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Fish and seafood from Thailand

Pla chao (khao mak fish)ปลาเจ่า

Pla chao is Thai freshwater fish salted for two days, then packed in jars with khao mak, a sweet fermented glutinous rice. The rice brings sugar, a little alcohol and yeasts, and the mix ferments for 10 to 20 days into a sweet, sour and salty fish.

Fully documentedFish and seafood14 days – 25 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceRatios from the JIRCAS Thai fermented-food database (after The Traditional Fermented Foods of Thailand, 1995). Khao mak is made separately; the Thai community standard for fermented sweet rice describes it.
Freshwater fish3 parts by weightDe-scaled, headed, gutted and cut into 1-inch cubes[jircas-plachao]
Fine salt1 part per 3 parts fish[jircas-plachao]
Khao mak (sweet fermented glutinous rice)1 part per 3 parts washed fishGlutinous rice steamed and fermented 2–3 days with loog-pang starter[jircas-plachao][tcps162]
Starterother: loog-pang (mould-yeast starter) via khao mak

Total time across the recorded steps: 14 days – 25 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
shapes, not to countMouldsYeastspH 4–4.5StarchSugarAlcoholCO₂

What changes: Mould and yeast turn the steamed rice sweet and a little boozy

Step 1 of 5
Make khao mak
Time
2–3 days
Set
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
pH 4–4.5
Set
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Moulds
Yeasts
Pediococcus halophilus
Bacillus sp.
Micrococcus sp.

Output: sweet, slightly sour, juicy rice.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

moulds turn starch to sugar and yeasts turn some sugar to alcohol

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

Pla chao is Thai freshwater fish salted for two days, then packed in jars with khao mak, a sweet fermented glutinous rice. The rice brings sugar, a little alcohol and yeasts, and the mix ferments for 10 to 20 days into a sweet, sour and salty fish. Made in 5 steps over 14 days – 25 days. The longest step, pack into jars and ferment, takes 10–20 days (JIRCAS 1995). Salt is 25 % (JIRCAS 1995). Pediococcus halophilus and Bacillus sp., Micrococcus sp. do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step10–20 daysReported[jircas-plachao]Pack into jars and ferment
Salt25 %Reported[jircas-plachao]Salt the fish cubes
AciditypH 4–4.5Set[tcps162]Make khao mak

What makes this one different

Most Thai sour fish (plaa-som, som-fak) use plain cooked rice and garlic. Pla chao uses khao mak, rice already fermented by mould and yeast, so it starts with sugar and alcohol and tastes sweet as well as sour.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Koong-chaoFreshwater shrimp (Macrobrachium lanchesteri) made the same way; it is pink.

Safety

Pla chao is cooked before eating, with coconut milk or water.

History and sources

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

History
The sources we found do not record its history.
  1. [jircas-plachao] JIRCAS, Database of Fermented Foods of Thailand: Plaa-chao / Koong-chao (after The Traditional Fermented Foods of Thailand, 1995)gov
  2. [tcps162] Thai Industrial Standards Institute, Thai Community Product Standard มผช.162/2546, Fermented sweet rice (khao mak) (copy on archive.org)spec
  3. [nimnoi2025] Nimnoi P. and Pongsilp N. 2025, Insights into the metagenomic and metabolomic compositions of the bacterial communities in Thai traditional fermented foods as well as the relationships between food nutrition and food microbiomes, PeerJ 13:e19606 (describes khao-mak as steamed sticky rice mixed with starter flour balls and kept closed for 2–3 days)paper