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Sauces and condiments from Korea

Aekjeot액젓

Aekjeot is Korean fish sauce, the liquid drawn from salted, fermented anchovy or sand lance. Fish are mixed with 20–30 % salt and left at room temperature for one to two years or more, while their own enzymes and salt-tolerant microbes break them down. It is used to season kimchi.

Fully documentedSauces and condiments12 months – 2 yearsFamily: Jeotgal (Korean salted fermented seafood)

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceGeneral practice as summarised by Um and Park 2015. A lab study mixed anchovies with salt at a 4:1 ratio.
Anchovy, sand lance or other fishAlso sardine, hairtail, shrimp and others[um2015]
Salt20–30 % of the fish weight[um2015]
Starterthe fish's own enzymes and microbes

Total time across the recorded steps: 12 months – 2 years

Start
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Salt 20–30 %

What changes: Fresh fish are mixed with a heavy dose of salt

Step 1 of 4
Mix the fish with salt
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
20–30 %
Reported
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Pediococcus
Tetragenococcus

Anchovies left 18–24 h at room temperature before salting made sauce with far more histamine than fresh ones. Output: salted fish.

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

Aekjeot is Korean fish sauce, the liquid drawn from salted, fermented anchovy or sand lance. Fish are mixed with 20–30 % salt and left at room temperature for one to two years or more, while their own enzymes and salt-tolerant microbes break them down. It is used to season kimchi. Made in 4 steps over 12 months – 2 years. The longest step, ferment and ripen at room temperature, takes 12 months – 2 years (Um I.-S 2015) and runs at 15–25 °C (Um I.-S 2015). Salt is 20–30 % (Um I.-S 2015). Pediococcus and Halanaerobium and Tetragenococcus do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step12 months – 2 yearsReported[um2015]Ferment and ripen at room temperature
Temperature15–25 °CReported[um2015]Ferment and ripen at room temperature
Salt20–30 %Reported[um2015]Mix the fish with salt
AciditypH 5.5–6.1Measured[um2015]Draw off and filter the liquid

What makes this one different

Jeotgal is the whole salted, fermented seafood. Aekjeot is only its liquid, drawn off after a year or more. Kkanari-aekjeot from sand lance and myeolchi-aekjeot from anchovy are the two common kinds.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Kkanari-aekjeotMade from sand lance; seven commercial sauces measured 23.16–24.03 % salt.
  • Jomi-aekjeot (조미액젓, seasoned aekjeot)Aekjeot with added brine or seasonings; total nitrogen of at least 0.5 %.

Safety

All myeolchi- and kkanari-aekjeot products in one review had histamine above the recommended 100 mg/kg, often about ten times over. In one lab study, anchovies salted straight after catch stayed low in histamine (44.0 falling to 9.2 mg/kg over 24 months), while those left 18–24 h first stayed far higher. KFRI advises mixing fish and salt evenly in tanks over 1 tonne, because uneven salt lets histamine-forming bacteria grow. Korea's traditional seafood quality standard caps aekjeot salt at 23 %.

Hazards the sources name: Enterobacteriaceae (turn the fish's histidine into histamine).

History and sources

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

The first Korean mention of jeotgal is in the Samguk Sagi, where a Silla court rite food called hae (today's jeotgal) appears. KFRI's 2023 guideline says Joseon-era records, the Ssaemirok and the Jeungbo Sallim Gyeongje, show the liquid alone being used to season food, so aekjeot was already made then. It adds that jeotgal was mostly made at home until the late Joseon period, when supply shifted to mass production.

  1. [kfri2023] Korea Food Research Institute (한국식품연구원) 2023, 젓갈류 생산가이드라인 제1권 (Guidelines for manufacturing in jeotgal, salt-fermented seafood, vol. 1)gov
  2. [mfds-code] Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, Korean Food Code (식품공전), 5. Standards by food, 20. processed fishery products, jeotgal (젓갈류)spec
  3. [um2015] Um I.-S., Park K.-S. 2015, Biogenic amine contents of commercial salted and fermented sand lance Ammodytes personatus sauces, Korean J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 48(6):883–887, doi:10.5657/KFAS.2015.0883paper
  4. [shim2022] Shim K., Mok J.S., Jeong Y., Park K., Jang M.S. 2022, Effect of organic acids on the formation of biogenic amines in fermented anchovy sauce comprising raw anchovy materials with different levels of freshness, J. Food Sci. Technol. 59:703–714, doi:10.1007/s13197-021-05065-wpaper
  5. [park2019] Park Y.K., Lee J.H., Mah J.-H. 2019, Occurrence and reduction of biogenic amines in kimchi and Korean fermented seafood products, Foods 8(11):547, doi:10.3390/foods8110547paper
  6. [byun2020] Byun H.-D., Hyun C.-G. 2020, Whole-genome sequencing of Lentibacillus sp. strain JNUCC-1, isolated from fermented anchovy sauce (myeolchi aekjeot), Microbiol. Resour. Announc., doi:10.1128/mra.01542-19paper