Vietnamese Dipping Fish Sauce Recipe (Nước Chấm/Nước Mắm Chấm)

By stancec44

Of course there other types of sauces Vietnamese people use, but this is the one primarily made with fish sauce. You’ll usually find a bowl of this sauce next to to foods like chả giò (egg rolls), spring rolls or summer rolls, bánh xèo, bánh hỏi, bánh cuốn, grilled meats, and fried fish just to barely name a few.

For different dishes there are slight variations on nước chấm, but we will use this as a base recipe that works great for most things. You can adjust it to your own taste if needed depending on what it’s going with.

Ingredients

• 6 tbsp. water
• 2 tbsp. sugar
• 1.5 to 2 tbsp. fresh lime or lemon juice
• 2 tbsp. fish sauce (Author uses Three Crabs brand)
• Optional Ingredients
• finely chopped garlic
• bird's eye / Thai chilies

Details

Adapted from hungryhuy.com

Preparation

Step 1

Simple Directions (see below)
Combine water and sugar in a bowl.
Add lime or lemon juice in increments until you like how it tastes
Add fish sauce in increments until you like how it tastes
Top with garlic and chilies

More Advice:
Brewing A Batch
Citrus – Start by mixing the water with sugar and lime or lemon. This is basically lemonade. If it’s too sweet, add some water. If it’s not sour enough add some more citrus. Citrus varies a lot from fruit to fruit, so use your taste buds. Following this recipe exactly won’t reproduce the same results if the limes or lemons are different each time. Don’t even think about using bottled lemon or lime juice.

Fish sauce – Slowly add the fish sauce in increments to slowly reach what the recipe calls for and taste it along the way. After you get used to making this, you can start to tell by the color of the sauce when you are getting close.

Optional additions – Add chopped chilies or finely chopped garlic to the sauce if you like. Chilies are a must for me, and garlic is nice too.

Keep in an airtight jar in the fridge so all your other food doesn’t smell like this sauce.

Variations
Sometimes you’ll see people put their own twists on this recipe. It’s all about making it your own. I’ve seen some recipes that swap out sugar for some other juices.

In restaurants this is made in big batches. They’ll typically use vinegar for bite instead of lemons since it’s easier and cheaper.