Amazing Vietnamese Dipping Sauce Recipe

Amazing Vietnamese Dipping Sauce Recipe
4.5/5 - (19 votes)

Vietnamese Dipping Sauce (Nước Mắm Chua Ngọt) is a must have in many popular Vietnamese dishes like Spring Rolls, Bánh Xèo, Crispy Skin Catfish, etc. 

In fact, the dipping sauce is a key component that makes or breaks your dish. That’s why a good dipping sauce recipe is so important.

The recipe that I’m going to show you is a precision recipe that I have tested over a long period of time. It is guaranteed to give you consistency in taste no matter how many times you make it.

To me, the sweet, sour, and saltiness balance is perfect, but you can always adjust to your liking.

You can even scale it up to make a bigger batch and the taste is still the same, just make sure you keep the correct ratio; also, remember to consider the adjustments that you’ve made if you changed the original recipe.

For storage, fridge this in a tightly sealed container; it can last up to 2 months and the color will still look fresh.

Let’s make it right now!

You can also watch the video for details on Vietnamese Dipping Sauce below:

Serving

1.5 QT (1.4 L)

Ingredients - Vietnamese Dipping Sauce

  • 2 cups (473 ml) fish sauce + another 3 tbsp (44 ml)
  • 2 cups (473 ml) sugar
  • 2 cups (473 ml) warm water 
  • 4 large limes (can substitute with lemon)
  • 20 cloves garlic
  • 5 chili peppers (can have more or less depends on your tolerance)

Kitchenware

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Directions

1. Peel the limes. Thoroughly remove the skin leaving the meat and juice.

2. Crushed the garlic cloves and remove the skin.

3. Remove the stems from chili peppers.

Viet Dipping Sauce - ingredients

4. Now, we grind the chilies. TIP: Add in a couple tbsp of the sugar to allow the food processor better surface areas to grind them. 

5. Add the the garlic to the mix and continue grinding until the garlic is finely chopped. 

6. Remove the content from the food processor into a bowl.

Viet Dipping Sauce - grinding chilies
Viet Dipping Sauce - grinding chilies and sugar
Viet Dipping Sauce - placing mix into bowl

7.  Next, we add the lime meat (don’t add the juice as it might leak). Grind quickly. We don’t want to keep it in too long as it might chop it too finely.

8. Add the lime juice and the lime bits from the processor to the bowl. 

9. Add all the sugar to the bowl and 1 cup (237 ml) of hot water. Mix well.

10. Once the sugar had dissolved, add 1 more cup (237 ml) of water.

Viet Dipping Sauce - adding hot water

11. Now, we add 2 cups (473 ml) of fish sauce.

12. Finally, the trick to remember here is we top it off with another 3 tbsp (44 ml) of fish sauce. This is because we want the ratio of the fish sauce to be a bit higher than the sugar and water. Mix well.

Viet Dipping Sauce - adding fish sauce
Viet Dipping Sauce - done mixing

13. Now, we store it in a tightly sealed container and it can last up to 2 months in the fridge.

And that’s it! Quite simple right?

A last tip I want to give you is, when you transfer the sauce, make sure to always use a clean spoon. This will make it last very long.

I hope you like this recipe.

Please let me know if you have any question or feedback. Always keep that cooking passion strong!

If you enjoyed this recipe, please check out my other recipes here:

Egg Rolls - Image
Crispy Vietnamese Egg Rolls
Crawfish - feature image
Whole Shabang Crawfish


4 thoughts on “Amazing Vietnamese Dipping Sauce Recipe”

  • Chị Kathy ơi lần sau chị làm nước mắm nữa chị có thể đong dùm em bao nhiêu ml hay bao nhiêu cup chanh nha chị. Tại em không biết nêm nếm sao cho vừa miệng mà chanh thì có trái lớn trái nhỏ đó chị. Cám ơn chị nhiều lắm!

  • Hello chi, I can’t wait to make this as I’ve been looking for a good all purpose mam recipe that isn’t too sweet. Question if I only have say 2 limes can I use vinegar mixed in? Sometimes limes are hard to find here depending in the season and it can be $1 a lime. A suggestion I would like to make is in your ingredients you list 2 cups of fish sauce but you add that you need 3 tablespoons to top off at end. It might be a good idea to add that just because sometimes people in a rush and firget to read the directions each time as theynthink thyenknow it once it’s made the first time. Your website is looking super amazing chi, please tell Anh Kevin he did a terrific and thorough job..very easy on the eyes and user friendly ❤️👍🏼👏🏻Xoxoxox em Kaytie

    • Hi em, yes you can use vinegar. It might taste a little different, but I think it should be okay if you don’t have enough lime. Thank you for pointing out the ingredient issues. This has already been fixed. I’ll also let anh Kevin know. Have a great day em! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

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