Many meat sauce recipes begin by cooking chunks of meat until browned bits stick to the bottom of the pot. Those browned bits are called fond, and they’re absolutely packed with savory umami taste. But this recipe uses ground beef rather than chunks of meat, which will turn dry and pebbly if cooked long enough to create a fond. So we turned to mushrooms! Mushrooms are packed with umami flavor compounds, too. As you cook them, they begin to brown and form flavor-packed fond on the bottom of the pot. Scraping up all that fond adds loads of umami flavor to your sauce. Bonus: Mixing the ground beef with baking soda helps keep it tender and moist. Pasta With Meat Sauce Serves 4 to 6 1 pound 85 percent lean ground beef 2 tablespoons water 1 teaspoon plus 1/2 teaspoon salt, divided, plus salt for cooking pasta 1/2 teaspoon baking …