Sa Chau village, which is located in Giao Chau commune of Nam Dinh province, has long been famous for its traditional fish sauce.
The fish sauce here is a completely handmade product. The production process is extremely meticulous.
The main ingredients to make the fish sauce are some kind of local fish and shrimps, all must be fresh, not frozen or decomposing.
Local people divide a year into two seasons: dry and rainy seasons. They make the fish sauce in the dry season, around the middle of the year, while fish source products are sold in the first or last months of the year when it rains a lot.
Salt is also carefully selected. People here usually buy salt from the end of April to May, when it is dry. Salt must be kept in storage for more than a year to get rid of its acrid taste before using.
For every 10 kg of fish, people will use from 1.2 to 1.3 kg of salt to marinate. Next, the marinated fish will be left fermented for 6 months. At the end of this time, the fermented fished mixture is poured into a bamboo basket covered with rudimentary cloth to extract fish sauce.
The extracted fish sauce is kept in crockery bowls and dried under the sun until white salt appears on the surface.
The secret to making the perfect Sa Chau fish sauce is to expose it under the sun during the day and the dew at night “to get the full flavor of heaven and earth”. Because the Sa Chau fish sauce is not allowed to be contaminated with rain water, workers must carefully cover crockery bowls to protect the fish sauce in them on rainy days.
After 6 months of drying, the fish sauce will be poured into jars and buried in the ground for 1 year. After that, the fish sauce is considered ready to use. The full flavor of earth and sky will give Sa Chau fish sauce a unique taste that cannot be obtained with fish sauce from other places.
Sa Chau fish sauce is very popular and is distributed to all provinces in the country, from the northern mountainous provinces such as Dien Bien, and Son La to the southern provinces and cities such as Ho Chi Minh City, and Tay Ninh./.
