Cheep Fast And Easy Garum Fish Sauce
From elgourmand 14 years ago
- 60 minutes to make
- Serves 1000
This is not my own recipe. Kinda hard to claim a recipe that may well be hundreds of years old. This is also not the traditional ancient Roman (not Italian but Roman) Garum; I’ll post that later. I found fish sauce here and there and changed it a bit, mostly, by leaving out most of the spices. Read more Asian fish sauce has way too many spices in it for some dishes so I like a basic fish sauce and I add the necessary spices when preparing the actual dish. This WILL stink like fish while you’re making it but the resulting sauce is mild and very tasty when used in recipes, and will keep indefinitely in the refrigerator. It is easy to make in modern kitchens. Do not be put off by the revolting mess in the cooking pot; the end result will be a clear, amber-colored liquid with an intriguing (but not overly fishy) smell and taste See less
Ingredients
- • 500 gram (1 pound) small fish (smelt, sprat, anchovy, sardine), whole; as in everything. You may have trouble getting fish with the guts in but do if you can. shopping list
- • 375 gram (1 1/2 cup) canning or sea salt, table salt will make your sauce cloudy. shopping list
- • 1 Tbsp. oregano shopping list
- • water to cover plus 2”. shopping list
How to make it
- 1. Rinse the fish under running water, leave them intact (do not remove heads, innards or whatever).
- 2. Put fish, salt and oregano in a cooking pot, add enough water to cover the fish with one or two inches of liquid on top.
- 3. Bring to the boil, let boil for at least thirty minutes until See Photo
- the fish are cooked to a pulp. Crush the fish even more with a wooden spoon; continue boiling until the liquid starts to thicken.
- 4. Now start straining. First use a coarse strainer or colander to remove all the larger bits and pieces, your cats will love these. Then strain the liquid several times through a kitchen cloth until the liquid is clear. Depending on the fish you use, and how long everything has boiled, you'll end up with a pale yellow to deep amber colored liquid.
- 5. Let it cool completely, and keep it in a glass jar in the refrigerator. It may be that salt crystals will collect at the bottom of the jar; not to worry.
- Because of the high content of salt, this sauce will keep for years. You'll need but a tea- or tablespoon full at the time. Take care that you use a completely clean spoon for taking garum out of the jar.
Cook the fish
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The Rating
Reviewed by 6 people-
Great Post! ! Filed and saved! Thank you for sharing!
J and M
quaziefly
in ALL POINTS loved it
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So, this is how it's made..."Guts and all"...Such an integral part of Thai cooking to....So strong, so pungent....Thai is what i had tonight... I don't think i needed to know the Deep Down Truth here... I'll never look at my bottle of fish sauce the ...more
turtle66
in Sacramento loved it
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Thanks for this, can the fish be frozen? The grocery has whole frozen smelt. Otherwise everything is pretty gutless. (including my partner)
fishtrippin
in Estelline loved it
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