David Chang's Secret Ingredient For Spaghetti Is A Little Fishy
Few feelings top the joy you experience upon realizing that your waiter is bringing over your food. But when you've ordered spaghetti, sometimes the thing that brings the most excitement is what comes after you've been served your plate of food.
"Would you like any cheese?" your waiter asks, though you both know the question is merely a formality. "Say when," they add as they start grating a mountain of parmesan cheese over the noodles. The shredded fromage is by far the most popular spaghetti additive, if for no other reason than making our grub even more aesthetically pleasing. However, when celebrity chef David Chang makes a pot of noodles and red sauce, he reaches for another ingredient to kick it up a notch.
"Yeah, I put fish sauce in my spaghetti ... and it's f**king delicious," the Momofuku founder revealed in an Instagram post from 2019. For those who have never experimented with the condiment, it is a briny liquid commonly used in Asian cuisine that is made from fermented fish. In the caption of his post, Chang described it as a "different kind of natural msg," and even advised his followers to "skip the parm" in favor of the salty liquid. "Spread the gospel," he urged, though it appears that many people had already hopped on board the fish sauce-in-spaghetti train.
David Chang's spaghetti sauce additive isn't as odd as it may seem
Similar to parmesan, fish sauce adds a rich, umami flavor to spaghetti sauce thanks to the high level of glutamates in it. Thanks to David Chang's 2019 Instagram post, several foodies were convinced to try adding fish sauce to their spaghetti it turned out that there were also a considerable number of people already akin to the pasta hack.
"I've always put in my spaghetti! Glad a renowned chef agrees and approves," one person wrote. "My mom has been putting fish sauce in our spaghetti since day 1 in America," another shared. And despite Chang saying that his spaghetti additive would make his nonna roll over in her grave, a third person said that an Italian was actually the one to put them on to the flavor-boosting hack.
As it turns out, Italians have their own version of fish sauce called colatura di alici. The ancient anchovy sauce takes three years to make and can be used similarly to how Chang used his fish sauce to boost the flavor of a classic red sauce, though some Italian cooks will simply incorporate chopped-up anchovies instead. Additionally, it is used in a dish called spaghetti alla colatura, which features spaghetti noodles tossed in a sauce made from garlic, olive oil, parsley, and colatura di alici.