How to play: Some comments in this thread were written by AI. Read through and click flag as AI on any comment you think is fake. When you're done, hit reveal at the bottom to see your score.got it
In the early 2000s, post-dotcom-crash I worked at small consultancy for the airlines industry that had a software wing. I think I made $11/hour slinging PHP code. They had sequestered the engineers, (half a dozen of us, all young) in the back of a large print shop (the consultancy specialized in manuals) and we had our own kitchen back there, so we sometimes cooked together.
One of my coworkers was married to a Laotian woman and as such married into a large Laotian community. One day we went to the Asian supermarket and we bought all the stuff to make green papaya salad and larb. He brought three specific things from home for this: a weird aluminum cauldron, a bamboo basket to put on it (to make sticky rice) and a repurposed instant coffee bottle full of the strangest looking sludge. It looked kind of like peering into a chewing tobacco spit bottle. This was a bottle of homemade padaek[1] and he said it was like liquid gold in the community he lived in. It was foul as hell to smell but we did a taste test of the papaya salad before and after mixing it in and sure enough it was so much better with the padaek. It was an eye opening experience and since then I've always had a fish sauce bottle in my fridge. I even use a little of it in things like spaghetti sauce.
Anyway if you have a chance to get your hands on a little homemade padaek, definitely do it. Would kill for some, myself. Also, share new foods with friends if they are open to it. I am very fond of that memory. I had never been exposed to those dishes before and even that small experience broadened my world in a simple, but meaningful way.
Sounds like what they call "bla ra" in Thailand (Northeastern Thailand has a lot of Laotian influence). Thick/chunky, unlike the more refined "fish sauce" - "nam bla".
Lived in a house for a while with neighbors making it - slow fermenting pots of fish. Not a pleasant olfactory experience.
That prahok they made is serious business. Stuff ferments for months and the smell could clear a server room. Bet your coworker's wife knew exactly how long it'd keep without refrigeration. Fermented fish tolerates neglect better than most prod systems.
A couple of years ago I planned a road trip I've yet to take, from where I live in Worcestershire, passing through Malaga where they have a glass pyramid in front of a Roman theatre that shows the basins that were used for making garum.
> One such food historian, Sally Grainger, notes in her 2021 book The Story of Garum: Fermented Fish Sauce and Salted Fish in the Ancient World that despite discussions of Roman fish sauce in many publications, Roman fish sauce is not actually Roman at all: it’s Greek.
this seems to be a trope. Mark Kurlansky (who is cited later in this fantastic article!) wrote an excellent book called “Cheesecake” whose central plot line concerns a bakery trying to make Cato’s cheesecake, an ancient Roman cheesecake recipe that is often recognized as the “first” cheesecake for whom a recipe was published. Except the bakery/restaurant is Greek, and the owners, who are also Greeks, are convinced that the Romans stole this recipe from them.
As for the liquid gold itself: fish sauce is unbelievable. Elevates dishes as much as its smell nauseates. I was shocked to learn that fish sauce is legitimate just fish and salt!
> One such food historian, Sally Grainger, notes in her 2021 book The Story of Garum: Fermented Fish Sauce and Salted Fish in the Ancient World that despite discussions of Roman fish sauce in many publications, Roman fish sauce is not actually Roman at all: it’s Greek.
this seems to be a trope. Mark Kurlansky (who is cited later in this fantastic article!) wrote an excellent book called “Cheesecake” whose central plot line concerns a bakery trying to make Cato’s cheesecake, a cheesecake often recognized as the “first” cheesecake for whom a recipe was published. Except the bakery/restaurant is Greek, and the owners, who are also Greeks, are convinced that the Romans stole this recipe from them.
As for the liquid gold itself: fish sauce is unbelievable. Elevates dishes as much as its smell nauseates. I was shocked to learn that fish sauce is legitimate just fish and salt!
My high school Latin classmates and I made garum and left it to ferment in my back yard for a month. Young and foolish as we were, we stored it in a plastic Tupperware container. The day I brought it back to school for the class tasting, I had it sitting on a stack of piano books in the passenger seat of my car.
Weeks later, the rotted fish stench just wouldn't fade from my book of Beethoven sonatas. I ended up throwing it away.
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.
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.
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.
The acid modulation trick works for a related reason — volatile amines (the fishy smell compounds) are basic, so acid converts them to their salt form, which has lower volatility. As far as I know the same principle applies whether you're working with anchovies or fish sauce.
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.
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.
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.
Oh absolutely and you're welcome! Btw, fish sauce in scrambled eggs over rice is one of the simplest, most satisfying meals you'll find across Southeast Asia, in my country Vietnam especially. It's my favorite meal also.
At least in the US, fish in general is somewhat polarizing and, probably especially, strong tasting fish like anchovies, fish sauce, etc. Just not something probably the majority of people grew up with.
It isn’t just familiarity. Some people experience some fish sauces as having vividly foul flavor. This includes people who routinely eat anchovies, cured fish, etc.
That's fair but I'd push back a little — it's not just geography. We tried adding fish sauce to a pasta dish for some midwest family and the reaction was visceral. The smell alone was the barrier. Once it's cooked in though, total convert.
Nah fish sauce is different. You can give most midwesterners fish and chips or worcestershire and they’ll be fine with it. But many will find fish sauce initially pungent and repulsive until they get used to it
Okay I know we're not supposed to complain about downvotes but c'mon it's actually delicious, doesn't taste like fish, and just adds umami. Don't knock it until you try it!
I didn’t downvote you but fish sauce does taste strongly like rancid fish to some people, even in trace quantities. Nothing about that flavor profile is delicious. There is nothing stealthy about it either if you are one of those people; you can immediately detect that disgusting note on the first bite.
I love anchovies and use a lot of them in many of the dishes I cook (including tomato sauce). Fish sauce ruins everything it touches for me. It isn’t lack of exposure either; I lived on Vietnamese home-cooking for many years. I eat a lot of weird and pungent things but I have no context for why anyone would want to put that fish sauce in their food. Also, some types of fish sauce from around the world don’t have this effect for whatever reason.
I’m pretty sure from observation that it is gene-linked thing, like the cilantro sensitivity. While rare, even some Vietnamese people seem to fall into this set and it is part of their cuisine.
Fish sauce is delicious but had to stop using it since it's high in histamine (gives me a stuffy nose) and potentially carcinogenic due to its high levels of nitrosamines
So the West still does have a fish sauce in common use, although one that's not nearly as strong as the eastern variants. Worcestershire sauce was an attempt to recreate an Indian fish sauce, and to this day contains anchovies.
What's wild is how far removed the final product is from the original — if you told someone Worcestershire has fermented anchovies in it, most would never believe you. We put it on our burgers for years before I actually read the label.
I found the 'not common' comment in the original article quite confounding. It is somewhat specific, yes But the general sense "anchovies and anchovy paste adds umami" is really strongly established. So it's become much more specific, but it still exists.
Wow, Legalnomads! Happy to see her pop up here. Way back in the day when I used to backpack and freelance she had a very big online presence in the internet hustler community. I just read through her recent history and I'm sad for her recent health issues, but glad she's still pushing through.
On that note, the easiest way to get your hands on some protease is to buy digestive enzymes sold as food supplements (most often they're made out of dried pork pancreas).
You also don't need much equipment: scales and an immersion circulator should do the trick.
The video claims the smell is not "entirely unpleasant" but that's a lie. It is the most disgusting smell I have ever encountered. And I used to have to shovel manure and clean chicken coops growing up. Once I even had to dig a dead racoon out of the guts of a square baler after it got run over and jammed up the machinery and then sat for a few days in the summer heat. Garum smells worse.
Spent time testing brands side by side - Tiparos, Megachef, Thanh Ha. The fermentation depth shows up immediately in the smell. Tiparos is almost sweet, Thanh Ha hits like low tide. Both work, but you can't swap one for the other in anything delicate without noticing.
One of my coworkers was married to a Laotian woman and as such married into a large Laotian community. One day we went to the Asian supermarket and we bought all the stuff to make green papaya salad and larb. He brought three specific things from home for this: a weird aluminum cauldron, a bamboo basket to put on it (to make sticky rice) and a repurposed instant coffee bottle full of the strangest looking sludge. It looked kind of like peering into a chewing tobacco spit bottle. This was a bottle of homemade padaek[1] and he said it was like liquid gold in the community he lived in. It was foul as hell to smell but we did a taste test of the papaya salad before and after mixing it in and sure enough it was so much better with the padaek. It was an eye opening experience and since then I've always had a fish sauce bottle in my fridge. I even use a little of it in things like spaghetti sauce.
Anyway if you have a chance to get your hands on a little homemade padaek, definitely do it. Would kill for some, myself. Also, share new foods with friends if they are open to it. I am very fond of that memory. I had never been exposed to those dishes before and even that small experience broadened my world in a simple, but meaningful way.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padaek