If you’re a fan of Thai and southeast Asian food, you know that fish sauce is a key ingredient to many dishes, giving them their unique flavor. Fish sauce, also called nuoc mam or nam pla, is made from fermented fish and salt. I thought it would be interesting to try to come up with a vegan alternative, so here is how to make vegan fish sauce.
A food blogger friend suggested that the key taste to capture was umami, the savory taste found in soy-based foods.
I took seaweed, soaked it, added miso for the salty umami flavor, and blended it. It has a briny taste that is a pretty reasonable substitute for fish sauce. Note that the final product is not particularly appetizing in color, so you might want to keep this a secret ingredient in your recipes. If you’re following a soy-free diet, use chickpea miso instead of soy-based miso for this recipe.
Suitable for:
vegan, gluten-free, reduced-sugar diets
Not for:
low-sodium or migraine diets
How to make vegan fish sauce
Ingredients
- 1/2 ounce nori seaweed sheets
- 2 tbsp miso (30 g), use chickpea miso for soy-free version
- 1 cup water (filtered or spring)
Instructions
- Soak the seaweed in the water for 30 minutes. Add the miso and put in a blender. Blend until smooth. Pass through a fine mesh strainer, saving the liquid (toss or compost what is caught by the strainer), and store in the refrigerator.
Notes
- 5 calories
- 0 g fat
- 0 g saturated fat
- 0 g monounsaturated fat
- 0 g polyunsaturated fat
- 0 g trans fat
- 0 g cholesterol
- 93 mg sodium
- 0 mg potassium
- 0 g carbohydrate
- 0 g fiber
- 0 g sugars
- 0 g protein
- 0 Weight Watchers Points Plus
Wow, this is genius! Do you have any idea about how long one recipe will keep in the fridge? Thanks so much!
Officially, I recommend using it within a week or two. You could make it and freeze it in ice cube trays in tiny portions, then thaw as needed.
My husband is allergic to seaweed. Is there anything you can recommend in place of the nori?
Hi, I don’t know what to tell you here… I can’t think of anything besides seaweed that would give you that fishy/sea taste. So sorry!
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Ok, this is probably a really dumb question, but I’m just wondering… when you pass the mixture through a fine mesh strainer, which part do you keep – the liquid or what’s left in the strainer?
You keep the liquid and toss or compost what’s left in the strainer. I’ll clarify the directions. Thanks for your question!
This is a great idea!
Thanks! Let me know if you try it. It was pretty amazing in today’s recipe for Bo La Lot. http://bit.ly/iQCwtM
This looks terrific! I’ve been wanting to get some fish sauce for my pantry, but when I see how much sodium is in it, I just can’t do it — so this looks like a great way to go for sodium reasons as well.
The “best” store-bought one I’ve found has about 700mg of sodium per ONE tablespoon. The worst? 1,350mg of sodium per tablespoon. I don’t know how they actually get that much sodium to stay in solution!
Any idea on the sodium content of the miso paste?
Thanks Andrew. For you, I got out my calculator. Miso is very salty, but it’s also really concentrated. For this recipe, using the miso paste I have, it comes out to 128 mg of sodium per tablespoon. Not bad in comparison.