Re:A Brief History of Fish Sauce
by kccqzy on Sunday April 19, 2026 @08:29PM
(#47829031)
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.
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I use anchovy fillets in alot of recipes to add umami and nutrients, not just sauces but also things like meatloaf. Fishiness dissipates pretty quickly with heat, even faster with acidic ingredients like tomatoes, citrus, or vinegar. It's pretty easy to modulate fishiness, even with just acid. I double or triple the anchovies in a typical caesar dressing recipe, and if I feel I over did it just adding more lemon juice tamps it down.
One of my kids is pretty picky, even sensitive to onions, but doesn't seem to pick up on the anchovies. She'll eat fish, though, depending on mood, so maybe she's not the best benchmark.
Re:A Brief History of Fish Sauce
by MengerSponge on Monday April 20, 2026 @12:08AM
(#47830302)
That's the spirit! But you shouldn't underestimate the power of suggestion:
"This was cooked with fish sauce" -> "This tastes fishy"
Re:A Brief History of Fish Sauce
by jandrewrogers on Monday April 20, 2026 @01:58AM
(#47830860)
I use massive amounts of anchovies in my cooking and various types of processed fish generally. They do not trigger the extremely strong “rancid fish” effect of e.g. Vietnamese fish sauce that some people can taste even in small quantities.
The anchovies disappear into the food. For people like me, the fish sauce never does, you just get a mouthful of rancid fish taste. People gave up trying to hide it from me years ago because nothing really seems to work.
Please understand that 3 crabs is a million times better than red boat.
Re:A Brief History of Fish Sauce
by AdieuToLogic on Sunday April 19, 2026 @11:31PM
(#47830132)
> Please understand that 3 crabs is a million times better than red boat.
Swooping in to say; Squid brand fish sauce[0] for the win!
0 - https://importfood.com/products/thai-sauces-condiments/item/...
Re:A Brief History of Fish Sauce
by thefringthing on Monday April 20, 2026 @01:21PM
(#47837563)
At my local Asian grocery store, Red Boat costs about four times as much as the other brands, so I'll be sticking with my old standby of "random bottle whose ingredients list contains only anchovies and salt".
Re:A Brief History of Fish Sauce
by antinomicus on Sunday April 19, 2026 @09:00PM
(#47829203)
Fish sauce is not supposed to be added to the point that you can taste the fishy taste, you do get that right? If you’ve added enough to impart fishy taste, you’ve added way too much.
Not quite true. Lots of Thai dishes use a tonne of fish sauce and even shrimp paste in their dishes. They even make side dish dipping sauce (Nam Jim Jaew) that's like basically 50% fish sauce.
Re:A Brief History of Fish Sauce
by jandrewrogers on Sunday April 19, 2026 @09:21PM
(#47829308)
No, people have different sensitivity to it. Many people experience Vietnamese fish sauce as a strong “rancid fish” character that is not at all subtle in all traditional recipes that use it. It isn’t “using too much”, it is “using any at all”.
I imagine it is like the people who are sensitive to cilantro, thinking it tastes like soap.
Except the cilantro thing seems to be genetic; disliking fish sauce is simply preference.
I've used fish sauce as an alternative to anchovy paste for caeser salad dressing which is heavily defined by a fishy taste.
I don't think your idea of 'fishy taste' is the same as theirs.
Some people are just more sensitive to certain smells and flavors than others, especially if they didn't have previous exposure to them.
I could not taste the fishy taste myself but my partner can. It varies by person how sensitive they are.
Right? It's there to add a layer of depth and savoury umami
Lots of people are super sensitive to the “fishiness” of fish sauce. I can taste it with just a few drops in a large dish. I love it now, but it took a while to get used to
I think in many dishes you can add quite a lot, but it blends and cooks in with other ingredients so that the "fish sauce flavor" does not jump out as such.
I make mapo tofu with 1 tsp each of fish sauce, oyster sauce and light soy sauce. I don't think anyone would think it tastes like fish or oyster sauce in any way, but it doesn't taste right at all without them. The same goes for many other dishes.
Re:A Brief History of Fish Sauce
by terribleperson on Monday April 20, 2026 @01:54AM
(#47830834)
I need to try this. Typically I make my mapo tofu with dry-fried mushrooms and mushroom stock (I've found this much tastier than a pork or beef-based mapo tofu), but I don't always have the mushroom preparation on hand and punching up a pork mapo tofu with fish sauce would be much more convenient.
What kind of fish sauce do you use?
Red Boat fish sauce, Lee Kum Kee Oyster Sauce, and Pearl River Bridge light soy sauce - all standard stuff. I use just a little ground pork for that flavor, and I’ve found a little chicken stock and dash of white pepper really help as well
It's just that it smells absolutely horrible, and so you should be using the tiniest amount possible unless you know what you're doing. The fish sauce is just a cultural equivalent of soy sauce in some of SEA countries, they use it liberally over there. It does taste substantially better than the soy kind if you can bear with the odor(which I personally can't).
I live in Vietnam, and it is jokingly said that the smell of fish sauce is used by some Vietnamese to get rid of unwanted foreigners, to be used when the smell of durian doesn’t work.
Re:A Brief History of Fish Sauce
by littleroot on Monday April 20, 2026 @06:36AM
(#47832438)
Vietnamese here, no we add this to almost everything, especially things that don't contain fish in the first place. We have techniques to remove the fish smell where we don't desire it, but to be honest highest grade nước mắm would smell more like pure umami than fish so removing the remaining fish smell isn't that hard, usually just some peppers would be enough.
I will try your suggestion of fish sauce plus peppers! You mean ground black pepper, right?
Re:A Brief History of Fish Sauce
by whywhywhywhy on Monday April 20, 2026 @07:03AM
(#47832620)
Never thought it tasted fishy really anyway it's more acrid umami.
I cook a lot of Vietnamese food. Goto recipe for fish sauce to use with bánh xèo and the like is roughly 4:1 water to fish sauce (3:1 is also fine) mix with 1-1.5 tablespoons of sugar until the sugar is dissolved.
Chop 2-3 pieces of garlic and roughly the same amount of chilli into very fine pieces (same cutting board so they mix already while chopping) and add it. Then squeeze about a slice of lime. taste and up/down sugar/acidity/fishiness to taste.
Edit: Typically I use 3 tablespoons of nước mắm with 12 of water for the 4:1 (forgot that in the initial post, otherwise the sugar amounts and so forth make little sense).