The soul of a nation’s food: Vietnamese fish sauce

(CNN) — Fish sauce – nước mắm, or actually ‘salted fish water’ – is a Vietnamese culinary icon, an indispensable nationwide ingredient up there with olive oil or soy sauce.

However it’s honest to say that the manufacturing course of is not probably the most aromatic, because of the pungent funk emanating from anchovies fermenting in huge picket vats for a 12 months.

They’ve been in enterprise since 1950 and are pleased with their status as one of many main producers on an island which many Vietnamese really feel is liable for the best fish sauce within the nation.

On the hunt for umami

The intensive repertoire of fantastically executed Vietnamese dishes they serve, similar to seafood and pomelo salad or lobster with wok-fried greens, is essentially underpinned by the distinctive taste profile and distinguished umami — the “fifth style,” or distinctive savoriness — as supplied by Phú Quốc fish sauce.

However you needn’t look far for a style of Vietnamese fish sauce. It is current in pho, spring rolls, com tam, banh xeo, com thit nuong and dozens of different ubiquitous dishes.

How the magic occurs

The essential substances in fish sauce are cá cơm (black anchovies) and smaller white anchovies. Collectively, they comprise about 95% of the fish used. Bigger fish like sardines and herring make up the remaining.

Historically, fish can be caught within the Andaman Sea round Phú Quốc, however at the moment they have a tendency to return from Tho Cho Island, round 70 miles away. They’re solely caught between April and September, corresponding broadly with wet season.

Phung Hung have their very own fishing boats, which permits them to supervise the entire manufacturing course of. When the fish are caught, they’re instantly drained whereas nonetheless on the boat, then salted and saved, which means that the fermentation course of has already begun, utilizing the freshest attainable catch.

They use salt that comes from the southern coastal province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau and add it in a ratio of 1 half to 4 elements fish.

When the fishing boats land, Phung Hung staff gather the 200 kilogram (440 pound) containers of fish and blend them collectively in their very own barrels.

Barrels

Fish sauce barrels was hand-crafted from wooden of boi loi, a tree from Phú Quốc Nationwide Park, however it’s now so endangered that wooden needs to be imported from Cambodia. Some have likened the significance of the wooden to wine growing old in oak barrels, imparting its personal distinctive taste profiles.

The hefty barrels are created from 54 slats of wooden, sure collectively by hand with a rattan twine. It takes two males three weeks to make one.

As soon as the barrel is stuffed, employees clamber up the surface, don white gumboots and begin compacting and urgent it down by stepping on the combo.

Thereafter, each day for an entire 12 months, the liquid that seeps from the fish is drained after which returned into the vat — however, critically, there is not any stirring or mixing concerned, as occurs in fish sauce manufacturing in different provinces of Vietnam.

Staff monitor the contents, tasting the sauce to determine when a batch is prepared.

A part of the key within the sauce is Phú Quốc’s distinctive mixture of environmental components, together with the appropriate humidity and warmth that slowly lets the combination cut back down, to go away between three and 4 thousand liters of fish sauce per barrel.

The ultimate stage comes after they ship a pattern of the sauce to the lab to get a grade of the depth, measured in levels of nitrogen, a byproduct of the fermentation course of. With out the right degree, it can’t be licensed on the bottle’s label.

The mildest model begins from 35° N, whereas probably the most intense are round 45° N.

Phú Quốc fish sauces — there are greater than 70 totally different producers on the island — are inclined to have larger levels of nitrogen content material, leading to complicated and totally different taste profiles.

The primary press

Should you’re after probably the most prized and costly fish sauce, it’s drawn immediately from the primary press of a single vat, undiluted and unmixed.

Search for the phrases “nước mắm nhi” on the label. Meaning it has come from the barrel’s first extraction of liquid. Some name it “extra-virgin fish sauce.”

“Fish sauce is the nationwide soul, the nationwide essence of the Vietnamese individuals, which units the nation’s delicacies other than the remainder of the world,” says Anon. “In each Vietnamese meal, a small bowl takes satisfaction of place, a sauce that ties collectively the whole lot on the desk.”

He explains that listed below are a number of layers to the style.

“It could be too easy to say that fish sauce tastes fishy, and even salty. High quality blends have a briny, rounded style you can even pattern straight from the bottle. Your thoughts would possibly go to the style of recent fish, or to sitting on the seashore.

“Fish sauce typically has a contact of sweetness, a mineral taste, or a word of caramel.”

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