Ingredients
Requirements
- Small bowl
- Two dip bowls
Almost every Vietnamese table has a small bowl of nuoc cham. It goes with spring rolls, grilled meat, vermicelli salad, and in the south, simply over a plate of rice. A handful of ingredients, but the proportions are everything.
First dissolve the sugar in warm water before adding the fish sauce and lime juice. Sugar barely dissolves in cold acid, and crunchy granules at the bottom of the bowl mean your sauce tastes too sharp on top. Add the garlic and chili last, so they stay afloat.
Always taste it and adjust, because no two fish sauces are alike. A cheaper fish sauce is saltier and requires a little more water, while a 40N fish sauce needs just a little more sugar to balance it out.
Ingredients