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Fish and seafood from Eastern Himalayas

Sukuti (fish)सुकुटी

Sukuti is dried fish, listed as Bombay duck, that is salted and dried in the sun, then kept and cooked into pickle, soup and curry in the Eastern Himalayas. It is a boundary product, a salted, sun-dried fish rather than a true ferment, although lactic bacteria do live on it.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Sukuti itself.

Short entryFish and seafood

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo published amounts were found; the fish are salted by hand.
Fish, Bombay duck[tamang2016]
Salt[thapa2016][chakraborty2018]
Start
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Close-up: salt moving into a fish

What changes: The washed fish are rubbed with salt

Step 1 of 3
Wash and rub with salt
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

Sukuti is dried fish, listed as Bombay duck, that is salted and dried in the sun, then kept and cooked into pickle, soup and curry in the Eastern Himalayas. It is a boundary product, a salted, sun-dried fish rather than a true ferment, although lactic bacteria do live on it.

What makes this one different

Sukuti is salted and sun-dried only. Sidra is the unsalted sun-dried form, and suka ko maacha is smoked over the kitchen fire. None of them has a deliberate fermentation stage.

Related ferments

Variants

  • SidraWhole small fish sun-dried without salt; also eaten as a roasted pickle.
  • Suka ko maachaFish smoked over the kitchen fire instead of sun-dried.

Safety

Sukuti is cooked before it is eaten, and drying is its main protection. Lactic strains from these products did not form biogenic amines in a lab test (Thapa et al. 2006); that test did not measure amines in the fish itself. Store it dry, since moisture lets bacteria and moulds grow again.

Hazards the sources name: Clostridium, Enterobacter and Plesiomonas (genera found across Sikkim's preserved fish products; species and toxins not tested).

History and sources

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

Thapa et al. (2006) list sukuti among four traditional smoked and sun-dried fish products of the Eastern Himalayan regions of Nepal and India, with sukako maacha, gnuchi and sidra.

  1. [thapa2006] Thapa N., Pal J., Tamang J.P. 2006, Phenotypic identification and technological properties of lactic acid bacteria isolated from traditionally processed fish products of the Eastern Himalayas, Int. J. Food Microbiol. 107(1):33–38, doi:10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2005.08.009 (abstract)paper
  2. [bhutia2021] Bhutia M.O., Thapa N., Shangpliang H.N.J., Tamang J.P. 2021, High-throughput sequence analysis of bacterial communities and their predictive functionalities in traditionally preserved fish products of Sikkim, India, Food Res. Int. 143:109885, doi:10.1016/j.foodres.2020.109885 (abstract)paper
  3. [thapa2016] Thapa N. 2016, Ethnic fermented and preserved fish products of India and Nepal, J. Ethnic Foods 3(1):69–77, doi:10.1016/j.jef.2016.02.003 (abstract)paper
  4. [tamang2016] Tamang J.P., Watanabe K., Holzapfel W.H. 2016, Review, Diversity of microorganisms in global fermented foods and beverages, Front. Microbiol. 7:377 (table of fish products)paper
  5. [chakraborty2018] Chakraborty R., Roy S. 2018, Exploration of the diversity and associated health benefits of traditional pickles from the Himalayan and adjacent hilly regions of Indian subcontinent, J. Food Sci. Technol. 55(5):1599–1613, doi:10.1007/s13197-018-3080-7paper