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Fish and seafood from Ghana

Koobikoobi

Koobi is Ghana's salted, fermented and sun-dried tilapia. Dressed fish are rubbed with dry salt, layered with more salt to ferment for two to three days, then dried in the sun for two to four days. The hard, salty fish is cooked in soups and stews.

Fully documentedFish and seafood4 days – 7 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe FAO description gives no amounts; makers salt by hand.
Tilapia, dressed and washed[fao329]
Dry saltRubbed into the gills, belly cavity and skin, layered between fish and sprinkled on during drying[fao329]

Total time across the recorded steps: 4 days – 7 days

Start
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Close-up: salt moving into a fish

What changes: Dry salt is rubbed into the gills, belly cavity and skin of the tilapia

Step 1 of 4
Dress and wash the fish; rub salt into the gills, belly and skin
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
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

Koobi is Ghana's salted, fermented and sun-dried tilapia. Dressed fish are rubbed with dry salt, layered with more salt to ferment for two to three days, then dried in the sun for two to four days. The hard, salty fish is cooked in soups and stews. Made in 4 steps over 4 days – 7 days. The longest step, sun-dry, sprinkling on more salt, takes 2–4 days (Essuman K.M. 1992). Salt is at least 15 % (Gurah-Sey K.E. 1999).

Key numbers
Main step2–4 daysReported[fao329]Sun-dry, sprinkling on more salt
Saltat least 15 %Measured[gurahsey1999]Layer with salt and ferment

What makes this one different

Koobi is tilapia; kako uses shark, skate or ray, and ewurefua uses triggerfish fermented in brine. Koobi became a popular substitute when imports of stockfish, also called kako, fell.

Related ferments

Variants

  • KakoThe same group of salted, fermented and dried products, made from shark, skate or ray.
  • Ewurefua (ewule)Triggerfish slit from belly to jaw, fermented 12–24 hours in saturated brine under sacks and weights, then sun-dried 2–3 days.

Safety

Retail koobi was above 15 % salt and its histamine was low, 7.06–32.15 µg/g, while unsalted tilapia produced elevated histamine (Gurah-Sey 1999). Market koobi samples carried total viable counts of log 4.11–6.78 cfu/g and Staphylococcus aureus at log 2.85–4.15 cfu/g; after four weeks in ambient storage, insects and pink colonies of halophilic bacteria appeared on untreated samples (Nketsia-Tabiri 2004, abstract). The dried fish breaks up easily and attracts insects and mould, so it needs re-drying in long storage (FAO).

Hazards the sources name: Staphylococcus aureus in market koobi samples, log 2.85–4.15 cfu/g.

History and sources

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

Stockfish kako (dried cod) was imported on a large scale from Iceland and Norway into Ghana in the 1960s, and Ghana stopped those imports in the early 1970s. FAO reported in 1992 that, over the previous two decades, koobi had become a more acceptable substitute and a delicacy in many Ghanaian homes (Essuman 1992).

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [fao329] Essuman K.M. 1992, Fermented fish in Africa, a study on processing, marketing and consumption, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 329, sections 3, 4.8.3 and 6.1 (history from https://www.fao.org/3/t0685e/T0685E07.htm and T0685E09.htm)gov
  2. [gurahsey1999] Gurah-Sey K.E. 1999, A study of the effects of handling, processing and storage on the histamine content in salted, fermented Telapia (Oreochromis Nilotica), M.Phil thesis, University of Ghana (abstract)paper
  3. [nketsia2004] Nketsia-Tabiri J. 2004, Radiation decontamination and disinfestation of salted dried tilapia fish (Koobi), Ghana Journal of Agricultural Science 37 (abstract)paper