Tomato Salad Gets A Huge Burst Of Umami With This Unexpected Liquid Pairing

It is truly hard to beat a salad made from fresh tomatoes, especially if they're homegrown or from a farmers' market. With so many kinds of colorful heirloom tomatoes in all shapes and sizes and with varying flavor profiles, a summer tomato salad needs little more than a pinch of sea salt and perhaps a glug of a high-quality extra virgin olive oil. But if you want to amp up the tomatoes' wonderful umami profile, add a splash of fish sauce and toss them together. Combining the ingredients adds a one-two punch of savoriness to just about anything, even dishes in which using fish sauce may be unexpected.

Like fish sauce, tomatoes are loaded with glutamates — more specifically glutamic acid — which are the primary compounds that create the umami taste. This is similar to the effect created when adding a pinch of the once-maligned monosodium glutamate, better known as MSG, which has now been redeemed as safe and is being rediscovered through its absolute best uses in the kitchen. A splash of fish sauce in the dressing will add the umami you crave in a tomato salad, but not necessarily the fishy taste. 

It turns out tomatoes and fish sauce get along fabulously, as the pungent, salty liquid enhances all kinds of tomato-based dishes like your go-to tomato gazpacho recipe. And when it comes to a tomato salad, there are quite a few recipes for Vietnamese tomato salad out there that use fish sauce in the dressing, and include ingredients like cucumber, basil, and crispy fried shallots, for instance. But adding fish sauce does not necessarily give the salad a Southeast Asian twist. In fact, there are many types of fish sauces around the world, all packing that lovely umami flavor enhancement. 

You could add a splash of an Italian pantry staple, colatura di alici, which is an anchovy-based sauce produced along the Amalfi coast, to your next caprese for a different umami twist. Or make a batch of spicy Thai prik nam pla and drizzle over the tomatoes, top them with crunchy roasted peanuts and freshly chopped cilantro, mint, scallions, or basil. You can also include fruit like watermelon, peaches, or mango, which all work well with tomatoes and fish sauce, and will add a little sweetness to the salad.