Want To Keep Learning About Thai Ingredients
Now that you know everything there is to know about this essential Thai sauce, time to get into the kitchen and cook with it. This list of easy Thai dishes is a great place to start.
If you want to keep learning more about other Thai ingredients, take a look at these other posts and videos, or check the complete library of my posts about Thai ingredients!
- What is Oyster Sauce And Which is the Best One?
- Ultimate Guide to Asian Grocery Store
- Coconut Milk: How to Choose, Use, Store & Substitute
- Soy Sauce 101 – What You Need To Know
How To Use Fish Sauce
If you’re new to fish sauce, I recommend starting out with recipes from Southeast Asian cuisine that naturally contains it, because those are tried and true. Thai curries, soups, or salads on this website are all great places to start.
Then, you can start experimenting with non-traditional uses. Try using it in place of soy sauce in Asian cooking, but keep in mind that the flavours are very different, so try substituting just half of the soy sauce in stir fries or marinades see how it goes!
And yes, you CAN use fish sauce outside of Asian cuisine! Remember it’s just a source of salty and savory taste. Richer foods are great for experimenting as the fish flavour won’t be too obvious: try it in stews, chili, bolognese sauce, braised meats, pasta sauces, or meatloaf!
You can also use it as a tableside condiment, adding it to anything that feels a little bland. For this, I recommend making the most popular Thai condiment, prik nam pla, simply by combining fish sauce with chopped fresh chilies and a squeeze of lime juice. Add some chopped garlic or shallots if you’d like, then treat it like you would tabasco, worcestershire sauce, or salt and pepper!
Choose A Higher Protein Content
Another indicator of quality is protein content. As I explained in How is Fish Sauce Made above, lower quality fish sauce has more water added, and this naturally dilutes the concentration of fish protein.
For example, Red Boat, a premium brand with no added water, contains 4 grams of protein per tablespoon. Squid and Megachef, both great everyday-use options, contain 2 grams. Lucky, a cheap brand I do not recommend you touch, contains zero grams of protein.
Some brands use a “degree N” number to indicate the amount of protein in the fish sauce, for example Red Boat indicates 40°N while Megachef indicates 30°N. The higher the number, the more protein.
You might notice that some brands contain added protein. For example, Three Crabs fish sauce contains 2 grams of protein but also has hydrolyzed wheat protein on its ingredient list. I do not know whether the amount added makes any difference to the total amount of protein per serving but it is something to mention.
Important takeaway: Choose fish sauce with at least 2 grams of protein per tablespoon.
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What Is Fish Sauce
Some call it a condiment, but fish sauce is more of a seasoning in a sense that we use it primarily to season our food. Its main purpose is to add saltiness and the secondary purpose, but still very important, is to add umami or savory flavor.
You can think of it as soy sauce, but with fish! It’s the main salting agent in traditional Thai cuisine, and is widely used in many Southeast Asian countries such as Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
We also use it as a condiment. Often in Thailand youll find prik nam pla on the table, which is a simple combination of fish sauce and chilies used to add an extra boost of seasoning to anything that might need it, much in the same way salt and pepper are used in the West.
But Will It Make My Food Taste Fishy
No. If that were true, most Thai dishes would taste fishy. I have received many messages from first timers who smell it, then immediately cannot imagine how this could be added to food. I’ve even had someone asking me if it had gone bad!
Yes, it smells fishy, but the magic of fish sauce is that once it’s added to food, the fishiness disappears and you’re left with that salty savory punch that can elevate any dish.
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Which Fish Sauce To Avoid
- Golden Boy . If this is the only one you have, fine, but it isn’t the best quality despite a relatively simple ingredient list.
- Lucky Brand. Avoid this one at all cost. It’s full of additives and is basically salty flavored water with colour added.
- Anything that is not a clear brown liquid! If you see “fish sauce” that is a murky, brownish-grey liquid, that is a different thing altogether and is NOT what you want unless you are making specific dishes that call for it. It’s an unfiltered fish sauce with a much more pungent flavour. I mostly see this product from Vietnam and it’s labeled mam nem, though there is also a Thai version called pla ra. If you’re looking at a Vietnamese fish sauce, make sure it says nuoc mam or nuoc mam nhi.
Choose One That’s Not Too Cheap
Finally, the price tag can tell you something. You can use price as a general indication of quality because the most flavourful fish sauce actually takes more fish to make, and should cost you more.
Price is just a general rule of thumb though, and should not be used as the only indicator . But once you’ve already considered the two points above, price can be used as a tiebreaker.
Note: If you’re going to compare prices, it should always be compared within the same store/seller, because different sellers can set prices differently and this difference can be huge especially if buying online.
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How To Choose A Good Fish Sauce
Good news: there aren’t a whole bunch of different types of fish sauce to choose from, unlike soy sauce where dark soy, light soy, sweet soy sauces and more can trip you up. There is mainly just one type .
You can also use fish sauce from different countries interchangeably, i.e. you can use Vietnamese fish sauce in Thai cooking and vice versa. BUT there is a huge range of quality, so your main concern is making sure you choose a good one. Here’s how:
How Is Fish Sauce Made
Basically, fish sauce is the liquid that results from the fermentation of small fish and salt. The process is rather simple: put a bunch of anchovies and salt together in a big tank and let it do its natural thing.
From there, the salt draws liquid from the fish, and naturally existing enzymes allow the fermentation process to begin. It ferments for 12 to 24 months, and the resulting liquid is your “first-press“, purest, extra-virgin fish sauce.
However, most of what’s on the market is not extra virgin, because what most manufacturers do after that is to add more water and salt back into the same batch to get a “second press” out of it. They can then repeat this as many times as they like, and the flavor becomes more diluted each time.
Then to make the final bottle, the first press is combined with subsequent presses at a ratio specific to that brand. So the fish sauce quality is determined by how much of that first press is in the final product.
Most brands will also add a little bit of sugar to help round off the sharpness of the salt for a more balanced flavour. The presence of sugar, in my opinion, is not a bad thing as it’s such a small amount and will only help its flavour. In lower quality fish sauces, other additives such as MSG, flavor, and color might also be added.
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Choose One With A Simple Ingredient List
First you’ll want to go with the one with the least number of ingredients because the more diluted the fish sauce, the more additives they have to add to it in order to make up for the lack of any real fish flavor.
The ingredient list should contain no more than: 1) anchovies, 2) water , 3) salt, and 4) sugar. If it contains anything else, it is not a good sign.
Note: Sometimes the label will list anchovy extract rather than anchovies. This does not mean theyre using artificial anchovy extracts or any such thing, but some brands use the word “extract” because there arent any actual fish in the bottle, only the liquid that had been extracted from the fish. In the same way that oyster sauce contains oyster extracts because the oyster bodies arent in the bottle.
Thai Kitchen Gluten Free Premium Fish Sauce
Carefully crafted from the pressing of salted anchovies, Thai Kitchen Fish Sauce provides an essential savory flavor found in traditional Thai cuisine. Use in place of soy sauce or salt…Carefully crafted from the pressing of salted anchovies, Thai Kitchen Fish Sauce provides an essential savory flavor found in traditional Thai cuisine. Use in place of soy sauce or salt to add a savory taste to any dish!MoreLess
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