Red Boat nuoc mam premium Estra Virgin Finest Fish Sauce Phu Quoc 500ml

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A lot of people don’t realize that a cookbook written by a company to promote their products is usually excellent because the company wants to make sure its customers continue to use their products in dishes they love. It’s an easy concept, but it works. One of the best examples of this is The Red Boat Fish Sauce Cookbook: Beloved Recipes from the Family Behind the Purest Fish Sauce by Cuong Pham, Tien Nguyen, and Diep Tran. This excellent cookbook contains family recipes, mostly, but not all, Vietnamese, using a premium brand of fish sauce which is essential to both Vietnamese and Thai cooking. SQUID. Squid is a household name of fish sauce in Thailand, and indeed it is the one my family uses. It isn't "premium," but it's perfect for everyday use and is affordable and widely available. 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. When I first spent a month in Southeast Asia I fell in love with the food. The flavors were unlike anything I had ever experienced and I wanted to take home as much of that as I could. The best I could do was some dry herbs and recipes that I collected throughout my trip. I could never quite duplicate it the way it was there and attributed that to two things: it ALWAYS tastes better when someone else is cooking, even if you follow their recipe to the letter, and the ingredients at home were just not on the same level. That’s when a friend introduced me to Red Boat Fish Sauce. It was the start of my journey to getting as close to the original recipes as I could.

Mix the Red Boat fish sauce with a little sugar, fresh red chilli and lime juice to make Nuoc Cham, a popular Vietnamese dipping sauce. Alternatively, add the umami sauce to stir-fries and Pad Thai, drizzle over roasted salmon, or toss through wok-fried green vegetables. THREE CRABS. I mostly use Thai fish sauce (for obvious reasons) but Vietnamese fish sauce or nuoc mam can be used in Thai cooking. I find Three Crabs to have a milder flavour than most others, which could be attributed to a higher sugar content (2g vs 1g) and perhaps less concentration of fish. If it's not a clear brown liquid, it's NOT the fish sauce you want. This is mam nem, an unfiltered fish sauce. Storage Tips 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. (Hydrolyzed wheat protein is a flavor enhancer, similar to MSG.) I do not know whether the amount added makes any difference to the total amount of protein per serving (my guess is that it doesn’t) but it is something to mention.

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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.

Fish sauce won't "spoil" however, because there's so much salt in there, no bacteria can grow; it just won't taste good if it's "old".

Note: Sometimes the label will list anchovy extract rather than anchovies. This does not mean they’re using artificial anchovy extracts or any such thing, but some brands use the word "extract" because there aren’t 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 aren’t in the bottle. 2. Choose a higher protein content.

I saw what he meant when we pulled into a narrow driveway, that didn’t look like it would lead to much from the street. The streets in Vietnam seem to be a jumble of everything, with different kinds of shops and restaurants, and other kinds of businesses, all mixed together. I was amazed at what kinds of businesses I randomly came across just walking around or passing on our motor scooter. Although I love Vietnamese food, I have to admit to not knowing about the cult status of the famed Red Boat fish sauce, but I'm glad that I do now! This cookbook is also a very effective sales strategy, as I now want to try their fish sauce as well as their salt and peppercorns. More than that, though, the cookbook is also a family history, a treatise on how fish sauce is, and should be, made, and an explanation of the importance of sustainability in production. I really appreciate a cookbook that's inclusive and strives to present a well-rounded worldview of the cuisine it discusses. The traditionally crafted fish sauce is matured in wooden barrels for one year. Grade N is an industry standard that indicates the protein content and quality of fish sauce. Commercially available fish sauces are usually less than 20° N. Red Boat is 40° N. One of the secrets to their fish sauce, which is why it isn’t as “fishy” as other fish sauces, is that the anchovies are salted on the boat, right after they’re caught, so they stay fresh. Other fish sauce makers may salt the fish a few days later, when the fish are not exactly at their prime. And we all know that fresh fish doesn’t get any better the longer it sits. You may come across Megachef fish sauce in two different looks: brown and blue. The brown one is a formula that is sold in Thailand, while the blue one is for export only. From my tasting, the blue one is less salty with 1500 mg sodium vs 1580 of the brown one.It does contain hydrolyzed vegetable protein which is a flavour enhancer, not unlike MSG, so it breaks my "simple ingredient list" rule. But it still tastes good so I make an exception for it. To show us the difference in the sauce over the course of the year it takes to ferment and age, Cuong drained off fish sauce from several different barrels, allowing us to see and taste the difference between sauce aged for 3, 6, 9 months, as well as fish sauce aged for 12 months, when it’s done and bottled. He pointed out the three-month aged sauce was lighter in color and had a rougher taste when we dipped our spoons into it, than the sauces that had been aged longer. Tasting them all, it was remarkable how the longer aging gave the sauce a substantially deeper flavor. 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! The authors have included a variety of recipes that Asian food lovers will definitely want to make. Plenty of rice and noodle dishes, and plenty of dishes using seafood, poultry, beef, and pork. Included are soups and stir fries, sandwiches and appetizers, as well as basics and sauces.

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. This deep amber sauce has a wonderfully punchy fermented fish nose to it. The flavour is savoury and umami with a rich but clean fish flavour. The fish and umami notes have length and there is a rounded flavour. It tasted nice on its own and it would be a great ingredient in cooking. This product seems more assertively fishy than many commercial fish sauces and as such displays considerable character. It isn't often that I actually sit down and read a cookbook...but I read this one! I loved the story about how Red Boat Fish Sauce got started, the intro about Vietnamese cooking and ingredients, and the family anecdotes and photos! But, I wish the book was organized a little more comprehensively. I also would have liked to see more variation in the dessert and drink offerings. 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.The book is mostly formulaic, with recipes of the types of recipes, stories, history and more. Not all of the recipes have pictures (which was a bit disappointing), but otherwise it was a very nice-looking, colorful cookbook. I personally associated fish sauce in savory dishes that one would eat for standard meals but it appears you can use it in desserts/sweets or even Bloody Marys, which was pretty cool to read about. The 40N on the label refers to the nitrogen level in the sauce. The higher the number, the higher the nitrogen level. This means more proteins and more intense, complex flavours. I will buy this cookbook as it has many good recipes that I think will have great flavor. I was impressed with the two I made and my husband loved them too! Megachef is fermented for 2 years, which I believe is longer than many others. The saltiness feels a little less jarring than Squid, so this is a good choice if you want to use it as a tableside condiment.