The Making of Belacan

Fisherman living by the sea have evolved many ways of preserving their catches. Numerous methods were also devised to tap potentials of the abundances of a otherwise non-marketable resources. An example, in this case minute shrimps.

According to the descending order based on size of shrimps, method of selling those smaller than table size shrimps are :- as Dried Shrimps - prawn cakes - preserved shrimps in bottles, and finally shrimp paste! These example mentioned are part of a list of products enhancement techniques. Down the list are prawn flavored source and prawn cakes.

This site now take a look at one of such products "belacan". An edible commercial semi-finished food stuff. Prawn cakes are produced in massive quantity next to dried shrimps.

Those shrimps harvested from the mangrove swamps - what products can be processed from them?

Into dries shrimps, paste cakes or assisting in the production of food flavoring?

The final product depended solely on the type of shrimps harvested, then the consistencies in species within that bulk harvest!.

Shrimps too gather in great numbers, usually in a shoal. It is a mono-species affair with impurities caused by the presence of some alien species. Another example shown in the picture above, there are instances where a particular species of small shrimp that is too small for dried shrimps and too big for paste. Then they are processed and sold as low grade dried shrimps.

For the production of solid cakes, it entails the following processes!

Large quantity of minute shrimps are drained of water- then mixed with salt to be retained inside this large wooden tumbler.

The salt and decaying shrimps will eventually fused into a semi solid dense dough.

In ensuring complete homogenizing, the newly formed dough are passed through a mill that squeezed on the mixture and passed out as thread-like paste. This process also increase the surface area of the paste from open-air dehydration.

The process is then reversed when these re-mixed dough are repacked into sacks for renewed fermentation.

The whole stage of allowing the dough to nurture it in a compacted state, -2nd taken out and re-mix them through the milling machines -3rd repacked for the next gestation stage, are repeated in 3 cycles.

Watch that the containers used for the 3 cycles varies!

The finished products, dried, are then retrieved and stored into containers. The moment these semi dried dough are taken away from heat, they will absorb moisture to return to a dough stage. hence packaging and storage of packed products is vital in retaining its fresh and aromatic quality!

In a dough stage, the finished goods are then shaped into cakes and divided into "rectangular" cubes of 0.5 kilogram or 1 kilogram per piece for final distribution and sales..