Sawaddee ka! 🙏🏼
With the holidays approaching, perhaps you are thinking about treating yourself or a loved one to an expensive bottle of premium fish sauce….wait…did you say no? Oh sorry, I guess that’s just me 😂.
Gift ideas aside, I often get asked: Do expensive versions of Thai ingredients make a difference in the final dish?
I have done a review of premium VS cheap oyster sauce previously, and before that I did a taste test of common fish sauces on the market at various price points.
But in the past few years, a new wave of “first press” fish sauces have started to make a splash, some with shockingly high price tags. And of course I have to wonder, are these expensive fish sauces worth the money?
So in the latest video I set out to answer this question by tasting 4 bottles of “first press” fish sauces with prices ranging from $9 to $30 US per 300 ml. I conducted 3 different tests: straight up, used raw in a condiment, and cooked in a stir fry. Some of the results really surprised me!
If you prefer reading to watching, you can also read all about it in the blog post.
But what does “first press” fish sauce even mean? Well, it is a bit of a long answer that involves explaining how fish sauce is made, and I cover all of this in the video and blog post. But to be overly simplistic, first press fish sauce has no added water, which means it is the richest, most concentrated, and more umami.
I hope you enjoy this video, it was super fun to shoot. And if you’re wondering, my kidneys are doing fine after the taste test. It wasn’t THAT much more sodium than a typical indulgent meal. 😂