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Sauces and condiments from Vietnam

Cơm mẻ (Vietnamese fermented rice souring paste)cơm mẻ

Cơm mẻ is a sour paste made by letting soft, wet cooked rice ferment for about a week to ten days, sometimes started with some of the old batch. Lactic acid bacteria sour it, and cooks use it as a souring ingredient.

Fully documentedSauces and condiments7 days – 10 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold method with no fixed amounts.
Overcooked, wet cooked rice[phan2024]
Some of the old batch (optional)Some households use the old batch as a starter, which shortens fermentation[phan2024]
Starterspontaneous, or backslop with old mẻ

Total time across the recorded steps: 7 days – 10 days

Start
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What changes: Rice is cooked soft and wet

Step 1 of 4
Cook rice soft and wet
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Lactobacillus plantarum
L. fermentum
L. casei

Output: overcooked, wet rice.

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

Cơm mẻ is a sour paste made by letting soft, wet cooked rice ferment for about a week to ten days, sometimes started with some of the old batch. Lactic acid bacteria sour it, and cooks use it as a souring ingredient. Made in 4 steps over 7 days – 10 days. The longest step, ferment until sour, takes 7–10 days (Phan Thi Hang G 2024). Lactobacillus plantarum, L. fermentum and L. paracasei or L. casei does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step7–10 daysReported[phan2024]Ferment until sour
AciditypH 2.9–3.6Measured[duoc2013]Ferment until sour

What makes this one different

Cơm mẻ ferments cooked rice into a sour paste. Cơm rượu is sweet glutinous rice fermented with a yeast starter, and Guizhou white sour soup ferments rice-washing water into a liquid.

Related ferments

Safety

Duoc et al. measured pH 2.91–3.55 in 18 cơm mẻ samples from six Mekong Delta provinces. The one bacterium identified from a sample in a 2024 study was Bacillus cereus, which can cause food poisoning.

Hazards the sources name: Bacillus cereus, the one isolate identified from a mẻ chua sample.

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. [phan2024] Phan Thi Hang G., Husáková M., Kaštánek P., Patakova P. 2024, Diversity of cultivable lactic acid bacteria and bacilli in traditional fermented foods in Vietnam, Czech Journal of Food Sciences 42(6):435–446, doi:10.17221/162/2024-CJFSpaper
  2. [fao1999] FAO 1999, Fermented cereals, a global perspective, chapter 3 (cereal fermentations in the Asia-Pacific region), table entry for me (Vietnam)gov
  3. [pham2018] Phạm Thị Kim Thảo, Nguyễn Thị Anh Tú, Lê Lý Thùy Trâm 2018, Phân lập và tuyển chọn chủng vi khuẩn lactic ứng dụng ủ chua bã đậu nành làm thức ăn chăn nuôi (isolation of lactic acid bacteria for soybean-residue fermentation), Tạp chí Khoa học và Công nghệ Đại học Đà Nẵng 1(122)paper
  4. [duoc2013] Tran Ngoc Duoc, Trần Nhân Dũng, Bùi Thị Minh Diệu, Đỗ Tấn Khang 2013, Khảo sát tính đa dạng sinh học vi khuẩn acid lactic phân lập từ cơm mẻ ở ba vùng sinh thái của Đồng bằng sông Cửu Long, Tạp chí Khoa học Đại học Cần Thơ 25:58–66 (full text read)paper