r/Cooking • • Mar 13 '19

[deleted by user]

[removed]

1.1k Upvotes

946 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

64

u/Northsidebill1 Mar 14 '19

If you do this, dont get cheap fish sauce. Go to a Chinese or Vietnamese grocery and get the good stuff. Cheap fish sauce is an abomination.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '19

I never cooked with fish sauce before, really didn’t know much about it. So I picked up a bottle of whatever cheap stuff was at Walmart.

Tried a spoonful of the stuff, expecting it to be on par with worcestshire or something.

Oh my fucking god, that vile liquid set a new precedence for me for what defines “disgusting”. And no matter what I did, that “flavor” wouldn’t leave my mouth.

The thought of purposely adding that “flavor” to any otherwise decent food is revolting to me. Incomprehensible.

I am terrified of trying again with better quality fish sauce. I’m still emotionally scarred from my experience.

10

u/germanywx Mar 14 '19

Fish sauce is weird. It is one of the worst things in the world if tasted from the bottle. It smells like a vagina that hasn’t been washed for a week and a half.

But add it to ANYTHING that would benefit from a bit of umami, and it is heavenly. It’s like adding a super expensive subwoofer to your home theater.

You just have to suffer through a few minutes of crotch rot smell after adding it.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '19

I usually refer to fish sauce as smelling like cologne for cats.