This has a specific name called “nước mắm chua ngọt”.  I’m beginning to see many people who doesn’t understand the Vietnamese language get confused as some refers it to as “nước chấm” which just literally means a general term for “dipping sauce”.  There are so many Vietnamese dipping sauces; therefore, it’s important to know the specific name of the sauce a person is looking for.

I will be using this Vietnamese sweet and sour fish sauce as part of my cooking ingredient in future posts.  Here is the formula to mix this sauce.  My “1 part” is a cup.  You can use a gallon size container to mix the sauce as long you stick to the proportions indicated.  Knowing this has helped me make the sauce with a consistent taste most of the time because sometimes the batch of fish sauce bottles made would taste a little more saltier than the previous bottle used. But the difference isn’t much when I stick to the same Viet Huong brand for the past 30+ years.

Ingredients:

• 1 part granulated sugar
• 1 part Viet Huong fish sauce
• 2+ part hot boiling water
• 1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
• fresh minced garlic
• Huy Phong’s Sriracha or my homemade chili paste*

Direction:

Mix all the ingredients together. Let cool. Keep refrigerated once the sauce cools down.

Note: Parents of little foodies, I normally prepare half a gallon of this Vietnamese sweet and sour fish sauce and have it in the fridge handy, but I don’t put the chili paste in the sauce, just for individual servings.