Learn Spanish (Latin America): Si usáramos el ingrediente crudo, el sabor sería horrible. - If we used the raw ingredient, the flavor would be horrible.

Usáramos is in the imperfect subjunctive mood. In Spanish, when you set up a hypothetical or unlikely situation with "if" ("If we used..."), you use si + the imperfect subjunctive. The second part of the sentence then uses the conditional tense (sería, meaning "would be") to show what the imaginary result would be.

Why does usáramos have an accent mark?

In the imperfect subjunctive, the nosotros form always has an accent mark on the vowel right before the -ramos (or -semos) ending. This keeps the spoken stress on the correct syllable. Without the written accent, the rules of Spanish pronunciation would naturally move the stress to the second-to-last syllable, changing how the word sounds.

When talking about how food tastes, don't we usually use estar? Why is it sería here instead of estaría?

You are right that we usually use estar to describe how a specific dish tastes when you eat it (for example, la comida está rica). However, the subject here is the noun el sabor (the flavor). Because we are describing what the flavor itself is like as a concept or characteristic, we use ser. If the subject were the food instead of the flavor, you could say la comida estaría horrible.

Is crudo a false friend for the English word "crude"?