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Fermentation Atlas

Fish and seafood from Korea

Hongeo (fermented skate)홍어

Whole skate is laid in a straw-lined jar with no salt and left for about ten days to a month. Bacteria break down the urea in the skate's flesh into ammonia, so the fish turns alkaline and takes on a sharp ammonia sting instead of going sour. It is eaten raw, often as samhap with boiled pork and aged kimchi. Made in 4 steps over 10 days – 30 days. The longest step, ripen until the ammonia sting develops, takes 10–30 days (Shinan County Office) and runs at 4–20 °C (Choi M.R 2003). Psychrobacter, Pseudomonas and Oblitimonas and Pseudomonadales, Alteromonadales and Burkholderiales do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step10–30 daysReported[shinan]Ripen until the ammonia sting develops
Temperature4–20 °CMeasured[choi2003]Ripen until the ammonia sting develops
Fully documentedFish and seafood10 days – 30 daysMore fish and seafoodMore from Korea

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedTraditional process with no fixed batch size. Only skate goes into the jar, so the fish is the whole recipe.
Skate, whole or in pieces · Like sharks and rays, skate holds urea and TMAO in its flesh[shinan][piao2022]
Rice straw · Lines the jar[shinan]
No salt · Studies ferment the flesh with no salt or other additives[piao2022]
Starter: spontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 10 days – 30 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Starting material: whole skate, with no salt added

Step 1 of 4
Take the skate from the catch
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Heuksando skate was carried for days to Naju, and it ripened on the way. Output: whole skate, unsalted.

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

What makes this one different

Most fish ferments are salted and go sour. Hongeo gets no salt at all and goes alkaline, because its own urea turns into ammonia. That makes it a close cousin of Icelandic hákarl and kæst skata rather than of Korean jeotgal.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Hongeo samhapRipened skate eaten with boiled pork and aged kimchi, the "three together".

Safety

Hongeo has no salt and no acid to protect it; its pH climbs instead (8.9 by day 4 at 20 °C in one study). The FDA's pathogen table puts the top pH for growth of Clostridium botulinum at 9 and of Staphylococcus aureus at 10, so the alkali alone is not a full barrier. Clostridium was found in commercial hongeo, though the species was not tested. Ripening cold slows the change; at 4 °C the pH and ammonia hardly rose.

Hazards the sources name: Clostridium (genus found in all five commercial samples; species and toxins not tested).

History and sources

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

Skate caught off Heuksando was carried for days to Naju and ripened on the way, which is the origin story told by Shinan county. Jeong Yak-jeon's fish guide Jasan-eobo (1814) notes that people near Naju liked to eat it.

  1. [shinan] Shinan County Office, Heuksando hongeo (local specialties page, in Korean)gov
  2. [choi2003] Choi M.R., Yoo E.J., Lim H.S., Park J.W. 2003, Biochemical and physiological properties of fermented skate, Journal of Life Science 13(5):675–683, doi:10.5352/JLS.2003.13.5.675 (abstract)paper
  3. [piao2022] Piao Y.Z., Bibat M.A.D., Hwang S.J., Eun J.B. 2022, Protein degradation and texture properties of skate (Raja kenojei) muscle during fermentation, J. Food Sci. Technol. 59(12):4713–4722, doi:10.1007/s13197-022-05553-7paper
  4. [zhao2020] Zhao C.C. and Eun J.B. 2020, Shotgun metagenomics approach reveals the bacterial community and metabolic pathways in commercial hongeo product, a traditional Korean fermented skate product, Food Res. Int. 131:109030, doi:10.1016/j.foodres.2020.109030 (abstract)paper
  5. [zhao2019] Zhao C.C., Kim D.W., Eun J.B. 2019, Physicochemical properties and bacterial community dynamics of hongeo, a Korean traditional fermented skate product, during fermentation at 10 °C, LWT 104:109–119, doi:10.1016/j.lwt.2019.01.048 (abstract)paper
  6. [fda-app4] US FDA 2011, Fish and Fishery Products Hazards and Controls Guidance, 4th ed., Appendix 4, Bacterial pathogen growth and inactivation, Table A-1gov
  7. [s1] Wikipedia, Skate (fish), mentions hongeohoe and Mokpo (outline only)wiki