Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Fish and seafood from Philippines

Burong talangkaburong talangka

Burong talangka is a Philippine salt ferment of river crabs, made in parts of Pampanga and Bulacan. Fresh crabs are kept covered in salt, then served at mealtime and eaten at once, because they spoil quickly once taken out of the salt.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Burong talangka itself. Its own sources do not record how it is made, so the steps and scenes below are those of Bagoong alamang, the closest documented fish and seafood ferment, shown as a guide to the method, not as a record of Burong talangka.

Short entryFish and seafood

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo source gives amounts.
Fresh river crabs (talangka)not given[wiki-taba]
Saltenough to cover the crabs[wiki-taba]

Total time across the steps of Bagoong alamang: 28 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Starting material: tiny Acetes shrimp, washed in weak brine

Step 1 of 4 · steps of Bagoong alamang
Wash the shrimp in weak brine
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Moulds
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Burong talangka is a Philippine salt ferment of river crabs, made in parts of Pampanga and Bulacan. Fresh crabs are kept covered in salt, then served at mealtime and eaten at once, because they spoil quickly once taken out of the salt. Leuconostoc mesenteroides, Enterococcus faecalis, Pediococcus cerevisiae and Lactobacillus plantarum does most of the fermenting.

What makes this one different

The whole fresh crabs stay in salt until the meal. Taba ng talangka, the better-known form, is crab fat and roe sautéed in garlic and kept in oil, not a salt ferment.

Related ferments

Safety

Talangka are river crabs, and the sources describe no cooking step. The CDC says paragonimiasis, a lung-fluke infection, comes from raw, partly cooked, pickled or salted freshwater crabs, and that Paragonimus westermani occurs in the Philippines. The CDC advises never eating raw freshwater crabs and cooking them to at least 63 °C (145 °F).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

  1. [wiki-taba] Wikipedia, Taba ng talangka (section on burong tabâ ng talangkâ; outline only)wiki
  2. [banaay2013] Banaay C.G.B., Balolong M.P. and Elegado F.B. 2013, Lactic acid bacteria in Philippine traditional fermented foods, in Lactic Acid Bacteria, R & D for Food, Health and Livestock Purposes, InTech, Table 1 (not read; the publisher's robots.txt blocks AI crawlers)book
  3. [cdc-paragonimus] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, About Paragonimus and Paragonimiasisgov