Ancient Roman Garum Revisited

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I love how half of the stuff garum was alleged to treat were all things that you could do with just plain salt because it killed bacteria.

This is one of your best episodes

I love how fermentation is A) not dangerous (even beneficial) and B) Often delicious despite the fact it's rotten food. Wild.

"Do not make this" Brother this is absolutely going to be my next summer project, food poisoning be damned

I'm so happy for you. I remember the first Garum video, where you were not able to make the long version because of the old house. You have come a long way and I am very glad you decided to pursue YouTube. I know it was a hard decision and we are all very grateful and look forward to more amazing videos.

I need to let it be known I watched the first garum video while I was giving birth at the hospital and the look on the doctors face when he asked what I was watching and I said making fermented fish juice was priceless 😂

I love the gyrados in the back instead of magikarp from the first video, like a symbol of how your channel has grown too:)

Garum seems like something that was discovered completely by accident. Like one guy tried to make normal salted fish, did something incorrectly, and forgot about it for a couple months and then tasted it out of curiosity and realized it was actually pretty good

Greetings as a viewer from Vietnam. Here our fish sauce is made almost the same way as your garum, but fermented for longer, which i think makes the flavour more mellow and umami. It is still so popular that it appears in almost every dishes just like with the ancient roman. In Vietnam and Laos, the unfiltered garum can also be used and actually tastes quite good when combined with other ingredients.

I made garum as a part of my final for a course on the history of Republican Rome. I had a hard time getting whole fish anywhere, but eventually found some at an Asian market. All was going well for the first month or two until my roommate (basically a stranger to me at the time) accidentally kicked it over in the middle of the night. He didn't have the heart to tell me, so he just kind of scooped it back into the vessel along with some inadvertent leaves and dirt. About two days later I went over to check on it and was horrified to see all sorts of foreign objects inside and smells that were offensive even in the context of making this putrid condiment. I made some "quick garum" based off of your recipe on this channel to pass off as my final project for the course. It worked out okay, but I haven't had the motivation to try this again.

I love the fact that people around the world from Rome to Japan, thought to stick fish and salt together for a couple of months, and decided to eat it.😮

My ancestors (Chinese migrants to Thailand) started a small fish sauce factory nearly 100 years ago in Northern town of Lampang, which was shut down a long time ago as we couldn’t really compete with the bigger players, and all of the descendants, my dad and aunts and uncles, pursued other careers. But it was still operating when I was young and I can still remember the smell! We visited the relatives who lived next to this factory every year. And even though the last bottle left the factory almost 2 decades ago, you can still smell it to this day.

Fun fact: I live in Italy, next to a village where garum is still made - Cetara is the name of the village, and we consume it as a seasoning for pasta.

You might be the only person who can make me sit, relax and enjoy a 23 Minutes session about Fish Sauce

My granny used to live on a tributary of the River Bann in Northern Ireland. I remember her keeping, somewhere near the turf shed, a wooden barrel into which she threw the guts, heads, and tails of the fish we used to catch. A tap at the bottom of the barrel decanted the liquid that she would then later refine/filter. Smashing stuff just on some floury spuds! (PS. I am not that ancient… a 70s born GenXer)

Very interesting hearing about the notes about not consuming garum when tending bees! I recently read in a bee-keeping book for beginners that consuming a lot of garlic and onions is not advisable when you are tending bees because they interpret that smell as you being sick and will treat you as such.

The deep belly laugh I had when he said, "do NOT MAKE THIS" is unparalleled😂😂😂

As someone who was hyped about an area of Max’s house being dedicated to Garum, I’m thoroughly intrigued.

I wonder if regional bacterial variations had an effect on the quality of garum from various locations - kind of like how San Francisco sourdough is so prized?