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Kristen is the Senior Editor of Food52
added 5 months agoIt's pretty central to the flavor, but there were some great alternatives suggested in the comments thread on the original blog post: http://food52.com/blog...
Thank you! Will take a look there. Cheers!
Soy sauce usually works as a decent vegetarian alternative for fish sauce.
Thanks Kristen and Lynnht! I'm now recalling a Cook's Illustrated recipe I used to make which offered the suggestion of using lime juice & salt as an alternate to the fish sauce. I'm going to do it!
The thread that Kristen referenced has a great link to "fishless fish sauce" from the kitchn. The explanation is also helpful, in that it discusses how fish sauce hits the umami spot and there are only certain flavors that do that. Lime and salt will be tasty but won't hit umami -- as they indicate, fish is high in umami (hence the success of a small bit of fish sauce in a number of dishes) but so are fermented foods and mushrooms. If you want to get that umami hit, I'd suggest using thekitchn's recipe http://www.thekitchn.com...
Thanks SeaJambon!