Nước chấm vs. Nước mắm pha
This easy Vietnamese Nuoc Cham is the best!
Vietnamese Nước mắm pha (mixed fish sauce) is the most well known dipping sauce made with fish sauce. When people use the tern nuoc cham this is what they usually mean.
This easy Vietnamese Nuoc Cham is sweet, sour, savory, salty, and spicy. The most common way to make it is with water, fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, garlic and chilies. There are many variation of the sauce that are mostly regional and are usually just variations of the proportions of the listed ingredients. Although in the south they sometime use a coconut soda as a sweetener.
This easy Vietnamese Nuoc Cham recipe below is probably the most common and is probably from Northern Vietnam.
Try this great Vietnamese recipe
Nuoc Cham (Vietnamese Dipping Sauce)
This sauce is sweet, sour, savory, salty, and spicy. It is used as a dipping sauce for many dishes like spring rolls and is used a a dressing for noodle salads
- 1/2 cup hot water
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup fish sauce
- 1/4 cup lime juice
- 1 clove garlic minced
- 1-2 Thai bird eye chili minced (you can substitute jalapeno or serrano chilies minced to taste)
Heat water and sugar just to the point the sugar dissolves. Add the rest of the ingredients.