I'm a fish sauce and anchovies addict. I'm working on how I can incorporate it in my cake recipe, yes, that bad. But the good stuff is expensive and only needs a small dap. So I ventured out looking for ways to get just enough for a meal or a sandwich or a drink to minimize waste. That's when I thought about a spray bottle. BINGO. A spray on a salad, a spray on a burger, a spray on scrambled eggs, a spray on a pizza slice, a spray on a slice of cake (Maybe?) .... Problem solved, no more waste.
Excellent fish sauce should have just 2 ingredients. Anchovies and salt. Push come to shove, Sugar but that's it.
I've tried Red Boat and know it's highly recommended. But it's been a while so it's probably time for a taste test. The fish sauces above contain anchovy extract, salt, water, fructose, and hydrolyzed vegetable protein (MSG) in them.
I also use the Three Crabs brand like Attjack. It is a step up from the generic store brand we had before we started doing more Vietnamese cooking. I'll look for Red Boat when we run out, but I don't recall seeing it and I may have to go to an Asian market to pick some up.
I don't refrigerate my fish sauce, I haven't noticed any change in flavor. It is kept in a cabinet not exposed to light.
I think fish sauce must be something folks either LOVE or HATE.
I use it in some Asian inspired recipes, and its always a small amount. My wife got a whiff of it one time when I had the bottle open, and couldn't believe I was putting that in food we were going to eat, haha. I cannot imagine just spraying it on my food straight...
I had a bottle of Red Boat in the fridge, but it expired recently and got tossed.
Attjack who can say? I cannot remember the first time I had whisky, since it was in my college days in the mid 1980's. I like it these days, neat, but it takes me about 6 months to work through a bottle on my own.
Now you remind me, I need to go to the liquor store!
Henrik Red boat has become the Gold standard. 40N, just anchovies and salt. The small batch is 50N with extra aging in maple barrel.
The Iwashi has some sugar and they use a different kind of anchovies. It's milder than red boat
Attjack See that list ingredients LOL. That's more like fish sauce STYLE.
I refrigerate the aged ones because I use them sparingly. These go in dips, quick sauces etc.
The regular red boat bottle sits next to my sat and pepper by the stove.
I hit up my Vietnamese friend and she likes Three Crabs and Squid brand. Three Crabs has more flavor and Squid is lighter. She often mixes them. She said her (adoptive) parents like Red Boat and she says she does too but that it's on the lighter side of flavor. I'll pick up some squid this weekend and Amazon will send my red boat and I'll do a taste test soon.
Now I'm reading some reviews and the 2 fish sauces I showed above are made by the same company but they are not the same. It's funny because I asked the owner of the shop when I bought the 3 crabs instead of my usual Flying Lion what the difference was and she said "no difference, same". Now I realize she must have meant they were both fish sauce.
On this website, squid is ranked the worst and Red Boat is the top 1 and 2 (5 and 4 stars respectively). Flying Lion gets 3/5 stars.
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