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Fish and seafood from South Korea

Gulbi굴비

Gulbi is whole yellow croaker that is dry-salted and then dried for weeks, a boundary entry because it is a salt cure and drying process, not a microbial ferment. During about 25 days of drying the fish loses water, its fat oxidises and its free amino acids rise several times, which gives the cured flavour.

Fully documentedFish and seafood3 days – 25 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo fixed amounts are published for traditional gulbi; the studies salted fish by dry salting with sea salt or purified salt, or by injecting brine into the body cavity.
Whole yellow croaker (chamjogi)[park1986][na1986]
SaltMost gulbi is dry-salted; a 20 % brine is the tested alternative[shin2004]
Starternone (salt cure and drying)

Total time across the recorded steps: 3 days – 25 days

Start
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What changes: Frozen spring croaker is thawed and sorted into fish of the same size

Step 1 of 4
Thaw and sort the croaker
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

In the modern process at Beopseongpo, spring croaker is kept frozen, thawed when needed and sorted into fish of the same size.

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

Gulbi is whole yellow croaker that is dry-salted and then dried for weeks, a boundary entry because it is a salt cure and drying process, not a microbial ferment. During about 25 days of drying the fish loses water, its fat oxidises and its free amino acids rise several times, which gives the cured flavour. Made in 4 steps over 3 days – 25 days. The longest step, dry the salted fish, takes 3–25 days (Park Y.-H 1986). Salt is 20–30 % (Shin M.-J 2004).

Key numbers
Main step3–25 daysReported[park1986][na1986][folkency-gulbi]Dry the salted fish
Salt20–30 %Measured[shin2004]Salt the croaker

What makes this one different

Gulbi is salted whole and dried for weeks, with no rice, starter or long brine ripening. Jogijeot uses the same fish but keeps it in salt as a wet jeotgal.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Bori-gulbi (보리굴비)Fully dried gulbi kept in a barley jar; the encyclopedia describes this as a way of storing gulbi, not a separate way of processing it.
  • Mul-gulbi (물굴비)Name used in the 1970s for the lightly dried, chilled gulbi, to tell it from the traditional hard-dried kind.
  • Gajogi (가조기)At Beopseongpo, croaker split along the belly and dried, as opposed to gulbi dried whole.

Safety

Salt and drying preserve gulbi. A higher brine strength (30 %) left about 1 log fewer bacteria in the muscle than 20 % (Shin et al. 2004).

History and sources

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

A popular story says the name comes from 1126, when the exiled Yi Ja-gyeom sent salted, dried croaker from Yeonggwang to King Injong. The encyclopedia calls this a folk etymology, because the name appears in the Yeojido seoji as 仇乙非 in most places and as 屈非 only for Yeonggwang and Gobu. Before refrigeration gulbi was heavily salted and dried for a long time. In the 1970s the lightly dried, chilled kind was called mul-gulbi to set it apart from the traditional hard-dried kind.

Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [park1986] Park Y.-H., Song E., Shin M.-S., Jhon D.-Y., Hong Y.-H. 1986, Studies on the changes of lipid constituents during Gulbi processing, Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology 18(6):485 (abstract)paper
  2. [na1986] Na A.-H., Shin M.-S., Jhon D.-Y., Hong Y.-H. 1986, Studies on the changes in free amino acids of yellow corvenia (Pseudosciaena manchurica) during Gulbi processing, Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition 15(3):263 (abstract)paper
  3. [shin2004] Shin M.-J., Kang S.-G., Kim S.-J., Kim J.-M. 2004, Determination of the optimum condition in preparing Gulbi (salted and semi-dried yellow croaker, Larimichthys polyactis) by brine salting with onion peel extract, Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition 33(8):1385 (abstract)paper
  4. [folkency-gulbi] Pyeon Seong-cheol (편성철), Gulbi (굴비), Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture (한국민속대백과사전), Dictionary of Korean Food, Clothing and Housing, National Folk Museum of Koreabook