Comment by bsimpson
5 hours ago
The talk of glutamic acid made me wonder if fish sauce is related to MSG. Gemini confirms MSG is just salt and glutamic acid, which is to say fish sauce is naturally derived MSG.
Fun story:
I was riding a motorcycle across Vietnam a few years ago. Made some friends on an excursion, and we all went to dinner together. The restaurant was a little outdoor kitchen and some picnic benches in front of an apartment building.
When we arrived, the mom was taking orders. She spoke enough English to serve travelers. One of my new friends ordered a sandwich, and fell in love with the sauce it came with. I offered to find out what was in it, but the mom had gone upstairs. Dad didn't speak a word of English.
We managed to ask him about the sauce, and he beckoned us to follow him behind the counter. He pointed at a mason jar of white powder: sugar. He pointed at another: salt. He pointed at a third: salt … wait, we already did salt…
It was MSG. This chef in a rural mountain town had just a handful of ingredients in his kitchen, and one was MSG.
As a 90s kid who grew up hearing of MSG is the same breath as processed foods, sulfites, and other health boogymen, it was wild to encounter it as just another ingredient in someone's pantry.
The MSG health panic was racism against Chinese people and their restaurants, nothing to do with health. So many foods and sauces contain glutamic acid yet nobody is complaining about their health being impacted when they eat them: Meat, Tomatoes, Mushrooms, Cheese, Worcestershire Sauce, Marmite, Soy Sauce, Fish Sauce, and Oyster Sauce to name a few.
When I make stews I'll often make a concoction of tomato paste, soy sauce, fish sauce and Worcestershire sauce to massively boost the meatiness of the stew without making it taste like any of those ingredients in particular.
The joke about KFC's "11 secret herbs and spices" is that they are
• Salt
• Pepper
• MSG
You can find msg in your local grocery store, usually under the Accent brand.
I've seen two pound jars of it in Costco.
>I've seen two pound jars of it in Costco.
I took pictures of empty 100 lb (45 kg) MSG containers in the trash outside Bao restaurant on St Marks in NYC
I know that now, but I'd only heard the hysteria around it as a kid.