This dipping sauce is very common in Vietnamese cooking where it’s used to flavor noodles, meat, spring rolls, rice or as a condiment at table. This time I used it to complement scallion pancakes. It’s sweet, sour, tart, salty, pungent and spicy. I love it to the point I can just drink it right out of the bowl!

Vietnamese dipping sauce

Vietnamese Dipping Sauce

Ingredients:
3 fresh garlic cloves
2 fresh jalapeño peppers, seeds and ribs removed then minced (preferably red)
3 tbsp sugar
Juice of 3 limes or lemons
½ cup rice vinegar
½ cup fish sauce
2 medium carrots, shredded
4 red radishes, shredded

Soak shredded carrots and radish in salt water for twenty minutes.

Place garlic, sugar, and jalapeño pepper into a mortar and pound it until it turns into a paste. Transfer to a bowl. Add rice vinegar, fish sauce and stir, assuring all the sugar is dissolved. Add lime juice. Rinse carrots and radish then add to sauce.