Foodlingo: Sambai vinegar

Regularly, food editor at large Marjan Ippel introduces a new or revived term from the food scene here, the so-called foodlingo. No foodie can do without it. After all, ‘what (not) to speak’ is at least as important in food as ‘what (not) to eat’.

This time: Sambai vinegar

Sweet, sour, bitter, salty. A good dish is made up of all these flavours. Especially in Asia, with its yin and yang culture. Vinegar is therefore an indispensable condiment, both in and with food.

Malt vinegar

The natural product vinegar is traditionally made by fermenting, for example, fruit. As the juice ferments, alcohol is produced, which is converted into acetic acid with the help of oxygen and the acetobacter bacterium.

Trendy Dutch menus cannot do without Japanese sambai vinegar.

A well-known vinegar is wine vinegar. There are also vinegars made from grain, rice, apples and malt. But these days, a somewhat trendy Dutch menu cannot do without Japanese sambai vinegar, also known as sambai-zu.

Bonito broth

In Japan, vinegar is traditionally made from barley or rice, and nowadays also from sake. But what exactly is sambai? The question sounds simpler than the answer. It is a rice vinegar, that much is clear. But after that, things become less clear.

We traced sambai varieties made with bonito broth, with bonito being a tuna-like fish. We even found one based on oxtail broth.

Oxtail?

Japanese cuisine experts, however, claim that oxtail—if it ever played a role at all—is now definitely The Great Absentee. Instead, they describe sambai as a simple combination of rice vinegar, soy sauce and mirin (sweet rice wine). Optionally with an extra flavouring such as dashi—broth made with kombu (seaweed) and tuna. Hmm.

Sambai is a Japanese rice vinegar. That much is certain.

One more thing is certain: it is precisely that entire yin & yang sequence of sweet, sour, bitter and the saltiness of, for example, dashi that makes it so versatile.

That is why it works so well with dumplings and raw fish; over cooked vegetables; with spit-roasted celeriac from Joris Bijdendijk at RIJKS restaurant; and with scallops and raw turnip from Guillaume de Beer of Guts & Glory restaurant.

And that is why it should not be missing from any trendy menu.

Sambai vinegar is available, among other places, from Vanilla Venture.