Fish Sauce Without the Fish

/ / Food & Flavor

Vegan chefs are creating animal-free fish sauce, using ingredients like seaweed, mushrooms, pineapple, soybeans, black beans and tofu for “the obvious oomph of umami.” A recent piece on Vice.com reported that many of these chefs were reluctant to use anything other than traditional fish-based ingredients. But they’ve found that these new fish sauces are especially popular with younger customers, many of whom are vegan or reducing the amount of meat-based products in their diets.

“Across the animal-free spectrum, home cooks and chefs have gotten creative as they deconstruct and recreate the magic of fermented fish,” continues the article. 

Raj Abat, chef at New York’s plant-based Filipino restaurant Saramsan, was initially skeptical that a vegan fish sauce could work, but he found that fermentation was the transformative element. He said: “My first thought was: It has to look dark and black, and it has to smell really, really bad. Fermentation does that. It makes everything smell really funky, but when you taste it, it’s so delicious.”

Read more (Vice)