Dashi and fish sauce as low-FODMAP fish stock alternative

All, Hacks, Soups, stews, slow-cooker

Dashi Powder

Pesco-Vegan | Gluten-Free | Low-FODMAP | OMS-Friendly

It isn’t always possible to have fish or prawn stock on the ready – it not only takes a while to prepare, but can be hard or expensive to find the ingredients (fish heads, prawn shells and heads).

You can use dashi and fish sauce to create your own flavoured fish stock.

Ingredients

  • 1 litre of boiling water
  • 1-3 Tbsp dashi granules, to taste (you can make you own dashi at home, check label for GF)
  • 1 Tbsp fish sauce, to taste (most fish sauce is GF, but check labels)

Method

  1. Put the litre of water on the stove to boil, then turn the heat down or off. It only needs to be very hot so the flavours expand into the water.
  2. You need to taste this at every step, so take a small sip of the water after one tablespoon of dashi has been added. Your soup or other recipe may need subtle fish and salt flavours, or stronger – you are going to have to be the judge and jury here.
  3. Keep adding dashi or a few drops of fish sauce, then tasting.

A recipe that worked well with the low-FODMAP mediterranean fish soup recipe was 3 Tbsp dashi and 3 shakes out of the bottle of fish sauce.

Vegetable stock and fish sauce also works

It is often recommended to use vegetable stock and fish sauce to create fish stock, so this is another option, however if you are on a low-FODMAP diet, any commercial stock will contain onion and garlic, and is therefore out of the question.