The Underrated Fish Sauce Alternative Every Cook Should Know

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Fish sauce is a popular condiment in Asian cooking, bringing an umami-rich boost to all kinds of marinades and sauces. You can find popular brands like Red Boat fish sauce at grocery stores in the Asian food section or online. Still, it might not be a common pantry staple for you. So if you're looking for a fish sauce alternative, clam juice is the underrated substitute that every cook should know.

A popular addition to Canada's Caesar cocktail and, of course, clam chowder, clam juice is made from the residual liquid leftover from steaming clams in saltwater. It has a briny, mildly sweet, and fishy flavor that enhances similar flavors in fish dishes. Many compare its production and flavor to a saltier fish stock or dashi, making it especially useful as an addition to stews and soups. In contrast, fish sauce is a fermented product, offering layers of oceanic and funky umami along with an intense saltiness. It's much more robust than clam juice, but the two can be used interchangeably if you adjust ratios.

Where a marinade or stir fry sauce may only need a teaspoon of fish sauce to instill a deep umami savoriness, you might want to double or triple the amount of clam juice's more delicate and mild flavor to achieve the same results. The key to the swap is intermittent taste tests; you can start with a one-to-one swap, increasing by half a teaspoon until you've reached the desired flavor profile of the recipe in question.

We've compiled a long list of uses for fish sauce outside of the typical marinades and stir-fry sauces. And for many of these uses, a clam juice substitute works just as well. Since you're adding more liquid with clam juice because you might need a larger proportion than fish sauce, clam juice will work especially well in soups, stews, and sauces.

You can add a tablespoon or two to chicken noodle soup or beef stew. It'd also work well to bring out the umami in a bolognese sauce. If you need the sauce to be thicker, you can always simmer a sauce for a bit longer to reduce the liquid and further concentrate the umami flavors of the clam juice. Just as fish sauce is a substitute for oyster sauce, clam juice's sweeter undertones would be an even better oyster sauce substitute to use in this recipe for chicken Yakisoba.

Clam juice would bring a subtle savoriness to a compound butter. This clam juice-infused compound butter would be the ultimate upgrade to simple buttered noodles. If you want to add that funky layer that clam juice lacks, you can always stir a dash of soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, or even a bit of miso paste into the clam juice before using it as a fish sauce substitute.