Mrs. Pham Thi Oanh’s family has had 4 generations of making Sa Chau traditional fish sauce. Starting to follow her mother as a profession since the age of 12, up to now, Mrs. Oanh has been with this profession for nearly thirty years.
In the days bordering on the Lunar New Year, the Sa Chau fish sauce village (Giao Thuy, Nam Dinh) is much more crowded. Stepping into the village gate, we saw a fragrant smell of fish sauce, every house was packed with pots and dried in the garden outside, the whole family quickly packed fish sauce in bottles, packed in boxes to keep up with the Tet shipments. .Mrs. Pham Thi Oanh’s family has had 4 generations of making Sa Chau traditional fish sauce. Starting to follow her mother as a profession since the age of 12, up to now, Mrs. Oanh has been with this profession for nearly thirty years.On Tet, in order to promptly serve orders in the South and the North, grandparents must “mobilize” their children and grandchildren to help.Each year, Mrs. Oanh’s family consumes 25-30 tons of fish to produce 4000-5000l of fish sauce.Mrs. Oanh shared that making Sa Chau fish sauce was very meticulous. Fish sauce must be produced through many stages over 2 years to be finished.In order to keep the unique flavor of this traditional fish sauce, the ingredients are carefully selected. They use fresh fish, shrimps … from Quat Lam beach and salt source from Bach Long sea (Nam Dinh).“Fish crushed, chilled, spoiled … can not make delicious fish sauce. Every year we also have to choose the time when good fish are imported as ingredients, for example anchovies in winter, scad in spring. Do not choose the new breed of fish because the fish sauce will be bitter “, said Ms. Oanh.Not one of the largest fish sauce producers in Sa Chau at present, but Ms. Oanh’s family is the one trying to preserve the traditional fish sauce making.
According to Ms. Oanh, carry the fish team back with bamboo tools, do not use corrugated iron and plastic containers to prevent fish from becoming contaminated and unsanitary. The salted fish must be stored for over a year to reduce its acrid taste.
For every ton of fish marinated with eighteen kilograms of salt, let the fish ripen naturally. After 6 months, it will be passed through a bamboo basket lined with cloth, squeezed out pure fish sauce.
This sauce is not cooked over the fire but is spread out into thin sections of about a glove, on a sunny day, and in the evening for another 6 months. The sauce is the most repellent to rain water. Whenever it comes to rain it is spoiled, so the people who make the sauce have to wait day and night looking exhausted during this month.
“This job is happy and miserable because of the god. God loves it leisurely, but when it rains erratically, sometimes it is empty,” said Ms. Oanh.At the end of the sun-drying period, people continue to put fish sauce in black jars, buried in the ground for at least a year to meet the taste of heaven and earth.
The process of making fish sauce does not use chemicals, does not shorten the drying time and the time to devour. Sa Chau fish sauce type one must be compared like honey, clear as amber, characteristic aroma, dipping a drop on the tip of the tongue has been sweet from the throat tingling all over.
That is why, although there are countless different types of fish sauce for consumers to choose from, “gourmet” still choose Sa Chau sauce in a Tet tray. “This job is hard all year round, a batch of fish sauce takes 2 years to sell, but also helps the family have a stable income. Every year, my family earns more than 100 million VND”, said Ms. Oanh.
The life of the fish sauce village is difficult, people are concerned about the profession of making fish sauce day and night. But that has helped to keep the value of this traditional fish sauce village.Currently, Sa Chau (Giao Thuy, Nam Dinh) has about 30 households producing and processing fish sauce, of which 10 are large-scale producers. Every year, Sa Chau commune consumes about 440,000 liters of fish sauce to all provinces across the country.The fish sauce production and processing households here are granted food safety certificates by the Sub-Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Nam Dinh province.
