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Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan Rock and Bellow Center, New York City New Stance Studios joined all the way in the back with John. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah?
Yeah, yeah. Far away as you've ever been and been in the studio. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get to that later.
I got Joe Hazen rocking the panels behind me. Hey, how are you doing? Doing well. I'm assuming I've got Quinn in the upper upper left. How you doing?
You do. Yeah. Do you have any fish? Do you have any fish sauces of your own? By the way, I should well, we'll get to it.
Today's gonna be fish sauce extravaganza. That's what it is. I mean, like, I'm sure we're gonna miss. I don't want to hear it later that we missed your favorite fish sauce listeners because you had the opportunity to tell us to go get some. You knew well in advance this was gonna happen.
I believe we even published the list of fish sauces. Is that not correct, Quinn? Uh no, we didn't tell them. Uh-huh. Son of a dungeon.
We are the worst humans. We are just worthless people. We should have given them. I thought you said we were gonna give them the opportunity to get them so they can. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, but the answer's yes. You need an answer for now. We can also publish it with Dennis's uh cool handy nifty guides that he put together as well and tasting breaking. But the obviously the answer is yes. Right?
I mean, you know. In the future, Quinn, you have ultimate authority, unlimited power. To publish such things as the list of things we're gonna be talking about on the next show. Uh, do we Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is not available because she is testing pyrotechnics for a rock and roll show? She's now.
Yeah. If you guys uh what's that show? I forget. I'll I'll go. She basically is running uh a tour.
So there is, oh, in the in the last season or second to last season of Hacks, picture Nastasia as the famous actor whose name I forget, who runs that tour bus and is absolutely bonks out of her mind. Do you know what I'm talking about? Have you seen Hacks? Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh do we have uh Monsieur Le Molecule? Yes, sir. Jack Jackie Molecules. Do you have a are you a fish sauce guy?
I love fish sauce. Good. Do you have a favorite? We're gonna maybe hopefully we have it here to taste. Do you have a favorite?
I mean, I usually just have red boat. So I'm excited to hear some maybe better options from here at home. Yeah. Red boat, what's cool about Red Boat is it has the same like met like meter vocally as fish sauce. So you can just like mix them back and forth.
So if you were gonna do the Nori song, Drink Champs, which it I'm sure some of you are familiar with. Anyone here familiar with Drink Champs? Drink champ, drink champ, drink champ, drink champ. You know this? So like the entire bike right over here, I was singing that song by Fish Sauce.
Oh. Yeah. I'm definitely not the fish sauce champion of that. I was singing the whole thing. For those of you that don't know the song, it is not responsible.
But I it's gotta be the basis of his podcast, right? Drink Champs Podcast. Yes. Go ahead. Now drink it up.
You guys really don't know this song? No. Oh my God. Do you guys hate New York? Is it that you all hate New York?
No. Okay. I've been here almost 25 years. I love New York. Okay.
All right. I'll have to take your word for it. All right. Uh, and then in the studio, uh, have been on the show before. Uh, friends and former guests.
Uh, which way should we go? Should we go back to front? I Dennis, I'm gonna butcher your last name again because I can't do the the pronunciation of NK. No, you can just say no. I know, but that's so not right.
No. Give it to me again. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Anyway, all right.
Uh formerly of uh D and now like uh Mr. Momo. What's your title at the at the Momo? I recently got promoted. Oh.
Yeah. So culinary director now. Congratulations. I mean, oh congratulations. So is that the job JJ Basil used to have?
Yes, I believe so back in the day, and JJ and I talk often. So he shares he shares his opinion with me always. Uh oh, really? Yes. Uh that is so surprised.
So JJ Basil is uh what's his current title at the Momo? I believe he's VP of culinary innovation. Okay. Maybe senior VP. I think he was promoted as well.
Uh like I feel like I've known him. I've known, I mean, I have known him for like a zillion years, so I I can say whatever I want, right? So JJ Basil, uh, aside from being kind of like uh, he's got like a a friendly hardcore anger vibe. You know what I'm saying? Like just a simmering, seething, rolling under current, right?
And uh, I don't whether remember whether he said this at the on the show once, but he shares my hatred of food mills, of the Moole style food mills, because they suck. And uh he went to his mom's house outside of DC, opened the door, and just took hers and hurled it as far as he could out of the front door. But JJ Basil totally shafted me when I was cooking for uh teaching at the French Culinary Institute. I set him up with a stage at WD 50. Yeah.
And then Wiley, who all my brother-in-law, also shafted me and said, I'll offer you a job if you quit school right now. Right. And he quit school. So guess who got in trouble for that? You did.
I did. Of course. Of course, because he quit school in the middle. So the school's like, you're not supposed to get him to quit school while they're at school. You're supposed to get him a job after they leave.
And I'm like, what do you want me to do? What am I gonna do? Go yell at Wiley? Go yell at J. I mean, I did yell at JJ.
I didn't yell at him, but I was like, you're shafting me, dude. Yeah. That's classic JJ. Um JJ's a very opinionated man, a very smart man. Um and he is not afraid of sharing his opinion at all times.
No, he says he makes the best fried chicken season. He does. And I got set up. Okay. I got set up once by my old boss at Momo who asked me to go ask JJ for the fried chicken recipe.
Oh God. And uh JJ, in no certain words, uh, you know, politefully told me that there's no chance in in hell that he was ever gonna share that with me. So maybe one day I'll get it from JJ Buck. Yeah, yeah. All right.
Uh and uh for those of you that can't just hear it, uh Dennis also has one of the great radio voices. Give us uh give us some radio. I mean, look, you know, I I said last time I was gonna come here with uh with the new theme song. I'm sorry to disappoint. Um I I still don't have it, but um I appreciate your kind words.
And I think um in my later age, I'd love to explore voice acting. Yeah, well, give me a very resonant fish sales. Fish sauce. There you go. There you go.
And uh I also happened to run into you when I did uh the pop-up at Agnes and Sherman because of your Houston, which like the the Vietnamese food game is so strong. Yeah. Did you enjoy the after-service snacks or didn't Oh I love them? Yeah, yeah, those rolls are delicious. Yeah, uh, so uh uh Joe Hazen put some reverb on your voice, gave you the full wait, crank the reverb and then just say whatever you want.
Go, go, go. Fish sauce. Yeah, there we go. And uh certainly not least, uh Andrea Nguyen win win, author of what, a thousand books? Yeah, at least.
Like eight thousand books. Name right. Oh, well, I hate uh Nguyen Nguyen win when so uh one of my one of my uh good friends who uh where did I know him from work right after college, but then he ended up going to culinary school and becoming a private chef is Mikey Nguyen. So like I and Mindy Nguyen. So like I know all like uh Nguyen's I know no no yeah.
No, maybe not. So uh your most recent book is not is is out yet or not out. The one that's it's out. It's out cooking tie. Cooking tie, which is you know, not your normal, and you wrote it with Pim, which is an interesting thing, but you only come in at the very like end.
I looked through I read through the whole thing looking to see your voice, and I was like, oh, okay. But my voice are the you know what I mean. I do, I do know what you mean. But uh for those of you that don't know uh uh Andrea's work, you like first of all, the first thing if you don't already own, I know it's an old book, but if you don't already own Asian tofu, just go buy it right now. You should just buy it right now.
Like put down the whatever you're doing, go buy it, and then come back. Is that am I in c am I incorrect about this? No. No, because you're absolutely right. Like for for for like literally decades, over a decade, people would say, uh, I want to know about tofu.
Uh what should I do? And I'm like, well, there's the shirt leaf book. And then uh as a backup, there's also the shirt leaf book. You know what I mean? And it wasn't, I'm not saying it's not a good book.
I'm just saying it's not written by a cook. Right. You know what I mean? It's not like step by step. Here's what you need to do, here are the different styles, here's what to do with it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's more like in 1795, tofu was made on the corner of blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? It's like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
All right. And I'm not saying that the other books aren't equally deserving of you buying them. I'm just saying you must own that book. No? Yeah.
If you love tofu, if you want to like understand tofu, its evolution and how you can play with it and use meat with it or without Asian tofu is it. I'm gonna make an argument. Even if you don't like tofu, I think you need to understand it to be a modern tofu. Totally. Correct.
Nowadays, right? Or just in general. I mean, like if you don't understand tofu, that's like saying, like, like, I don't know, like it's a whole realm of things that you don't understand. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like saying, I mean, I don't know.
Even if you can't eat it, even if you can't have soy, I would say that it behooves you to know something about tofu soy and its impact in the world. I mean, I don't know. It's like I've never I've never heard of rice. I don't want to know how to cook rice. Uh bread is useless to me.
I don't need to know anything about it. You know what I mean? It's like, how do you whatever. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know.
You can't live uh soy is all over the place. Yeah, you know? Right. And it's like it's in seat belts, too. But you're not gonna eat your seat belts.
Hey, do you know you know who's uh tofu and you've you you've I'm sure tried it. Uh I haven't tried. Is the the one that used to be open on Grand Street for a billion years closed and reopened. Is the is the is there's is there product any good? I I only if you like it because I don't say negative things about people.
You know what? It's fresh, and the freshest tofu is like the freshest bread. So if you live near Fongon, you're in the New York area, get it. Because it's going to be the freshest possible. And it actually has umami.
And as it sits after it's uh made, the umami develops and you can't really savor that unless it's like made on the premises. And it's just so delicious. Let me ask you a separate question. Because I don't remember if I asked you the last time you were on, because I don't remember which book you were doing when you came on last. But uh what are your thoughts on not soaking it in a bunch of water if you're gonna use it right away?
When you're making your own. Oh. Well, then you're just gonna get like soy flour, which I've used for making tofu too. No, no, no, no. I mean like after you've made the block.
You soak the beans, you blend the beans. Right. You make the tofu. We have our little beautiful block of tofu, what do we do? Not having it sit in like liquid for a long time.
Just if you're gonna use it right away, not doing this the soak out. Do you think you lose a lot of flavor on the soaking after after it's made? Um, because that's just an exchange of of whey, and it's also just letting uh the protein settle. Right. So soak it in the whey though, not in I mean, you can s I mean if you don't soak it in water, it's gonna dry up.
You gotta like protect your little tofu. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it's but you think soak you don't think whey makes that much of a difference soak it in water versus soaking in whey? Well, there's two things. So like if you make zaru tofu, which is basket tofu, that's like Japanese style, you just put the the curds and whey that you scoop it up in um from the pot and just put it into a basket.
Um, and uh you can eat that because it's really soft and jiggly. But if you're making a block, then you really want because it's normally a larger quantity, soaking it really like protects um the moisture level of the tofu. But I mean, there's all kinds, Dave. You know, like if you make um tofu, that's like the tofu pudding that you just scoop up. Yeah, what do you think about that?
Oh I love that stuff. If you make it like really good soybeans and you have the right um ratio of soy to water then it's just like beautiful genius. I think it's good. I just don't think it's like someone's like I made tofu and I didn't. Oh you know what one okay so one time I had David Kent over for dinner and I'm like dude I'm gonna make you tofu and I did this little magic trick and I'm like we're making tofu right now and a little pot I scooped it up put a bunch of different garnishes out and we played with it.
It was so much fun. So much fun. All right. He doesn't I mean I've I've met him a bunch of times I know fun no he seems fun. You just get him in like the right set setting.
Okay. All right. I mean I haven't seen him in years so he's he and I are so we live in the same town. It's fantastic now. David Kent fantastic yes no he is no longer part of the Michelin three star world yeah which is like what a not a oh no not a fun world to be in not that I'm in it but can't be far fun world.
Not a fun world right so now that we've introduced everyone and we're gonna talk fish sauce let's do a very quick weekend review for people so that we can talk about things that we've uh done like Quinlet actually Jack let's start with Jack since uh since you don't have a bunch of fish sauces uh sitting on it let's go with Jack what do you got Jack? So I'll save my Paris and Belgium stuff for uh no tangent episode but Nastasia and I yeah I mean shout out to John for so many great reps in Belgium. Let me ask you one question. You've never been to Belgium. You've never been to Belgium before, right?
Please. No, I haven't. Okay. Did it surprise you how awesome it was? Yeah, it really did.
Yeah. I loved it. Yeah. Yeah. Belgium is like we stayed in Belgium a little longer than we planned on.
We like to took another extra night or two. It was amazing. I love it. Belgium is the surprising destination. You're like, oh man, Belgium.
Wow. Belgium. Great time. Yeah. Yep.
All right. So we're good time. So we'll save that for an all tangent Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. We'll save that for a tangent. But Stas and I did go have a great dinner at Firstborn uh two nights ago. Oh, nice. Yeah.
Yeah. Friends of the show. Shout out to them. Yeah. Friends of the show friends of the show indeed.
Speaking of tofu, they do, they do a really they do a really great Mapo tofu over there. I mean, so what they have sweep sweetbreads in there. Like fried pieces of sweet bread or like gooey soft pieces of sweet bread. Do we yeah, like kind of mixed in with the you know the meat crumble. I see.
Okay. Soft then. Yeah, yeah. All right. Uh oh, and I should say this because I'm supposed to shoot a video.
But if you live in the greater Southern California area and you can go, I believe to Costco, Aaron Polski has his uh has his ready to uh drink uh cocktails at the Costco. And if they don't sell out in a reasonable amount of time, they will not order more. So go uh go get Aaron Polski's um uh live wire product, which is uh, you know, made by bartenders. He made these ones that they're out. I think it's melon, some sort of melon collins, and I get it now.
Uh, you know, an apricot uh bourbon uh highball thing, but go uh go check it out because uh he has thought a lot about uh fridge temperature sh uh stable canned cocktails in the in the correct canned ABV range. So all right. Uh they're good too. They're really good. As somebody who doesn't like kind of a lot of those sorts of drinks, like the canned alpolic product drink, they're very good.
Yeah, I have to say. And it's got unbiased. We love Polski, but the drinks are very good. My son who doesn't know I forget whether it was Dax or Booker, looked at it and be like, why is Jesus on that can? I'm like, that's not Jesus, that's Polcat.
That's Aaron Polski. But you know, he does throw off like a not a real Jesus vibe, but like a like a 1960s Jesus Christ Christ Superstar Vibe, you know? Yeah, fun Jesus. Fun Jesus, like the kinch of Jesus'. Yeah, exactly.
The problem is I won't sing it, I'll spare you all, but now I have all the Jesus Christ Superstar songs going through my head. But you know what? When you sing those in your uh because I'm assuming you all sing these in your head all the time, Jesus Christ Superstar songs. Do you do more Judas or do you do more Jesus or more Mary? Magdalene.
They're all good. I'm more Judas. Died young, unfortunately, the guy who uh played uh Judas in the movie version. Uh it seems to me I won't do it. I won't do that.
Uh all right. Uh John, what do you got? Uh nothing. Finish my uh uh time at Marquette restaurant and starting at the Inc. 48 hotel next week.
So yeah. Give yourself a week of free time. That's right. Going to Connecticut this afternoon, take a little time off and then yeah, head back. So for the younger people in the listening audience, is it just like summer break where it's like sudden decompression and everything starts fresh?
That's the thing about being an adult. Nothing's ever fresh. You don't ever get a reset. No, you don't. You know what I mean?
But at least I'm getting out of the city for a couple of days and listen, yeah. I I no one is listening who is in high school right now, probably, right? Uh, but here once you get if you go to college, I know a lot of people, you know, whatever, whatever. If you go to college, what's nice about college is every semester is a true reset because it's not like in high school where the professor where the teachers talk about you and you get your rep shows up at the door. It's fresh.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Every semester, you could be a brand new human. It's amazing. Uh, but you never get that again.
I had a lot of resets in college. Yeah. Yeah, but it feels good, doesn't it? That reset. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You can get your reinvent yourself all the time. Yeah. Yeah, once you're in the real world, not so much. Not so bad. Adulting sucks.
Yeah, it does. Yeah. Uh Quinny Quinn McQuinn, what do you got? Uh let's see. We didn't do too much.
I did try out a recipe from a YouTube channel that I know has a lot of or some overlap with our audience because I uh am in their Discord and our Discord, and there's at least two or three uh common names that I see in in both uh chat rooms, but it was a uh Ming Dynasty inspired spicy chicken, which is interesting because it's dated for before the introduction of uh chili peppers to Asia. So it's you know, a black pepper-based spicy chicken, and it was quite good. All right. I appreciate a uh I appreciate a pre-exchange recipe as much as the next person does. Uh all right.
Uh Dennis Andrea, what do you got in the week? Uh for the week? Well, you know, Andrew's in town, so we're gonna eat a lot of Vietnamese food and see a lot of Vietnamese folks. So yeah, just excited to uh hang out with the community. Yeah, cool.
Talk Vietnamese food. All right. Well about what about you, Andrea? Anything coming up? Anything good?
What's what's good? Uh I've I've got a book event with to celebrate cooking Thai this week. Christine Mulkey's house. It'll be fun. Nice.
And then hanging out with Dennis, and we're gonna cook at his house. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. So that sound that does sound fun. Uh, where do you live? Uh I live in Williamsburg.
Uh-huh. But like like like East Williamsburg or Old Williamsburg. Uh it's affectionately called rural Greenpoint, um, according to the real estate agents. But it's it's near McGlueric. Um, so on the other side of the commercial thorough McGuinness.
So I'm on the other side. How far away from like uh Bay Yard and all that where the museum used to be? Uh not too far. It's about like a 15-minute walk. Do you know how to skateboard?
No. Yeah. But I know they had that skate park there. Yeah, no, it's ridiculous. So not ridiculous.
Uh like I just if we had been the museum of skateboarding, right, John? If we had been in the museum with it. That's so many guesses. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Uh all right. So listen, today is, and uh Dennis, this is your idea a million years ago, or was it maybe the last time when Andrea was on and you were in the back? We've been talking about it. We've been talking about it. Yeah, and it's been simmering.
Let's let's let's it's been fermenting. Let's taste fish sauce. Yeah, we're doing we're talking fish sauce, but I'm gonna let you guys maybe set up like kind of uh what we're tasting. But also that since you did just work on a Thai cookbook, you have a very interesting perspective on not that they're you know, fighting, but Thai versus Vietnamese fish houses. And we have some non we have some uh American-made Asian-style sauces and some American sauces, and I brought some Italian stuff as well.
Uh so we can uh yeah, we'll we'll so why don't you set why don't you set this up? Sure. I uh I'll start by just sharing what we have, and then Andrea can fill in the details. But by the way, Quinn is putting on the what's it called? The the list.
The list that we're tasting, and maybe, you know, if if we're extra special nice, he'll add the ones that I brought as bonus. Yeah, and then we can also post our little scorecard that I created. You know I made sure to plan everything out for us, you know, so we could have a successful tasting here. But you know, we've got a selection of um, you know, different types of fish sauces. Some are pure, some have sugar added, so different kinds of flavors, different types of perspectives on everything.
I think you've been generous to add a couple here as well. So, you know, I think we were gonna brought mostly low-end low-end. No, that's not true. You have some primo, some primo. You know, there's only two I wish I had here that I don't have.
We'll talk about it later. Yeah, so but I you know, I figured we would just kind of talk it about it based on you know these characteristics, the saltiness, the sweetness, the umami, the fishiness, and then maybe talk about best best uses for every single one, just so the audience, you know, can come away with an understanding of just you know what the different characteristics of all these different sauces and the different applications. I don't know. Does that sound right, Andrea? Yeah, because you know, fish sauce, and we've got like this is international fish sauce day.
Um really? Yeah. Well, let's just make it here. I'm here. Yeah.
Dude, yes. Because people international fish sauce day. Yeah, right. You say it later, Des We'll get it out. Yeah, we'll do that, yeah.
And and so we've got, you know, the world of fish sauce, and people think of fish sauce as being like this the Southeast Asian thing. But I mean, I love the fact that you I knew you were gonna do this. Bring in, you know, the Euro. Yeah, you know, you know, have you seen me? I I just'm aware.
We look different, you know. So anyway, so so there's so much variety in fish sauce. And um I've learned so much working with Pim Tashamami Beat on cooking Thai and the world of fish sauce in Thailand. But um, we're we're really gonna focus on what's available here in the United States and what is um attainable. Because some of the Thai stuff that I've tasted, like you can't get it.
And I've even like had Cambodian stuff that we're not even tasting today. But um Dennis has gathered, Dennis, how many we have here? We have we we brought seven, and then Dave's brought one, two, three, four, five more. So we have twelve all day. I don't know if we're gonna get all 12, but we're gonna try.
Oh, we will. We might we might not go in depth on all of them. Okay. We have scorecards. Yeah.
You know, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna uh okay. I'm bad at scoring things, I'm terrible. Me too. Yeah, I hate it. I hate it.
It's like grading. If I had a teacher, I'd suck. It's like a hate contest too. It's like, can't we all be losers? You know what I mean?
Anyway, no winners, just all losers. Semi-finalists. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. First losers.
Uh I remember uh I saw that I saw uh years ago I was on one of these terrible tourist boats, and I someone had that t-shirt second place as the first loser. And Dax and I, my son, we're like, we just say that to each other all the time now. How'd you come in? He's like, first loser. Oh.
Yeah. Anyway, uh weak. All right. What are we tasting first, Dennis? Uh, so Andrea, what do you what do you think we should go?
Should the one with the uh added stuff, or do you want to go with the pure stuff? Well, it won't okay. Let's talk about this. Some have sugar, some don't. The sugar is typically added afterwards, right?
Correct. And there's some fish sauces. First of all, my impression is is that more in the Vietnamese side, they might label the nitrogen content. We should talk about that. Whereas I think that's probably rare in a Thai fish sauce or any other person's fish sauce.
Right. You can use this special magic trick. Uh Quinn's talked about it before of uh taking the the milligrams, uh, you know, multiple figure out how much that is per liter, how many grams per liter that is, multiply by 2.54, which is also the magic number to remember inch uh centimeters to inches, and get the actual uh salt content and percentage, just so you if you want to look at the back of a label. Uh and the difference between extract where they can re-add liquid and press it again versus uh straight anchor. You want to just run through the generalized procedure here, somebody, not me, somebody who's not me.
Andrea. So I've seen fish sauce made. I've been to Fukuok with the red boat people. And so what you do is you're you got a whole boat full of little anchovies, little fish, and then you're going to pack it in layers of sea salt and then transport all of that into large vats or containers of some sort. The vats can be made out of wood, or they can be um actually even small porcelain urns if you were a small producer like a homemade fish sauce person.
And or you can put them in a concrete vat and then they're let left there to go through the autolytic process of decomposition and fermentation. The first drawing out of fish sauce, um, you know, like extra virgin olive oil, cold press, is super rich in flavor and nitrogen. It's always almost thick. But what you want to do out of that vat is you want to blend it like you would wine, because one vat's gonna differ from the other. They're not like weighing how much, you know, fish and salt.
They're just literally like dumping it in from the boat. And so there has to be this calibration by the fish sauce producer. And so that happens at every single level of these um producers at their facility before it is bottled. And they can control it to create this nitrogen level, which is sort of like I see it as like you know, you go to Union 76 and you buy gasoline and there's different octane levels and they're like premium or whatever. So the higher the N, the higher the punch, the umami, the depth of it.
And it scales directly to protein content. Exactly. Exactly. And you don't always the N, some people argue is not always like the best judgment of flavor. Because sometimes something that's 30 N can be a tastes just as good as 40.
And there's even like 50 N. You can't really go above 50. If you see anything that's above 50, that's bullshit. And by the way, 50 is 5%. Yeah.
It's percent times 10. This is somebody's crazy the same way that like proof is two times the ABV. Why? Only God knows. Yeah.
So sometimes there's something sweet added because um in Vietnam and elsewhere, traditionally, like they would add a little MSG because you gotta just like round out the flavors, you know, just polish them a little bit. It's cheap. It's cheap. Yeah. You add a little sugar to it, you know.
And so it's what it's going to create a that sweet, savory umami flavor um that we all love. But sugar's not a pejorative, right? You're not, it's not like you get angry like rum people get angry. No, no, it's like not huge, you know, it's not a huge thing, but it's just that little bit. And sometimes a fish sauce doesn't have any, but some of these producers are gonna tweak it so that and they want to stay very pure, like as if this is something that you and I and our our grandmothers or great grandmothers would produce at home.
So it's just salt and fish. And you don't always have to use fish for fish sauce either. I've had krill fish sauce in Thailand that was funky but good. Yeah? Yeah.
I mean I've had fish sauce made from squid not squid brand, which is not made from squid. Exactly. But I've had squid based sauce. Yeah. Squid gut based sauce.
Yeah. Yeah. Real good. And I've also had f fish sauce made from um freshwater fish. Ayu?
Do you have oh I wish we had that stuff. The Ayu one, the one from Japan? No, I got this at these cam this Cambodian market. And you know, because they're a landlocked country more or less. That's why I'm like, where are you getting this f fish for fish sauce?
And it's all it's like freshwater fish. And it has a different flavor. It's a different animal, but it but it it's funky, it's earthy, it's like and it really works with their food. Yeah one of my top five fish sauces, I don't have it, I couldn't find it because it's it's very hard to find here in the US is a freshwater Japanese fish sauce. But it's not traditional.
It's only like 25 years old or something like this. Wow. You know the sweet fish, the one that you for those of you who don't know I'm talking about if you you mainly see it like grill like like like rubbed and grilled in like it's swimming on a skewer. Yeah. They're small like you you know they're small, like smelty size.
Yeah. Yeah. So I you. And they make a fish sauce. And then he strangely, the guy who makes it also makes one blended with shoyu, but I can do that blend myself.
Exactly. Why pay for it? And yesterday I went to the Banchan shop and um Huni Kim's place out in uh Long Island City, and he's got a couple of very interesting looking Korean fish sauces. Ooh. Yeah.
Me neither. Yeah. I mean, obviously fermented seafood products from there, but never a fish sauce. Right. So he's got him there.
So he that's a great little shop. So if you're, you know, nearby, check it out. I think we can say that at some point or another, anybody that has fish has had some form of fish sauce. This whether or not it's culturally current. Yeah.
I mean, you got a lot of fish, you got salt. You got to do something with it. All of Europe had it back in the day. You know what I mean? At least all of your Europe that Rome touched.
Right. Um, d speaking about nitrogen, I think my personal opinion is while it's an important metric and it's definitely used to like signify you know the type of pressing and the quality of it, new mommy. Um, you know, I think it's not the all end all in terms of evaluating fish sauce for your own personal use. So I I would urge everyone, you know, as they're evaluating fish sauces for their own personal use. Yes, pay attention to that nitrogen number, but also realize that nitrogen number can be manipulated and it can be done in certain ways to you know achieve a higher number.
So it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best sauce for your application. So go into an open mind, you know, 25N can taste just as good as a 40 end, depending on the application and how you're utilizing it. And I think one other thing that's going to be interesting here is uh we're gonna be tasting some fish sauce that's you they're they're using uh American anchovies. Yeah, why? We'll talk about it when it when they come up.
Yeah, maybe maybe you can talk about the individual brands when they come up. But one more question, uh, or I should maybe comment. Um, so uh you you can add fish sauce at various points. Like I use it as a condiment, right? Or you could have like thick, you know, like mixed already with like water and sugar and on the table or whatever.
Yeah. But fish sauce cooked is very different from fish sauce not cooked. So is it the same to we're evaluating all of these uncooked for like a finishing application, I guess, but like it would a different fish sauce be better to go in as it's gonna be cooked or no? It depends on the fish sauce itself. Some fish sauces are um okay, you can add all of them during the cooking process.
But when you do that, it's gonna be a stealth ingredient that just goes right in there, right? And it's gonna like meld with everything. But if you I season a dish with fish sauce at the end, first of all, you're going to get that bloom of flavors and the expression of the umami. So for example, when you're making a soup like pho, if I used to to season my broth at the beginning with fish sauce, and then I started playing around with it, and also I was like kind of reprimanded by some chefs in Hanoi. Like, you've been away too long, sister.
Yeah. And they're like, put it at the end because that's where the umami's gonna really burst and you're really going to experience it. So, you know, it it really is a matter of learning and playing around, practicing manipulating it so that you get the effect of it. Do you want it to be an undercurrent or do you want it to go pow? I'm here.
Right. So Nick Coleman, olive oil guy, friend of the show, been on a bunch of times. He always says I'm wrong when I say I have like several grades of olive oil in my house, because if I'm gonna add olive oil and use it in the pan early, I'm not gonna use your fancy stuff. He's like, No, you should always use great olive oil. I'm like, okay.
Is it the same with fish sauce? Like it would never dump a super expensive fish sauce in early, right? Exactly. You want to save that there's like fish sauce for seasoning and then there's fish sauce for sauces and dips. But if you only give one bottle in your house, by all means do it.
Use it all the time. Right. Yeah. Using a higher quality one earlier is not gonna make your dish worse. It's just throwing away money, right?
Only my ninety-two-year-old mother would like be really, you know, gonna chastise you. I'm not going to. Yeah. And Nick Coleman. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh they can be together. They can be friends. They're basically the same person.
Only different. Uh all right. So let's go. Let's taste. Well, is there anything else we need to say beforehand?
No, let's just get into it. Okay. Um, let's start with we're gonna start with all the fish sauces that have added ingredients. Okay. So these are the ones with sugar.
Um, sometimes there's some uh yeast extract for for umami in there. Um I think we're gonna just taste everything on a spoon. Yeah. Hammy Yeah, but give me a big spoon because I don't wanna spill by the way, is yeast extract just a friendly way to say MSG. Come on.
Oh, yeah. I mean, please. Our friend monosodium glutamate. Yeah, or if we get to three crabs, it's like, you know, T VP. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we all know. Yeah. We all know. We're not stupid. I mean, maybe.
We tend to think we're not stupid. Yeah. All right, hit us, Dennis. All right. John's getting his.
All right, here we go. Passing it down. We have mega chef blue hair spoons. All right, yeah, spoons, big spoons. Spoon, spoon, spoons.
Big spoon. Mega chef. Now, for a long time this was a darling of people because it's relatively inexpensive. Comes in a big bottle with the with the fish on the side and the little a little um what's it called? Grading.
So why don't you talk about this this brand? Um, well, you know, my knowledge of it, it's a Thai brand. Um popular in Thai cooking. Um, you know, I think I believe my understanding, I was I was reading Andrea's story about it. These guys actually came from Squid brand initially, potentially.
Mega Chef is the son of squid. Yeah. Mega Chef. Mega Chef is the son of squid. Um but it's nicely balanced.
You know, I think it's a ready-to-eat kind of fish sauce, you know, with the sugar. Um, you can really taste the sugar. Yeah. I mean, when you're eating it straight, you the sugar is clearly there. Yes, but um let's taste it blue against brown.
Yeah, brown. I think the brown is where you know it gets to be. So spoons. No, we can't. So most of the time, what you're going to see sold at markets is Mega Chef Blue, because it's widely available.
And um, but the brown has an extra gravity toss to it. That's very interesting. And I'll explain why. Is brown available in the U.S.? Yes, it is.
Hard to find, though. Hard to find. I couldn't find, I had to order it online. Yeah. But brown.
I've never actually had brown. You've never had brown. I've never had brown. You're a brown version than Mega Chef Brown version. It's my understanding, brown is more geared towards Vietnamese applications, and the blue is more geared towards cool.
No? Okay. Never mind. Jesus, Dennis. God.
I thought we were friends. So Mega Chef Blue is geared more for the Vietnamese community. Uh-huh. And because there are it's, you know, Vietnamese flavor profiles it for food is more like what I describe as rolling hills, whereas Mega Chef Brown is geared for the Thai Thai food because their food is more peaks and valleys, more lusty, more rustic, more lots of sugar. So you need something that's more robust.
And Mega Chef exports more of the blue to the United States because there are more Vietnamese people here than Thai's. And we are like a huge consumer of fish sauce. So when you're looking for the brown, and the brown taste to me, it's got a great sweet edge to it, but it's just got a little bit more of that kind of gut punch. It's also to me something that I look for in fish sauces, and this is a kind of a random statement. Uh I look for a kind of a sometimes a canned meat flavor.
Like, and this has the brown has that, and I really like that canned meat, that like deviled ham flavor. And this has that, you know. Yeah, the red devil. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Small can. Yeah, yeah. Tiny can. Uh, but yeah, it has a little bit of that. Whereas I don't get that much of that in the blue.
No, no, you don't. And the the Thai's, for example, they've got a uh a dipping sauce that's very basic, is called Nampla Prick, and it's just fish sauce, lime juice, and chilies, no water. Whereas the Vietnamese are gonna always like diluted. I need it so much. That's why it comes in those giant chugs on that.
I was like, I need so much of this. Yeah. You could almost drink it. The salt level is so low. Exactly.
Yeah, exactly. Okay. We're going into this. This is a brand I'm not familiar with. This is uh thin.
So it's that bit that nice looking bottle that you have there. Well, it's it's a hold this up to the where's my finger. There. Yeah. So this is um something that I picked up in California.
And it's strangely imported, it's imported by the Lee Sandwich people. They're like the um sort of the McDonald's of sandwich makers. And it comes in that cute bottle because those are the kinds of containers that historically were used to sell fish sauce in Vietnam. And this fish sauce comes from an area called Fanti in southern Vietnam that's also very well known for fish sauce making. And they've got a little bit of sugar in there.
And they claim that their fish sauce production is like one of the oldest in Vietnam. So it's got sugar in it, but it's almost kind of whiny. Yeah. Yeah. It's really good.
Yeah. But it's like almost more subtle on the upfront, but it's got like this really interesting back end. Here, you guys try more of it because I'm sure you didn't give yourself enough. It's got a great long tail. Yeah.
Yeah. You need to taste that one a couple of times to get to it. But why don't you go over? Because like uh this is not well known. So why don't you just oh sorry, Joe.
I keep hitting the microphones. Describe uh how they can find this if they can find this. We W-E-E-E exclamation point. We'll deliver. To you.
Okay. All right. Yeah. Wonderful online resource that Andrew introduced me to. I love looking at we for all kinds of cool food products.
And um you can get it, yeah, delivered. And the supply goes up and down. It's actually has been sold at Costco's in Northern California, where the Vietnamese people just like clean it out. Or you can go to like Lee Sandwich grocery stores. There's only like one or two of 'em in the Bay Area.
But definitely if you have access to we can I mean it came in and it came in overnight. Yeah. That's it's very interesting. What do you guys think about it? Oh, delicious.
Um I agree. This was the first time I've had it. Um it finishes really nice. A lot of umami. I you know, if if you notice, uh they they market it as uh 41, 41 nitrogen.
Just one above. Oh one above 40. So uh 40s for chumps. 441. Uh Vietnamese people are so damn competitive.
Yeah. All right, what's next? Uh next we're gonna have I already know there's not gonna be a winner. Because we're not even scoring. Yeah.
We're not even scoring. We're not expecting it. You could, but like we should talk about what they're for and what they're not for. Yeah. Like, okay, first of all, like what are the price points of the things we've been tasting so far?
Mega Chef Blue is running around, say $3.99. And this is all like tariff prices, pre-for-tariffs, two eighty-nine, post-tariff, thanks, Trump, $399. Um, brown is around the same price too, if not a little bit higher, because I think they just don't bring in as much. The tin fish sauce is going to run you around between thirteen dollars without shipping and then up to like twenty-five with shipping. But it's for a decent size.
It is. And look, it's a gift. Okay. I mean, look at that bottle. You want to save that bottle.
Yeah, it comes with a little like sling. Yeah, exactly. You can just like bring that into a party as a hostess gift or a host gift and be like a a total superstar. So what are we tasting now? So this is the Dear Mom.
This is a play on Dear Mom. Yeah. This is from the son uh fish sauce producer. Um I actually spoke to him over the weekend just so I could get some you know updated information to share. Um this is his homage.
This is a blended one. So this has uh sugar and stuff of that nature. And his thinking was this is kind of an homage to fish sauce that uh he grew up eating, which is the three crab that you brought in here as well. So um using American anchovies. Um I think that's something that's what's the advantage they said of using the American anchovies.
According to uh Danny, it's uh it's about a sustainability practice. Um there's a lot of anchovies that go ahead. Andrew. But he's taking the anchovies in the United States and he goes to Vietnam with them and then brings them back. Um I containerized shipping is cheap.
It is. And is it ferment on the way over? You know what? They should make like a you know, Liniacovit? Yeah.
They have to put it on a boo or too it's the argument. I mean, that's my only Jefferson reserve. But but Danny has made like American anchovy fish sauce before. And I have to say that dear mom is better than what he produced before. And um, but uh he so he and his wife um have a uh fish sauce concern out of this tiny island called Sun Island.
And um her her family has been making fish sauce there like for decades. She's like fourth generation. And so I understand the need to be in the the place. And but you know, I I feel like taking American anchovies all the way there and then coming back is just kind of weird. I don't know.
Like we have to look at the quote unquote carbon footprint. Dennis, why don't you bust out some crackers and cucumbers? I need to clear myself. Here. Cucumbers, cucumbers.
What's the price point of dear mum? Uh, you know, I think they're all, you know, different regions, different prices, but we're talking everything below like $9 for all of these. So I, you know, I think it's in the same range, maybe slightly more than the mega chefs. The thing about what I like that Danny does is I think his products are really nice. And but, you know, I'm always gonna say, Danny, why'd you have to bring a fish back and forth?
You know? And what do you say? Uh he's just goes, because we want to do something different. All right. That's fine.
He wants to like prove that you can make fish sauce from American anchovies. By the way, Dennis brought the cucumbers, which are nice. And I now feel stupid because I told myself I would never buy an unsalted saltine ever. But for this. Yeah.
What about this? Do you know um the other thing I could have done? In country ham tasting, the standard is apple juice. Oh. Yeah.
Clear out cabbages. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you say something while I eat this cracker, Dennis. Um well, let's talk about the applications.
That finishes all of the ones that have stuff added to them. Um, you know, I think for me, these are all cooking, you know, these have been formulated so they're ready to use more so than the other ones without, obviously. So, you know, I've used these pri you know, previously to cook with. Um, I'll introduce them to F. Um, but I'll also make dipping sauces sauces out of them as well.
So I think it has a wide range of applications that I've used in the kitchen. It's a great starter fish sauce for anyone that is kind of dipping their toes into the world of fish sauce and having it in their pantry. So um I think it's a great starter there. So so within the the four that we've tasted, which one would you say is like entry level? Entry level in what way?
Like I'm starting out. You know, I'm like a fish sauce newbie. Oh. And I just want to plug and play. For me, it's the mega chef blue.
Yeah? Mm-hmm. I like the brown more. I kind of do too. Yeah.
But but you're a Judas. I am. I am. I am. John, you had something you want to say.
What was it? No, I'm just chewing, but um agreeing about the mega chef brown. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good idea.
Yeah. I I have whenever I've scored a bottle of that stuff, I keep it around. I have one bottle. I age for like three years, and it was still good. Yeah.
Also, I have to say, uh, the whininess on the on the tin is really tin. Like, I I I think I understand why none of you went there just because it's different. You know what I mean? So maybe it's not going to be like the straight classic, like what what you hit, but like, I really like that. I was kind of like I think you're my mother because she that is the fish sauce that she is eating just with white rice.
Yeah. That's it. She's like, I want to taste what I remember from Vietnam over 50 years ago, and that's the one. Huh. So yeah.
So, you know. So you have a 92 year old approval. That's sweet. I mean, like, you know, and she's a hard ass. That's better than a better than a whatever 15-year-old approval.
Totally. Yeah. I mean, no offense, 15-year-olds. Uh uh, all right. So we are now moving on to the ones that are just anchovy and salt.
Now, this one, next one, is made by the same people or relatives of the same people. Same people. Dear mom and son. Son. What happened to daughter?
Yeah. Yeah. Always getting shafted. Daughter's always getting shafted. All right.
So now is this a similar makeup? Or this one is made with local anchovies, not shipped around. This is local. Oh, that's very different. Very sharp.
Very sharp. Yeah. It's got almost a maybe make sure it wasn't the crackers and the cucumber. It comes out quite a rough. Yeah.
Yeah. It's um doesn't really have a canned meat. The salt is up front. It almost makes me think there's an acidity to it, or like uh, you can almost taste like a regular fermentation instead of uh just a breakdown process. Salt very present up front.
It's funny because they blend things all the time. And he and Danny's told me like sometimes, even though it says 30 N on their bottles, it's like coming in at like 40. So I never know. He knows from batch to batch, Dennis, like how much the N is. He said the he used to make three different kinds, 25, 33, and 40 back in the day.
I think he realized, you know, in my conversations with him that the 25 was the nice kind of point for everyone in terms of just all the characteristics that you're looking for. So he he's exclusively now switched over to 25 for all of his products. You know what's interesting to me is that especially on the taste and retaste, after the salt fades away, this, unlike the other ones, has like a real dashi note. You know what I mean? To it.
Like almost like a katsobushi note. Um I don't know whether it's just I'm getting that because it doesn't have some of those other breakdown products, like like you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, you know, his 33, Dennis was like excellent. Like when he had 33, I was like, that's as good as red boat, if not better and easier to use.
Um I'm not really loving the 25. And this is the 25. Yes. 25. And why did he s he switch that?
Is it a price point thing? Yeah, I think it was a combination of everything. Um, you know, just an attractive price point, and then just finding that the difference in nitrogen just wasn't enough um to to warrant, you know, the the three different separate ones. I mean, I I think I think what's interesting is like it's almost like I wasn't thinking it was the same producer. I just wasn't expecting it to be this different.
Right. You know what I mean? Like maybe if we had tasted it on its own, we would think differently. I don't know. What do you think, John?
Yeah, no, it was an aggressive flavor. Yeah, I think, yeah. That's definitely not like the best introductory one. Yeah, but again, I think like this is clearly an expression because we've had two sauces by the same producer. So clearly, like this is the goal, this is what their their target.
They know their targets, you know what I mean? Right. So what's interesting is that he we tasted Mega Chef Blue and Mega Chef Brown. So Dennis, when you were talking to Danny about son versus dear mom, what's his target market for those two sauces? Well, you know, I think Deer Mom, like I said, you know, an om an homage to the classic uh three crabs fish sauce.
So I think he was targeting that kind of audience, um, just that kind of nostalgia of that kind of formulated fish sauce. You know, so that kind of flavor, but then obviously with his process and then his procurement and his sourcing. I think the sun, um, you know, like since it's just anchovy and salt, I think that's more of the people that are more, I think have more comfortable with fish sauce and want to use it as straight applications versus mixing with other things, cooking with it per se. Um, you know, for me personally, you know, we're gonna taste red boat note next, you know, another one that's just anchovian salt. And these are the ones I kind of just leave and serve as is.
You know, I'm gonna make it in a sauce that it's not gonna get heated up or I'm just gonna season things specifically with just that sauce itself. Yeah, let's let's try the red boat because like that's the one I would say use it as a sub for anchovies for a lazy day Caesar. Yeah. I mean I put a lot of red boat down my face. Let's try, yeah.
Who makes red boat? Um it is Gung Fam and the his family in uh on Fukuok Island. But has it always been like has it because I feel like it hit huge, I don't know, like fifth 15 years ago or something. What was it before that? Was it something else local and it just got came here as red No, no, no.
He had a dream of making fish sauce the way that his mother and grandmother had it. And so he was like one of the I don't know employee number double digit at Apple. Yeah. Yeah. And then he retired early and started making fish sauce.
Yeah. I think you apples and fish sauce would be good. Not just a computer. That's a good product. I mean like I don't know what to say about it.
It's a good product. Yeah. Yeah yeah. No, this is solid. I, you know, it's I think red boat is always right there for you.
It's highly reliable. Um, it's got that robustness. They do this thing in their facility in Fremont where they're removing some of the salt. It's kind of funny. I mean, it's got it's sometimes the um salinity level is lower than other fish sauces.
Oh. And so um he he tinkers with it all the time. He has this machine that he's like re removing through some centrifuge, I think, like salt crystals. So like or like a like evaporating or removing and adding water back. I mean, no, no, it's I know.
I know, I know. I've seen with my own eyes. Or like I could use a membrane, I guess. Yeah. Um, but I don't know how you would selectively, I guess salt is quite small compared to the other things.
The crystals come out and they're like they're there. Look, there's some meat in there. It's got a good bracing salt up front. It's not overly funky, right? No, no, it's not fishy.
It's a very nice, friendly fish sauce. Yeah, it's like it's reliable for a lot of I think Western food. It's not going to say, I'm fishy. I'm funky. I'm gonna challenge you.
Right. Right. Friendly. Okay, so friendly fish sauce. Dennis, I've never tasted the next one.
You've never had this one? No. So this guy came up to me at an event. I forget the dude's name. Do you know the guy's name?
No. Uh no. It's expensive as hell. Yes, it is. So Red Bow, you thought red boat was expensive.
What is red boat? 13 a bottle? Uh, it depends on where you're shopping. Yeah. 13 to 15, I think.
Go to the go to the hood, Dave. This is main garum. Yep. And it is I I haven't had this batch. I had a batch from before.
The color is different. Color's very different. This I should have brought mine. This is a different batch. This tastes completely different from the one that I have.
I mean, because he's making them himself. So this one, you said it's from crabs. I forget what the other one. I don't think the other one I had was think it was from eye. I had eel.
It's lighter. Right? The eel one tasted like ishiri, which is the Japanese sometimes squid, and then they do a different one, uh gut fish sauce. And that one, the main garum one that was made from eel, to me was the closest I've ever had to that Japanese fish sauce. And Sally Granger, the garum expert, her like fancy garum sociarum one.
Super meaty, like canned meat only, canned meat and and stuff. This one doesn't taste like that at all. So like I would it's an interesting kind of object lesson in how the different inputs make different flavors. Totally. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And it's it goes up your olfactory senses quite a lot. I need to try it again because I was expecting something totally different. So why don't you guys talk about it while I'm reorganizing my brain?
I should have brought my other bottle up so stupid. It's a different color, too. It's a totally different color. I'm gonna like taste let's say I'm gonna I'm gonna it's greenish brown. Greenish, yeah.
Whereas let's and it it's lower in salt according to the label. Well, so they're making it out of green crops, which is an invasive species up here. Um that's been damaging clam beds and oyster beds. So I I know they've been trying to find culinary applications for this, you know, way for the last couple years. I don't know if we can do this.
Um it's yeah, it's it's interesting to see them turn it into a fish sauce. And it's there's no there's no mistaking the crab flavor. Here. I'm gonna do this and hopefully not put fish sauce on your No, there's no mistaking the crab flavor. Yeah.
So I mean, there's no mistaking the crab flavor. So what would you use that in? You'd have to want crab flavor. Which by the way, crab is God's crustacean. I mean, crab is the best tasting of all the crustaceans.
I mean, if you had to only have one crab and someone else was going to get the meat for you, it would be crab. Okay. Only one crustacean. It would be crab. Right.
But also, let's let's say it's three crabs. Because you brought it up. I did I did bring that. So what do we think about this though? I like it.
It's interesting. Yeah. It's not an everyday sauce. I wish you had the eel, man. Yeah.
The eel is a was killer. I brought that uh to uh I brought it to an event like the day after I got it because I just couldn't believe how good it was. Yeah. And like I said, I wish I could have gotten the Ayu and the and the um, what's it called? Um freaking ishiri.
Uh okay. What do you want to taste next? Let's do, let's, let's, let's try a little bit of the one that I only have a tiny bit of. You three taste it. This is the I think it's Spanish made garum made in the Roman style, sold by Mitica for an absurd amount of money.
It's like $30, $35 or something. Something ridiculous. But for like three milliliters or something dumb. You know what I mean? It's a rich person's fish sauce.
Bougie fish sauce. Yeah, boo boo boogie. Where did you get it? Uh I made I was given some by somebody, and then I made DiPalos carry it because it they carry meat, even though it's not Italian. I made the argument that it was Roman style and that they already carried Mitica products, so they could do it.
You know what I'm saying? And they did. And I was like, Louis, the Di Paolo and Sal, I was like, Did you try it yet? Did you try it? And they're like, no, haven't tried it.
It's good. At least it was the last time I had it. Um you gonna go for it? Yeah, are you so familiar with it? Your Jada.
I'll go for it. It's just I was gonna cucumber, but I can't because I can't ASMR into the let's see here. This is an old bottle, so let's see what they're doing about how fish sauce changes over time. Yeah, this one is old. It tastes old.
You can taste. Yeah. Um it doesn't taste like that when it's when it's a new bottle. Yeah. Yeah.
So do you it has more vivacity? Yeah. Yeah. It's closer. Yeah.
It it this has lost its how do you store it? This one, uh it's uh, so in my kitchen, you know, stuff that I'm it's it's middle what's that my phone? It's my mid it's my middle something's beeping. Yeah. No.
Uh in my kitchen, I store stuff I care about middle and low, because my the ceiling of my kitchen gets hot, but I don't refrigerate it. Oh, refrigerate it. Yeah, refrigerate. Yeah, it'll last forever. Forever.
Forever. Even if like the salt crystals form, it's fine. So I would say you haven't tasted that. Yeah. Based on that.
So but it is very good when it is new, but also very expensive. Also, my Kolatura I brought it color. Let's try the color torah. Let's try the colatura, the little tiny bottle, and the yondu. And then on the way out, you know, we'll we'll just do a quick rundown of the ones that people have already had.
So Kolatura is not technically speaking, fish sauce. It's like the runoff from curing anchovies. It comes from the amalfi coast. This one is not technically Kolatura because it comes from Sicily. Uh so it's just, you know, a byproduct.
But this would be closer, probably to like some of the. Let me see here. It's good though. It's really good. But it's definitely got like a slackier.
It's nice. No, I like this. This is like rustic tasting. You know? It reminds me of Vietnamese stuff, like old school aged.
Yeah. Yeah, it's good. It's showing better than I thought. All right, let's yawn to it. Let's do some vegetarian.
See if you think this is a good substitute, a non-soyating. You know, I make vegetarian fish sauce. Well, remember when you came on, whatever book you were pushing, you had the Evergreen Vietnamese is like my favorite vegetarian to bring sauce. No, I didn't. Alright.
You know, I flew in just yesterday, man. All right. All right. I didn't know you're gonna review the yondu. Had had I known, I would have brought a little bit.
All right. And then uh Joe, do we have like 20 seconds because we can taste some of the uh the quickies, just quicky them out? I love yondu. Yeah, it really is. Yondu's really good.
All right, Yandu is like, I like Yandu a lot. Let's do let's do fancy squid. This is squid brand, but they're fancy. Oh yeah, this is fancy squid. Listen, I think Yandu is a great product.
Yeah. What do you guys do about the salinity? Because I feel like it's not quite a one-to-one, and I taste the soy in it. I taste hydrolyzed wheat. Yeah, I mean, like I use it mainly, um, I use it mainly, you know, it it's my go-to when I'm cooking for like when I have to worry about and I don't want to push something actually because to me it doesn't taste as fishy or as like it's it's it's more cultural neutral.
Yes, it is. It is culturally neutral. Ooh, I really like this. That is good, I like this squid. Squid, the golden squid, the the their high first press one.
That is a really good product. I think this is really excellent stuff. That's a really good product. So much better than regular squid. You found that at your local store?
Just I mean I live in Chinatown, though. You're lucky. Yeah. All right. Uh you want a tip arose on the way out, or do you want to?
Yeah, no, no, tip tip it because yours is a very aged bottle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my god, it is still tipping on faux faux. It's got the salt crystals. Yep.
Tip in on faux faux. You know what? I keep a bottle of tip rose for um reference. When I recipe test, so funk. Funk, yeah.
All right. So seeing as how we're already over time on the way out, what would you say the takeaway from this is? Oh my god. How old? Um for me it's uh explore fish sauce.
It needs to be part of your pantry if it's not already. And it's very versatile. That one that you have that's not your go-to fish sauce, after a while it changes. Yeah. As you can as you can see.
Now you're apologizing for it. You don't have to apologize for your fish sauce. Use whatever you got, and if it's not working for you, get a new bottle. There you go. Well listen, uh, thanks so much folks for coming on.
I love this tasting. I'm now gonna go into a salt coma. Uh I've consumed a a vicious amount of salt, but uh because I have to taste a lot. I can't taste a tiny bit. But you're getting like the glutamic rush now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Anyway, come on, uh come on anytime. Cooking issues. Plumbing, heating, or electrical problem?
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