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Vegetables from Myanmar

Bu chin (sour bottle gourd)

Bottle gourd is cut into long strips and soured in a pot with congee or rice water and a little salt, the same way as Myanmar's sour radish. It is a quick seasonal ferment, sold in markets within days during the hot season.

Fully documentedVegetables5 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedMarket and household ferment with no fixed amounts in the source.
Bottle gourd (calabash), sliced into small, long pieces[bo2022]
Congee, rice water or cooked-rice water[bo2022]
A small amount of table salt[bo2022]
Starterspontaneous, with rice water or congee and salt

Total time across the recorded steps: 5 days

Start
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What changes: Bottle gourd is sliced into small, long strips

Step 1 of 4
Cut the gourd into long strips
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Lactobacilli
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

Bottle gourd is cut into long strips and soured in a pot with congee or rice water and a little salt, the same way as Myanmar's sour radish. It is a quick seasonal ferment, sold in markets within days during the hot season. Made in 4 steps over 5 days. The longest step, sell fresh at the market, takes up to 5 days (Bo Bo and Aye Aye Win 2022). Lactobacilli does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main stepup to 5 daysReported[bo2022]Sell fresh at the market
AciditypH 3.7Measured[bo2022]Sell fresh at the market

What makes this one different

Bu chin is made the same way as sour radish (mon-la chin), but from calabash, and only in the hot season, March to May. The source gives a fermentation time only for sour radish, 1 to 2 days on average, and longer when rice water or cooked-rice water is used.

Related ferments

Safety

Bo and Win (2022) describe Myanmar's plant ferments as small-scale, spontaneous and not standardised, with inconsistent quality and poor hygiene, and call for quality and safety standards. Their market samples, bu chin included, had fermented for less than 5 days. Market bu chin measured pH 3.72 ± 0.04.

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. [bo2022] Bo Bo and Aye Aye Win 2022, Myanmar popular plant-based fermented foods, their processing, and their microorganisms potential for probiotics, Bacterial Empire 5(3):e430paper
  2. [wp-ingr] Wikipedia, List of ingredients in Burmese cuisine (gourd ဘူးသီး; chin ချဉ် in fermented-food names), read 2026-10wiki