Monday 8 December 2014

Vegan Fish Sauce


After a couple of months of minimal blogging and no featured countries, I'm getting back into the swing of it. This month's featured country is Myanmar, which I was really excited about. You should be too, it's completely delicious and I have some great thing to share with you this month!

Fish sauce is pretty ubiquitous in Burmese cuisine, so it was an obvious starting point for this country. I'm not big on buying substitutes, they tend to be full of letters and numbers and sometimes don't even taste like the product they're trying to replace. So I figured I would make my own. 

Fish sauce has a couple of distinct elements - 1) salty, sour flavour and 2) rancid smell. I think this version does pretty well on both! I kept a bottle of the real stuff next to me on the bench while I was concocting it and I think actually they tasted pretty much the same. This vegan version won't be as clear as the real stuff, it goes a bit cloudy because of the miso, so remember to shake it up before you use it.

A lot of recipes for vegan fish sauce add sugar, however, when I was tasting the actual fish sauce I didn't get sweetness from it so I think it's not necessary at all & lets face it - less sugar in our lives can only be a good thing.


Vegan Fish Sauce

Ingredients
1 tsp red miso
1 tsp black miso
1/4 cup water
1/3 cup light soy sauce
1 tbsp pineapple juice

To Make:
1. Place the two types of miso in a small bowl or jar and add a little bit of the water. Stir vigorously to make a smooth runny paste with no lumps. 
2. Gradually add in the rest of the ingredients, stirring as you go to keep the consistency smooth.
3. That's it. Bottle it up and store in the fridge.

Use in any recipe which calls for fish sauce or just add to any Asian style dish.

Makes about 1 cup vegan fish sauce.

This month I'm featuring vegan recipes from Myanmar (Burma).
Check out my other Burmese recipe posts:

7 comments:

  1. I recently discovered your blog and love it. I'm even more thrilled to see that you're covering Burmese recipes this month, since I love Burmese food and have recently been trying to veganize some recipes from Naomi Duguid's wonderful "Burma: Rivers of Flavor". I'm looking forward to your posts the rest of the month!

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    1. Thanks M! Can't wait to hear what you think of my Burmese recipes this month :)

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  2. How long can you have it in the fridge?

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    1. I couldn't tell you for sure. But the two main ingredients are miso and soy sauce, both of which have incredibly long shelf lives. I would guess that this will remain good in the fridge for several months.

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  3. I have just one type of miso. If using two types is obligatory?

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    1. Should be fine - give it a try and see how it turns out!

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  4. i have scoured the internet for "black miso" and am unable to find anything anywhere! Is it just a very very strong red miso? thanks

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