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Meat from India

Jamma (geema)jamma

Jamma, or geema, is a goat-meat sausage of the Kumaon Himalaya. Minced goat meat is mixed with ground finger millet, salt, wild pepper (timbur), chilli powder, water and fresh blood, stuffed into goat small intestine, boiled for 15–20 minutes and then smoked above the kitchen oven for 15–20 days. Lactic acid bacteria dominate its microbes.

Fully documentedMeat15 days – 20 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedA household product with no fixed amounts.
Minced goat meatRed goat meat chopped into fine pieces[rai2009][teixeira2020]
Ground finger millet (Eleusine coracana)[rai2009]
Salt, wild pepper (timbur, Zanthoxylum), chilli powder[rai2009][teixeira2020]
Fresh blood and waterA little fresh blood; water is poured in to make the mix semi-liquid[rai2009][teixeira2020]
Goat small intestineThe casing, about 2–3 cm across and 100–120 cm long, filled with a funnel and tied at both ends[rai2009]
Starternone added; Rai et al. say the Himalayan meat products are naturally cured without starter cultures

Total time across the recorded steps: 15 days – 20 days

Start
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What changes: Minced goat meat is mixed with millet, salt, wild pepper, chilli, water and blood

Step 1 of 4
Mix meat, millet, spices and blood
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
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

Jamma, or geema, is a goat-meat sausage of the Kumaon Himalaya. Minced goat meat is mixed with ground finger millet, salt, wild pepper (timbur), chilli powder, water and fresh blood, stuffed into goat small intestine, boiled for 15–20 minutes and then smoked above the kitchen oven for 15–20 days. Lactic acid bacteria dominate its microbes. Made in 4 steps over 15 days – 20 days. The longest step, smoke and dry above the kitchen oven, takes 15–20 days (Rai A.K 2009). Lactic acid bacteria, the main microbes (7.5 ± 0.1 log cfu/g in jamma); species found across jamma, arjia and chartayshya were Enterococcus durans, E. faecalis, E. faecium, E. hirae, Leuconostoc citreum, Leuc. mesenteroides, Pediococcus pentosaceus and Weissella cibaria does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step15–20 daysReported[rai2009][teixeira2020]Smoke and dry above the kitchen oven

What makes this one different

Jamma is made of minced goat meat in small intestine; its sister arjia uses goat lungs in the large intestine. Both are boiled before they are dried or smoked over the kitchen oven, while chartayshya is salted goat-meat pieces threaded on a string and air-dried with no casing.

Related ferments

Variants

  • ArjiaGoat lung instead of meat, stuffed into large intestine; see its own entry.

Safety

The sausage is boiled for 15–20 minutes before drying, and is pricked so it does not burst in the pot. That boil is the only heat step for the raw meat and fresh blood, and the sausage then hangs for 15–20 days with no nitrite or starter added. In kargyong, a related boiled and smoked Himalayan sausage, a Sikkim study detected enterotoxins and Salmonella by ELISA in a few household samples, though it notes no official report of food poisoning from kargyong. Jamma is recorded eaten in curry, deep-fried or as a cooked sausage. Cook it again before eating, but no source read shows that cooking removes those toxins.

Hazards the sources name: Staphylococcal and Bacillus diarrhoeal enterotoxins and Salmonella, detected by ELISA in kargyong, a related boiled and smoked Himalayan sausage; not tested in jamma.

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.
Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [rai2009] Rai A.K., Palni U., Tamang J.P. 2009, Traditional knowledge of the Himalayan people on production of indigenous meat products, Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge 8(1):104-109paper
  2. [oki2011] Oki K., Rai A.K., Sato S., Watanabe K., Tamang J.P. 2011, Lactic acid bacteria isolated from ethnic preserved meat products of the Western Himalayas, Food Microbiology 28:1308-1315 (abstract)paper
  3. [teixeira2020] Teixeira A., Silva S., Guedes C., Rodrigues S. 2020, Sheep and goat meat processed products quality, a review, Foods 9(7):960 (jamma passage, which cites Svanberg 2015 and Rai et al. 2008)paper
  4. [bhutia2021] Bhutia M.O., Thapa N., Tamang J.P. 2021, Molecular characterization of bacteria, detection of enterotoxin genes, and screening of antibiotic susceptibility patterns in traditionally processed meat products of Sikkim, India, Frontiers in Microbiology 11:599606paper