What is Fish Sauce?
Why is Third Coast Fish Sauce disrupting the now square-shaped wheel, not reinventing it but offering you a circular option again, making it the most dynamic, polyapplicable, and next-level ingredient in your pantry? Beyond the confines of villages, homes, and visionary restaurants, we are the pioneers in bringing true fish sauce to market in a responsible and ethical manner, delivering not only the perfect Umami experience but also an opportunity for collective betterment through a regenerative philosophy.
Co-founder of Third Coast Fish Sauce, Steven Peyer’s journey toward lovingly and clearly defining this elusive elixir caters to those who call it fish oil and the fish sauce connoisseur.
Firstly, FISH SAUCE is a broad term. For clarity, let’s cover the primary use methods with brief explanations.
Their Methods
The lowest grade of "fish sauce" typically combines anchovy paste (sourced from unspecified origins), salt, water, synthetic MSG (monosodium glutamate), and additional stabilizers. At this juncture, the actual method of creating fish sauce diverges. Through a natural process called autolysis, the entire fish, usually anchovies, along with their guts (essential for the bacteria and enzymes present), are layered with salt and fermented in various types of vats, tanks, or casks. This fermentation process can span from 6 to 12 months or even longer.
As it's a living process, every environmental factor influences the outcome. Commercially produced fish sauce in Asia often involves corruption, including human trafficking, illegal fishing practices, and lax regulations—a similar method in the Mediterranean results in Garum. While we refrain from assumptions, it's hard to imagine that the fisheries catching anchovies between Africa and Sicily are any better.
Third Coast Method
This brings us to the fourth method: our method. We utilize Lake Superior herring, which multiplies 95 times the allowable harvest yearly. They're hand-caught using non-plastic, specifically designed nets to avoid bycatch. We source from a single fisherman, Bill Bodin of Bodin Fisheries, trusting only one to adhere to our commitment to regenerative practices.
Our second ingredient is hand-harvested sea salt from Jacobsen Salt Company in Oregon, chosen for its ethical focus and quality.
We use cleaned fish, preferring the mineral-rich water and the resulting umami from a cleaner fermentation process. Subsequently, we age our jus in third-year Burgundy barrels with a proprietary blend of botanicals until the living process fully evolves to its potential. Each batch bears a vintage, tied to the spawning season, evolving with our environment.
So why do we adore fish sauce? And why do we go to such lengths to disrupt the conventional, self-proclaimed sustainable methods?
It all boils down to connection—the connection of flavors and humanity's connection to its environment. Umami serves as the flavor connector and a metaphor for our spiritual connection with the universe.
We hope you relish using our fish sauce as much as we delight in crafting it.