A Brief History of Fish Sauce

38 points10 comments16 hours ago
rcakebread

I'm just here to thank Kenji for making me try fish sauce.

kccqzy

I bought a bottle of Vietnamese fish sauce (Red Boat brand, the most recommended brand) and added a teaspoon to some pea leaves. I loved the resulting flavor, but my partner did not and complained that it had too much of a fishy smell. A lot of cooking techniques actually seek to remove this fishy smell even when cooking fish, so it was not welcome to add this to something that didn’t contain fish in the first place. It’s certainly not a flavor everyone would like.

tananan

Thanks for sharing. It is especially interesting to hear the factors that contributed to the decline of fish sauce use in the west.

One thing I am “stealing” from SEA is fish sauce in scrambled eggs. Feels almost like a cheat code.

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saysjonathan

Homemade garum is a fun kitchen experiment, if you have the equipment and patience. Heat + protease + protein substrate is really all you need.

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