Ingredient: Worcestershire sauce

Worcestershire is a weird-to-look-at ingredient with an incredible taste and is incredibly hard to pronounce. For all the Worcestershire sauce’s fans and amateurs: you might not want to hear this, but your special sauce is made with old fish juice. You read it right; it contains fish juice. There’s a lot of unbelievable things going on in that bottle of Worcestershire sauce you have in your pantry. You’ll be thrilled to learn that its strong, intense, umami flavor comes from various, weird to put together in a single bottle, ingredients: onions, fermented anchovies, garlic, vinegar, molasses, tamarind paste, sugar, salt, and a seasoning mixture that can include anything and everything, from cloves to mustard seed. For more than a year, Worcestershire sauce is made by fermenting anchovies in vinegar; then, our picked fish purée is mixed with all the intense ingredients listed above. Yum. This sauce is usually used to enhance all sorts of food, from oysters to deviled eggs. Recently, it has become a favorite and a common topping for hamburgers and dipping sauce for different steaks. It’s also an essential ingredient in Bloody Mary cocktail. Contrary to popular belief, “Worcestershire” is not pronounced “wershersterersher.” It’s pronounced “woo-stuh-sher.” Like many British places (like Gloucester and Leicester), the “-cester” isn’t said like it’s spelled. However, if you were to pronounce it wrong, don’t sweat it; you are certainly not alone. You can use Worcestershire to enhance all sorts of foods, from oysters to deviled eggs. In recent years, it has become a popular topping for burgers and dipping sauce for steak. It’s also an essential ingredient in a Bloody Mary.