Fish sauce is an amber-colored liquid extracted from the fermentation of fish with sea salt. It is used as a condiment in various cuisines. Fish sauce is a staple ingredient in numerous cultures in Southeast Asia and the coastal regions of East Asia, and features heavily in Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Philippine cuisine.
In addition to being added to dishes during the cooking process, fish sauce is also used as a base for a dipping condiment that is prepared in many different ways by cooks in each country mentioned for fish, shrimp, pork, and chicken. In parts of southern China, it is used as an ingredient for soups and casseroles. Fish sauce, and its derivatives, impart an umami flavor to food due to their glutamate content.
Read more about Fish Sauce: Types
Famous quotes containing the words fish sauce, fish and/or sauce:
“The progress
Is permanent like the preordained bulk
Of the First National Bank
Like fish sauce, but agreeable.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“I have often told you that I am that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal. Anyway, that is the way I am. Life moves over me in a vast black shadow and I swallow whatever it drops with relish, having learned in a very hard school that one cannot be both a parasite and enjoy self-nourishment without moving in worlds too fantastic for even my disordered imagination to people with meaning.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948)
“There’s no sauce in the world like hunger.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)