Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Fish and seafood from Korea

Galchi saekki jeot갈치새끼젓

Galchi-saekki-jeot is small, young hairtail salted whole and ripened in a sealed crock. In Jeju it is made around September, layered with salt, weighted with a stone and kept in the shade at about 15 °C for two to three months. It is eaten as a side dish, seasoned and wrapped in leaves.

Fully documentedFish and seafood2 months – 3 monthsFamily: Jeotgal (Korean salted fermented seafood)

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo weighed recipe is published. The salt is measured as layers: about 1 cm between fish and 1–2 cm on top, as in the folk encyclopedia's Jeju method.
Small hairtail, wholeLarger ones are gutted first[nfm-galchijeot]
SaltRubbed into the belly and gills, about 1 cm between fish and 1–2 cm on top[nfm-galchijeot]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 2 months – 3 months

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Starting material: small hairtail, the bigger ones gutted

Step 1 of 5
Sort the catch
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
T. halophilus
Lactobacillus sakei
Pediococcus

Made around September, when hairtail are plentiful; jeot from that catch is ranked best. Large fish are gutted, small ones kept whole. Output: small whole hairtail.

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

Galchi-saekki-jeot is small, young hairtail salted whole and ripened in a sealed crock. In Jeju it is made around September, layered with salt, weighted with a stone and kept in the shade at about 15 °C for two to three months. It is eaten as a side dish, seasoned and wrapped in leaves. Made in 5 steps over 2 months – 3 months. The longest step, ripen in the shade, takes 2–3 months (Oh Y.J) and runs at 15 °C (Oh Y.J). Tetragenococcus halophilus does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step2–3 monthsReported[nfm-galchijeot]Ripen in the shade
Temperature15 °CReported[nfm-galchijeot]Ripen in the shade

What makes this one different

Some Korean jeotgal are kept long for the liquid that seasons kimchi; galchi-jeot is a side dish. It uses the small fish whole and ripens only two to three months. Galchi-sokjeot uses the guts instead.

Related ferments

Safety

Under the Korean Food Code, jeotgal must not be bulked up with added water or brine, and sorbic acid (up to 1.0 g/kg) is allowed only in jeotgal with 8 % salt or less.

History and sources

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

The National Folk Museum entry says Jeju's sea, where warm and cold currents cross, yields much hairtail, and that Jeju households salt the small fish around September, when the catch is plentiful, and rank jeot from that catch best.

  1. [lee1986] Lee C.H., Lee E.H., Lim M.H., Kim S.H., Chae S.K., Lee K.W., Koh K.H. 1986, Characteristics of Korean fish fermentation technology, J. Korean Soc. Food Culture 1(3):267-278 (abstract)paper
  2. [lee2018] Lee Y., Cho Y., Kim E., Kim H.-J., Kim H.-Y. 2018, Identification of lactic acid bacteria in galchi- and myeolchi-jeotgal by 16S rRNA sequencing, MALDI TOF mass spectrometry, and PCR-DGGE, Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology 28(7):1112-1121, doi:10.4014/jmb.1803.03034 (abstract)paper
  3. [nfm-galchijeot] Oh Y.J., Galchi-jeot (갈치젓), National Folk Museum of Korea, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture: Korean Food, Clothing and Housing (한국의식주생활사전)book
  4. [mfds-code] Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, Korean Food Code (식품공전), 5. Standards by food, 20-2 jeotgal (젓갈류)spec