Traditional Vietnamese Dipping Sauce is Good on Everything from Spring Rolls to Omelets

One of the things that gets us most excited about living in Sacramento is the cultural diversity. With diversity, comes a wide range of food experiences. We live close to an area of town called 'Little Saigon', that is a two mile corridor that is a cultural and culinary center of the Vietnamese community. There are more restaurants there than you could ever try. If you do want to try some local places, Eater has created a thorough list of places to explore. I love Vietnamese food. It's considered one of the healthiest cuisines. It is largely based on fresh vegetables, with meat as an accent, and it's all about the sauces. But, when was the last time you attempted making Vietnamese food at home? It’s a little intimidating, right?

 Viet Kieu Sauce Co. wanted to make cooking Vietnamese food at home easier and more accessible for the home cook. Their sauces are all made from fresh, locally sourced ingredients, and they taste like it. They make three sauces and they all explode with flavor. No overwhelming vinegar taste here. The Vietnamese Dipping Sauce, featured in our October Farm to Fork in a Box is perfectly balanced with notes of lime, garlic and ginger and is slightly sweet. If you have ever ordered the vermicelli dish at a Vietnamese restaurant, this is the same type of sauce served with that dish. It is perfect for fresh rolls and spring rolls, putting on fried rice, using as a marinade, in salad dressing or even in eggs.

The Troung family greatly missed their mother’s cooking after she passed, so Enve and his brothers started replicating her dishes, and realized it’s all about the sauces. They perfected their recipes and brought them to market in 2006 in the hopes that more people would cook Vietnamese food at home. Viet Kieu translates to ‘Vietnamese living overseas’. The name of the company is both an homage to their people still in Vietnam but also to the over 2 million Vietnamese people living in the United States, many of whom fled a brutal communist regime, or their parents did. The woman on the bottle is their mother. Currently the business is mostly managed by Enve and his wife Mary. 

We visited Enve and Mary in their commercial kitchen in Rancho Cordova, California. Mary showed us how to make fresh rolls. We love fresh rolls and they are actually super easy to make. You can make them with the traditional ingredients, or make up your own. Watch the videos below for a tutorial on how to make these. Enve showed us how to use the dipping sauce in an omelet, something I never would have thought of, but was so good I am adding that to my morning breakfast go to’s. It just adds a little subtle flavor to make the dish more interesting. Watch the video to see Enve make an omelet using the dipping sauce.

I really love this sauce, really all of their sauces. They are vibrant tasting and super versatile. Get dipping and tell me how you are using your sauce, I would love to hear. 

Enjoy!

Meet Enve and Mary Truong of Viêt Kiêu Sauce Co.

How to Make Fresh Spring Shrimp Rolls

Omelet with Vietnamese Dipping Sauce