As how popular wasabi is to Japanese, ketchup is to French and plum sauce to Chinese, when people mention Vietnamese dishes, fish sauce is the top one bear in their minds. It has an indispensable role for much Vietnamese cuisine since it can be use as an ingredient for cooking or an element to make dipping sauce.

Vietnamese dipping fish sauce is a mixture made from fish sauce, lime juice, minced garlic, chilies, sugar and water (or coconut juice). As fish sauce is salty, lime juice is sour, garlic and chilies are spicy and coconut juice and sugar are sweet, this dipping sauce symbolizes for a life which has bitterness, pungency, gladness and happiness. While we cannot predict what taste of our lives is, the taste of this sauce is various depending on personal preference.

The taste of the dipping fish sauce is different by each region. While Northern Vietnamese people prefer adding broth cooked by pork and penaeid shrimp, people in the central part is in favor with the salty taste by adding less water. Moreover, people from the South choose coconut juice instead of water.
Next, I will show you how to make Vietnamese dipping fish sauce: firstly, dissolve the sugar and water is the prior step. Next, add lime juice or vinegar to the mixture and followed are minced garlic and chilies. Finally, fish sauce is poured into the mixture to complete a delicious and healthy dipping sauce.

Now, you have your own Vietnamese dipping fish sauce! Well done!!!