Asian food is our favourite type of food, and many recipes call for fish sauce. After many years skipping this ingredient when following recipes, adding more salt or more soy sauce, we thought it was time to develop a proper Vegan Fish Sauce.
This plant-based alternative is made simply with four ingredients: Dried shiitake Mushrooms, kombu, soy sauce and miso paste.
Dried Shiitake Mushrooms. You can find dried shiitake in any Asian supermarket. They sell them in medium or big size bags. These mushrooms give the Vegan Fish Sauce a lovely deep earthy flavour.
Kombu dried seaweed. Seaweed is the best way to get the ocean flavour into your sauce. Kombu is our favourite seaweed and is the one we use for ramen and fish sauce. You can use any seaweed that you already have at home.
Soy sauce. Fish sauce needs to be salty, and soy sauce is our way to bring the saltiness into the sauce.
Miso paste. We use white miso for our Vegan Fish Sauce. Apart from being healthy and amazingly good for your gut, it tastes delicious and will bring an umami flavour to the sauce.

What to cook with Vegan Fish Sauce?
Many Thai and Vietnamese dishes contain fish sauce and you will be able to use it in a lot of Asian dishes. Check some of our recipes cooked with Vegan Fish Sauce:
Vegan Fish Sauce
Ingredients
- ½ cup of water
- 4 dried shiitake mushrooms
- 10 g kombu
- 1 teaspoon miso paste
- 2 tablespoon soy sauce
Instructions
- In a small pan, heat the water and add the shiitake mushrooms and kombu.
- Bring the water to boil and reduce the heat. Leave simmering for around 15 minutes.
- Remove the shiitake and kombu, pour the broth into a jar and add the soy sauce and miso paste.
- Mix until all the ingredients are completely combined. The sauce is ready to use in your favourite dishes or leave to cool completely before puting it in the fridge.

M. Liverant says
Which type of miso to use in the recipe?
I know there's white miso, dark miso, etc.
Laura says
White miso! ?
scott-t says
Any idea how long this will last in the fridge?
Laura says
Hi Scott, we normally keep it in the fridge for at least two weeks and it stays in perfect conditions. You can probably save it for longer, as the miso and soy sauce are really high in salt.