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Fish and seafood from Southwest China

Suanyu酸鱼

Suanyu is whole freshwater fish, usually carp, gutted and cured with salt and spices, dried, then packed with rice, roasted corn or millet in water-sealed ceramic pots. Home makers in Guizhou and Hunan ferment it at 22–25 °C for one to two months, and the finished fish measured about pH 4.3–5.5.

Fully documentedFish and seafood31 days – 2.1 months

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold method from Guizhou and Hunan farm homes; no fixed amounts. A university lab recipe used 3% salt and 0.3% each of cinnamon, star anise, coriander leaf and dried chili by fish weight.
Whole carp, 0.5–1.5 kg each, gills and guts removed[sun2022]
Salt, sucrose, cinnamon, star anise, chili powder and pepperProportions are set by each household[sun2022]
Rice, roasted corn or millet[sun2022]
Starterspontaneous at home; trials add Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Total time across the recorded steps: 31 days – 2.1 months

Start
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What changes: The carp are gutted and the gills removed, leaving the fish whole

Step 1 of 5
Remove the gills and guts
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
L. plantarum
Staphylococcus xylosus
Yeasts
Debaryomyces
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

Suanyu is whole freshwater fish, usually carp, gutted and cured with salt and spices, dried, then packed with rice, roasted corn or millet in water-sealed ceramic pots. Home makers in Guizhou and Hunan ferment it at 22–25 °C for one to two months, and the finished fish measured about pH 4.3–5.5. Made in 5 steps over 31 days – 2.1 months. The longest step, ferment, takes 30 days – 2 months (Sun H 2022) and runs at 22–25 °C (Sun H 2022). Salt is 3 % (Wenkang H 2024). Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and Staphylococcus xylosus, isolated from suanyu in earlier studies and proposed as starter cultures and Yeasts and other fungi, mainly Kodamaea, Debaryomyces, Wallemia and Zygosaccharomyces do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step30 days – 2 monthsReported[sun2022]Ferment
Temperature22–25 °CReported[sun2022]Ferment
Salt3 %Reported[hu2024]Cure with salt, sugar and spices
AciditypH 4.3–5.5Measured[sun2022]Ferment

What makes this one different

Suanyu is soured with grain in a water-sealed pot for one to two months. Chouguiyu from Anhui is mandarin fish cured with salt and spices under weights for about a week and has a strong smell.

Related ferments

Safety

Enterobacteria isolated from suanyu made high levels of putrescine, histamine and cadaverine, and acid stress raised the amounts (Yang et al. 2020). Home samples held 17.11–94.70 mg/100 g total volatile base nitrogen, with lower average biogenic amines in Guizhou samples than in Hunan samples (Sun et al. 2022). Neither study tested for botulinum toxin. The fish sits in a water-sealed pot at 22–25 °C for weeks, with 3 % salt by fish weight in one lab recipe and home samples as high as pH 5.5. For unrefrigerated fish, the FDA's acid or salt barrier to botulism is pH 4.6 or below, or 20 % salt in the water phase; its lower barrier of pH 5 or 5 % salt covers only type E and non-proteolytic types B and F, and still needs refrigeration. Japan's agriculture ministry lists home-made izushi and similar fish ferments as botulism foods. CDC says the toxin cannot be seen, smelled or tasted, so this page is a record of the practice, not a recipe to follow at home.

Hazards the sources name: Amine-producing Enterobacteriaceae such as Morganella morganii, Klebsiella aerogenes and Klebsiella pneumoniae (97 strains from suanyu).

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. [fda-ch13] US Food and Drug Administration, Fish and Fishery Products Hazards and Controls Guidance, Chapter 13: Clostridium botulinum Toxin Formationgov
  2. [maff-boto] MAFF Japan, hazard profile, Clostridium botulinum (food poisoning cases and control measures)gov
  3. [cdc-prev] CDC, Preventing botulism (botulism prevention page), read 2026-11gov
  4. [sun2022] Sun H., Liu X., Wang L., Sang Y., Sun J. 2022, Exploring the fungal community and its correlation with the physicochemical properties of Chinese traditional fermented fish (Suanyu), Foods 11(12):1721, doi 10.3390/foods11121721paper
  5. [yang2020] Yang Q., Meng J., Zhang W., Liu L., He L., Deng L., Zeng X., Ye C. 2020, Effects of amino acid decarboxylase genes and pH on the amine formation of enteric bacteria from Chinese traditional fermented fish (Suan Yu), Frontiers in Microbiology 11:1130, doi 10.3389/fmicb.2020.01130paper
  6. [hu2024] Wenkang H., Jingui L., Xuelu D., Yanjie R., Mingzhu L., Tingting S., Fuyao T., Xuefeng Z. 2024, Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains L7 contribute to flavor and deacidification in Suanyu, a Chinese traditional fermented fish, npj Science of Food 8:92, doi 10.1038/s41538-024-00336-0paper