Trying to replace fish sauce with soy sauce, ponzu, hoisin sauce or anything else will result in something that is not nước chấm. There is no good substitute for fish sauce. It is strong smelling straight out of the bottle but mellows when mixed with other ingredients. Fish sauce has a multi-layered taste that is very salty on the surface but has a certain sweet-savory quality underneath. Nước Chấm is a balance of salty, sour, sweet and a little bit of spice. You just learned that you would use the unmixed fish sauce to season a bowl of pho but would use the mixed fish sauce to pour over a noodle bowl with chargrilled chicken. In my family growing up, we often referred to both forms of fish sauce as nước mắm and we figured out what was being referenced by context. In Vietnamese, we generally refer to the bottled concentrate as nước mắm (pronounced like “nook mum”) and the prepared sauce as nước chấm (pronounced like “nook djum”) or nước mắm pha which translates to “mixed fish sauce”.
And to confuse things further the prepared sauce is often called “dipping sauce” even when the sauce is poured over something (such as for these grilled pork & rice vermicelli noodles). The name, fish sauce, can be confusing because it is used for both the concentrated sauce in the bottles as well as the prepared sauce that uses the bottled concentrate as an ingredient. I am going to explain the ingredients, clarify some of the terminology, and tell you how the sauce can be used. If you have ever wondered what the magical sauce is that gets poured over noodle bowls at your favorite Vietnamese restaurant, this blog post is for you.
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