THE ART OF SAUCES IN VIET NAM’S CULINARY

Sauce plays an important role, to fulfill the taste of a dish. Sauce can be made from fish paste, original soy sauce; it might be steamed or mixed, combined with chili, ginger, garlic, sugar, lemon juice…Every housewife experiences the specialness as well as the sensitiveness to make a sauce for each dish. Even with the same ingredients but the different in portion can bring the different sauces.

Among infinity Vietnam’s spices, fish sauce is the most popular for making a sauce. Fish sauce can be used in daily meal, to eat with boiled vegetable or rolls, especially fry fermented pork roll. Sweet and sour fish sauce has the main ingredients are fish sauce, lemon juice or vinegar, sugar, garlic, chili… Each dish will decide the taste of salty, sour, and sweet in the sauce.

Different than the sweet and sour sauce, ginger fish sauce is especially suitable for some dishes that have stinky smell such as duck, fish, snail… The fish sauce in ginger fish sauce is usually the original fish sauce, mixed with sugar, a bit of lemon juice, finely crushed ginger. Ginger fish sauce with duck doesn’t have to be add water, but with snails, clams it does need.

Shrimp paste is one of the specific sauce in Viet Nam’s culinary. Shrimp paste is mixed with lemon juice or kumquat juice, beaten well until bubbling, add a bit of sugar. Somebody like to mix shrimp paste with white wine to elevate the flavor of this sauce. Shrimp paste can be served as a sauce in some family’s dishes such as ca phao (white small eggplant), fry tofu, or an unmissable part of bun dau mam tom (tofu, pork vermicelli with shrimp paste). Shrimp paste can also be used to season for some dishes such as snail vermicelli soup, bun rieu (crab noodle), bun thang…

We cannot forget the soybean sauce… It is from soybean but it’s different in the way people make it due to area. The North people like “tuong ban”, with smoked baby cow, boiled vegetable… The Middle like soybean sauce with finely chopped pig liver, with blended sticky rice for serving with “banh khoai” or “nem lui”. The South people like to mix it with sugar, sticky rice but add a bit of coconut cream. Every single bowl  of sauce is really elegant, flavorful presenting for the consolidation of Vietnamese community.


*Taro**