Fish Sauce
Fishing villages lining the southern coast of Vietnam produce several hundred million liters of fish sauce annually, for domestic consumption and export. Children venture out to the Pacific in thung chai, bamboo baskets, from which they cast their nets and catch as many as a hundred varieties of fish. The fish are fermented in vats with salt for more than a year then drained, producing a liquid that becomes the briny, pungent sauce that's a staple of Vietnamese cuisine.

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