canhchuacahu

Western style sour soup in Vietnam. A popular dish and seems to appear quite a lot on the menu in every family. If you want to season a delicious pot of sour soup, you must be "bold" to use spices, if you are "shy" the soup will always be bland and bland.

1. Sour soup must be sour
2. Sour soup must use SUGAR, the sugar in the sour soup will not taste like I imagined having to put sugar in the vegetable soup, because the ingredients and accompanying spices of the sour soup will make the taste sweet. Its not like the rumor "going to the West to eat sweet soup like eating tea" 😅.
   And here, ladies, watch me "strongly" season the fish soup pot below. If you know how to cook and have cooked it well, please ignore it for me, I suggest that for those of you who like to eat this soup but can't cook it, there is the most specific dose illustration, from which it can be "changed according to your needs." personal taste” many other types of sour soup of the West.
   Sour spices are extremely rich: ripe tamarind, raw tamarind, batch rice, crocodile, Giang leaves, sour leaves, young tamarind leaves, lemon, vinegar, kumquat, star fruit... but because of the above sour spices, they also change. Change the amount of other seasoning to go with it due to the different sour taste. In the soup pot below, I will use tamarind juice because it is available everywhere, common and has the least difference in taste.
   ️Ingredients: for 2 liters of water (4 people to eat)

• Howling fish (you can use fish similar to pineapple fish, cotton fish, salmon head...will be more delicious than snakehead fish because it has a certain amount of fat) - I cooked 3 slices of this fish for nearly 700g
• 2 mint sprigs
• 2 tomatoes
• 6-8 okra balls (too much broth will become soup), note a little thick cut.
• 50g bean sprouts
• 1/8 pineapple
• Herbs (coriander and braised vegetables)
  ️ SPICES: I would like to leave the brand name so that everyone can grasp the taste, if the brand is different, the saltiness will be different, then change the amount of seasoning.
• 8g salt (I use finely dried sea salt) - more than 1/2 tbsp
• 30g sugar - 1 tablespoon full
• 15ml delicious fish sauce (I use Nam Ngu II) - 2 tbsp
• 1 small ripe tamarind
• 1 small chili (it's okay if you don't have it)
  The amount of this seasoning will also adjust if the amount of ingredients is more or less, the sweetness of the pineapple also has a little effect.
  ✳️PROCESSING:
• Wash the fish with salt and vinegar, then bring the pot of water to a boil, drop in 1 teaspoon of salt when it boils, let the fish in and blanch for 2 minutes so that the fish is not fishy, ​​the soup will be much better, then take it out to Drain the marinade with a little fish sauce (additional fish sauce, not the above) to infuse for 15 minutes (fish in soup should be cut a bit thick when cooking to avoid being crushed, cooked fish meat is less "invaded" by the broth) inside, it will be sweeter)
• Turn on the stove, add a little oil enough to fry a little garlic until golden, purple onion, fragrant and 2 tomatoes have been cut into stir-fry -> add 2 liters of water and bring to a boil. Add all the above spices at once. The broth at this time will be very sour if you taste it 😂
• Put the fish in and cook on medium heat, about 60% of the fish is cooked, then add mint (along the net) first, then okra + 1/2 of the remaining tomato, when all are cooked, add the price. and herbs in, the water boils, then turn off the stove to complete the soup.
  Pour the salted fish sauce on a plate, cut the chili in, take the fish out and put it on a plate and enjoy it hot with rice. Oh, just need a pot of fish soup, no need to add any side dishes, the rice cooker will fly very quickly.
  Note:

• The fish also does not need to be fried to shape at all, which will make the soup less greasy because of the fat and the pieces of fish are not originally sweet because they have been fried in oil.
  *Sour soup is especially suitable for fried garlic, some other cooking methods can add lemongrass (sour style like Thai hot pot), sometimes if you want a simple sour soup that doesn't contain fat, you may not need the garlic frying step. this.
  *The broth of the pot of fish and sour soup is as above, if you cook sour shrimp soup, you need to reduce the sugar and reduce the sourness.
  *When adding salt to the pot of sour soup, be careful because salt also pushes the sour taste of the soup up a bit (it sounds backwards but it's true)
  *If the soup pot is cooked with green vegetables (water spinach, coriander ...) then the sour seasoning is almost done, put it in to keep the green color of the vegetables in the soup from turning yellow.
  That is my experience after many years of cooking soup. Thank you for reading my post. Wish you a lot of health.