The Italian Dish That Benefits From A Few Dashes Of Fish Sauce

Italian cooking certainly isn't the first cuisine that comes to mind when you think of fish sauce. For the worldly cooks and eaters out there, your first thought is probably of Thai and Vietnamese fish sauces. It is a common ingredient in both of those cuisines, but this unique, umami-packed condiment has a place in cuisines from all over the world, even if you don't realize it yet — and that includes your favorite bolognese sauce.

That's right, one of the many creative uses for fish sauce is adding a splash to your spaghetti bolognese. Now, when you first crack the bottle open, fish sauce can smell powerful, depending on the brand you buy, and it might seem like an odd pairing for bolognese. But when diluted into a whole pot of sauce, that fishy smell disappears, and the umami infusion remains.

You see, fish sauces, which are made by fermenting small oily fish, are naturally high in glutamates, the key to umami flavor. With a bolognese sauce, umami is already one of the main targets, and is a large part of why we find it such a satisfyingly savory sauce. Tomatoes are high in glutamates, as are the meats you put in the sauce, like pork and beef. Together, these already give a solid umami base, but mixing in a tablespoon or two of fish sauce will really supercharge that flavor.

Bolognese sauce isn't the only Italian dish that can benefit from a dash or two of fish sauce, either. You might see it listed as a secret ingredient in a savory lasagna recipe, or just about anywhere else you find tomatoes. The recipes that it works well in don't need to be cooked, either. A little fish sauce will upgrade a tomato salad just like it does a tomato sauce, adding salty, savory layers of flavor. And while it isn't quite the same, Giada De Laurentiis's cucumber salad uses a fishy ingredient called colatura di alici, which is not so different from the fish sauce in your pantry.

Colatura di alici is an anchovy-based sauce from Italy that is very similar to the sauces popular in Southeast Asian cuisines. You might not hear too much about fish sauce in modern Italian cuisine, but it actually has a long history in the region. Garum is a sauce that originated in ancient Rome and was made through the same salty, fishy fermentation that produces the versions that you see at the Asian market today. So, while the idea of adding fish sauce to your Italian recipes might have sounded outlandish at the beginning of this article, it has actually been an ingredient in the region for millennia. So long as you are careful not to overdo it, fish sauce can give an umami boost to all sorts of Italian dishes.