Vietnamese Fish Sauce Dip Recipe EASY QUICK | White On Rice Couple (2024)

I’m excited to share my personal recipe for Vietnamese fish sauce dip recipe that my even Mom approves of! Like any recipe, customize the flavors to your personal sweet and spice taste.

Vietnamese Fish Sauce Dip

I may be Vietnamese, but I’m no expert in Vietnamese food, nor have I ever met a true Vietnamese food expert. Every time I get together with elder Vietnamese cooks who have traveled through different parts of Vietnam, their list of new food discoveries grows longer by the day.They are always humbled by the vast differences in not just regional food differences, but differences within each family household and tradition.

It wasn’t until towards the end of my 24 years (yup, I was a manicurist for 24 years!)of working in my Mother’s nail shop and talking food with her Vietnamese staff that I realized how much I was going to miss this crazy but collectively unique group of passionate ladies. They all grew upfrom different regions of Vietnam, hailing from the furthest Northern forests to the most Southern hot villages of the country. What made me adore our often curious and heated conversations was their passionate food traditions and beliefs. I learned so much from them as I stalked them every time they ate their lunch. But I was respectful and waited untilthey finished before I bombarded them with all my food questions.

Watch Video: Nước Mắm Chấm Vietnamese Fish Sauce Dip:

Learning from Elders

I listened intently, like a curious kid but with an analytical mind, like a Grad Student, to their beliefs on what made the best pot of phổ noodle soup and why their sticky rice was more flavorful and moistthan the neighbor’s across the street. Some claimed to make the best braised fish in claypot because it was their Grandmother’s recipe. And to top off the challenge, Grandma gave birth and raised 9 kids in a 500 square foot shack along the rice paddy fields in central Vietnam during the war.

Ok, as soon as someone says their recipe is the best and only way to make it because “Grandmother of 9 kids and 15 grandkids” made it, I won’t ever argue. If the matriarch of your family made your seafood stock a certain way and you say it’s the best, I will nod respectfully as I slurp my way towards the bottom of the soup bowl.Family cooking traditions and recipes are topics I would never question orchallenge, because who am I to say that it’s wrong? It’s only different, but never wrong.

Family Food Traditions

There’s no right nor wrong in family traditions, food ways and recipes. I respect that because my own family food traditions are like no other household. My family experiences are what sets the foundation for my understanding of my Vietnamese food. The best part about learning my food traditions is that there are gazillions of other Vietnamese families who don’t cook and eat just-like-me, so there’s so much more discovery on the horizon waiting for me to hear, taste and document!

Respecting Family Traditions and Recipes

Vietnamese Fish Sauce dip is one example that often provokes heated, passionate debates. Why? It’s because folks are so obsessed about eating it all their livesand there’s no singular recipe that is definitive of what this quintessential dip should be. It varies between regions, villages, neighborhoods, families and even varies between individuals within each family. Even within my family of 12,not everyone agrees on how salty, sweet, garlicky or spicy it should be.

So I’m not here to argue or listen to any banter as to why my Vietnamese fish sauce dip version is “wrong”, as I’ve previously heard in the past from silly readers about my family Vietnamese recipes. I’m here to to say this is MY version and there’s a gazillion different variations that can come out of my recipe. Make it your own, to your personal taste and we can all be friends.

To take away fish sauce (Nước Mắm) from the Vietnamese is like draining blood from a living soul, deflating a floating helium balloon or driving a nail into a tire. Slowly but surely, all life would slowly cease. Extreme as this may sound, this is how vital this golden elixir reigns in Viet cuisine (well, at least in my family’s Viet cooking). Like how olive oil is to the Italians, Red wine is to the French, and ketchup is to my french fries, fish sauce is to the Vietnamese. It’s a pure, pungent nectar sent from the fermented fish gods to grace our breaths and Viet inspired dishes.

Understanding Fish Sauce and How to Cook with It

Fish sauce in its pure straight-from-the-bottle form can be pretty aggressiveto both the nose and the palette. Basically, it can totally stink. But it can become a little softer, subdued and more manageable on the palette when mixed with some acid, sweetness and spice. It then becomes the dip what Vietnamese call, Nước chấm or simply, Nước Mắm (depending on tradition). One of the very basic staples of fish sauce is the dipping sauce that can be used as a dip for spring rolls, as a dressing for noodles and rice or as a marinade for grilled meat. It’s like magic when you take fish sauce, mix it with a little lime, garlic and chili.

Vietnamese Fish sauce dip has so many differentdegrees of sweet-ness, spicy-ness, garlicky-ness and lime-ness (sp?), each household will make claim to having “mom’s best” version. My mother believes that her garlic infused Vietnamese Fish sauce dip version reigns supreme (with much support from her nail shop staff), but I feel that my variation is more palatablejust because it requires much less post-breath mints.
You decide how much more you want to explore Vietnamese Fish sauce dip by adding more or less of whatever you like. As long as you’re making it and enjoying this Vietnamese Fish sauce dip, that makes me uber happy!
-diane

What’s the best fish sauce? We talk about it here. And here’s our previous tutorial on How To Roll Spring rolls and All Our Great Spring Rolls Recipes


Here’sa Few of our FavoriteSpring Roll Ingredients and Tools:

It can sometimes be hard to find good spring roll ingredients and tools. Here’ssomeof the favorites:

Rice Paper Wrapper Water Bowl– The perfect bowl for dipping the rice paper at the table. These have been life changers when it comes to our spring roll parties. Easy for everyone to dip and takes up so much less table space.

OXO Julienne Tool– This little tool makes julienning the carrots and other ingredients a breeze.

Flying Lion Fish Sauce– This has been our house fish sauce for decades. Great stuff! We’ll use it to make our dipping sauces as well as marinades.

Red Boat Fish Sauce– 100% all natural first press extra virgin Vietnamese fish sauce. A solid craft fish sauce producer.

Koon Chun Hoisin Sauce – Our house favorite hoisin sauce. Great flavor. We use it to make a dipping sauce for spring rolls.

Our popular fish sauce Umami burgers recipe is an old family recipe and tradition. And better yet, it’s a reader favorite!

More of my Vietnamese recipes and random childhood stories (Family-inspired of course!)

• Diane’s Vietnamese Fried Chicken Recipe
• Vietnamese Chicken Salad Recipe
• Vietnamese pickled carrots and daikon recipe
• Turkey Avocado spring rolls recipe with hoisin peanut dip.
• Bacon Lettuce Tomato (BLT) Fresh Spring Rolls Recipe
• Garlic Chicken Spring Rolls Recipe