream of selling artisan MSG at farmer's markets. I could do a coarse "kosher" MSG, but that might taste terrible.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  Just sell kombu salt like everyone else
- thedougd 5y ago
  An MSG grinder! Burr mill of course.
  - EricE 5y ago
    ugh - grinding things that do not contain essential oils (like peppercorns = essential oils!) is worthless, annoying and bordering on pretentious.
    - utucuro 5y ago
      Powdered sugar is produced by grinding, as is table salt... So, add trying to achieve a specific texture, or melting property to things with essential oils and you're fine (Though I cannot help but smirk at the idea of using a sugar grinder for your tea)
      - schwartzworld 5y ago
        Op means grinding fresh. You can buy salt in a plastic spice grinder, for example. It's cute, but doesn't improve the salt like grinding does for spices.
- hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
  You can buy in bulk at chinese store and add some smoke flavour or paprika and wham! New Product! (Oh No!) :)
user_7832 5y ago
Probably not what you were looking for, but you can use yeast extract as a source of MSG. If I'm not mistaken some companies like McDonald's use this as a work-around. Edit - apparently it is not banned in the US, though it is limited to 10g/kg of food in the EU. Sorry for the mistake, I could've swore I saw it banned somewhere. Edit 2 - I think I was thinking about Sodium Cyclamte instead, a sweetener in the Non-US Sweet n Low variants amongst other uses.
- arsome 5y ago
  What? MSG is very commonly used in popular American snack foods, like Doritos, no need for a workaround and there's no ban on it.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Fun fact - MSG is completely banned in the US for use in food Where did you read that? It would be all over the news if it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given MSG its generally recognized as safe (GRAS) designation
  - user_7832 5y ago
    Thanks, I've corrected it. I don't know why I remember reading that because I used to wonder what might have caused such a reaction from the FDA. I suppose I'm misremembering with some other compound. Edit: I think it's Sodium Cyclamte I was thinking about, a sweetener in the Non-US Sweet n Low variants amongst other uses.
    - mprovost 5y ago
      I feel like this is a reenactment of how MSG got a bad name in the first place. Someone mistook it for a different compound and here we are decades later.
      - user_7832 5y ago
OJFord 5y ago
According to Wikipedia, modern industrial production is actually mainly by bacterial fermentation (perhaps because the earlier method produced hydrogen chloride), and it sounds probably doable: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jgam1955/3/3/3_3_193/_pdf https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jgam1955/3/3/3_3_193/_p... Hard if you want to optimise yield (as you would industrially), but seems not so hard to happen across a yeast strain that will produce some glutamate.

ToniCipriani 5y ago

Uncle Roger's favourite science experiment.

jbirer 5y ago
Fuiyoh!

rob74 5y ago

Interesting - however I don't think I have ever seen "pure" MSG for sale here in Germany. Due to its bad reputation, it's only available as a part of various products which come either in liquid form (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi-W%C3%BCrze https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi-W%C3%BCrze) or as "spice mixes" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegeta_(condiment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegeta_(condiment)).

Faaak 5y ago
I got mine from amazon. It's perfect for asian/stir-fry dishes
myrmidon 5y ago
You can typically get this in most Asia shops, e.g.: https://goasia.net/onlineshop/sauce-oel-und-gewuerze/2728/mononatrium-glutamate/geschmacksverstaerker-200g-ajinomoto https://goasia.net/onlineshop/sauce-oel-und-gewuerze/2728/mo...
krageon 5y ago
Any asian store will have it (as vetsin, for example). If you're really hard-pressed, you can go to the netherlands and buy bulk amounts from an asian store there.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Supermarkets don't have a lot of things here in Berlin. But there are plenty of Asian stores. I bought some MSG a few months ago in a Pakistani shop that also sells a lot of other nice things that you are unlikely to get in most German supermarkets. If you are in Berlin, the shop is called Tariq and it is near the Gesundbrunnen station.
janfoeh 5y ago
I could have sworn that one of the usual suspects - Ostmann, Fuchs.. - used to sell it in small shakers you'll find in supermarket spice racks, but those seem to have disappeared. You can buy it by the kg from Metro/Selgros, though.
newaccount74 5y ago

JRKrause 5y ago

Coming from a semiconductor crystal growth background, I really love these articles. I wonder what could be accomplished by further controlling the growth environment. From my understanding, the growth-rate of these crystals is limited by the availability of mass i.e. the slow evaporation of water out of the suspension liquid increases the MSG concentration which in turn makes condensation of MSG onto the seed crystal energetically favorable. Generally, the most energetically favorable outcome is for these condensing molecules to incorporate into the 'ideal' location within the crystal lattice, forming a single-crystalline mass. From the images we can see condensation on walls of the container which indicates that 'non-ideal' incorporation is prevalent. One way to combat this is to the raise the growth temperature, such that molecules that condense into non-single-crystalline locations are more likely to just dissolve back into the solution. Finding this optimal temperature where molecule-glass condensation is unlikely but molecule-crystal lattice is likely is, naturally, difficult. Lots of nobs to turn in a process like this. It's fun to imagine how you might construct a proper growth reactor that allows more precise control of temperature and mass flux.

EricE 5y ago
Reminds me of stuff I have seen in the 3D printing groups for controlled drying of 3D prints. With the plethora of sensors and cheap programmable controllers you could probably whip up a chamber that could control both heat and humidity without much trouble. A quick web search turned up this page: https://reprap.org/wiki/Heated_Build_Chamber https://reprap.org/wiki/Heated_Build_Chamber I'm sure with some more digging others already have designed chambers for controlling heat and humidity. Might be fun extension/dual use for 3D printing and crystal growing. Overlapping hobbies are the best!

abcd_f 5y ago

Yeah... about this whole crystal growing business. A salt crystal growing guide from the same site was on the front page a couple (?) of months ago. Looked interesting and easy enough, so I gave it a try. So far it has been a complete fiasco second in scale only to my attempt at making pancakes at the ripe age of 5. Pretty much I just got salt back so far, lol. So, caveat emptor.

durkie 5y ago
One very passive method that has worked well for me in the past was to prepare a highly-concentrated salt solution (5M -- 292 g salt per liter of water) and then let the water evaporate very slowly (like only slightly open to the outside world) and left undisturbed. This left me with a roughly 2cm x 2cm x 1cm crystal of salt that is incredibly transparent (save small impurities in the center) with nice cubic features on the broad face.

mchanson 5y ago

I use MSG in almost all of my savory cooking at home. Highly underrated flavor enhancer.

smegsicle 5y ago
does it provide any big opportunities if you've already got something like worchestershiresauce?
- dekhn 5y ago
  yes, it doesn't contain 900 other things like sugar, rotting fish, extra flavorings so you can make things that are much cleaner tasting.
hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
OMG thats soo yummy!!! // Followed by a night of headaches and sleeplessness. I understand not everyone gets the side effects though.

analog31 5y ago

I know some synthetic chemists, and getting some new compound that they've made, to grow into a crystal, is a huge thing. With a good crystal, you can get a molecular structure from X-Ray crystallography. Also, crystallizing something and washing away the solvent, was a way to purify a compound. The chemists talked about all sorts of rituals and superstitions, to coax a compound to crystallize. Usually it was just in good fun, something to talk about when a particular compound was being stubborn. With drug compounds, a different crystal structure of the same compound is a different drug. And complicated compounds can have multiple stable structures. Getting particular crystal structures to grow reliably in large quantities is a big deal for the drug business. So it's definitely more than a hobby, but yet everybody enjoys seeing these nice big crystals.

JaggerFoo 5y ago

I can imagine the reaction from Venice Beach,CA vegans to an MSG crystal vendor on the boardwalk. First "Oooh cool crystals, I use crystals to keep my chakras aligned. What kind are they?" "MSG????" They quickly walk away, their sandals with white socks never moved faster. Cheers

hbarka 5y ago

How did MSG get such a bad rap? The anti-MSG marketing was really strong and even made its way into pop culture. I can think of a few other controversies where there was a corporate food lobby behind the marketing, whether to vilify or promote, with lasting effects for many years. What is good versus bad?Butter, Margarine, coconut oil, corn oil, vegetable oils, meat (keto), carbs vs no-carbs, milk protein as cancer catalyst. Coffee gets assailed every now and then, and then a counter study would appear. Blue zones, caloric restriction, etc etc.

sosborn 5y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/dining/msg-chinese-restaurant-syndrome-merriam-webster-dictionary.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/dining/msg-chinese-restau...
zackmorris 5y ago
Another one I discovered is the glorification of almonds. Tree nuts are inflammatory, which I didn't realize could get me, and almond butter kicked off the digestive issues I started getting in 2018. I believe what happened is that I was chronically dehydrated, drinking too much alcohol due to work stress, and eating a harsh diet of legumes and nightshades as part of a low-budget workout diet. That weakened my gut lining enough that the bad stuff got into my blood while my body was trying to absorb water from the intestines, which triggered an autoimmune response. I believe a similar mechanism happens with gluten, which cascades into an autoimmune response to protein in the thyroid. So the cost difference between cheap foods made of fillers like gluten/sugar/etc and high end/organic food is eventual autoimmune disease and obesity. Pumpkin seeds are so much better. But of course, anyone can grow pumpkins. Where's the profit? $$$ For anyone dealing with digestive issues, this quite literally saved my health (no affiliation): https://www.naturespath.com/en-us/products/natures-path-foods/pumpkin-seed-flax-granola/ https://www.naturespath.com/en-us/products/natures-path-food... Brussels sprouts, switching from wheat to rice, digestive enzymes, psyllium husk capsules and cutting dairy and other inflammatory foods by half put my symptoms into remission. I took the Everlywell (again no affiliation) test of 200+ foods which showed the smoking guns of almonds and dairy in my immune response: https://www.everlywell.com https://www.everlywell.com

EricE 5y ago

That whole site is very well done and worth exploring. I'm pretty sure a previous HN story lead me to it last year and even inspired me to grow a few sugar crystals.