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Fish and seafood from India

Karati, bordia and lashimkarati

Karati, bordia and lashim are dried fish products of Assam. They are a boundary case, dried rather than fermented in a vessel, but market samples in Guwahati carried lactic acid bacteria, Bacillus and yeasts.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Karati, bordia and lashim itself. Its own sources do not record how it is made, so the steps and scenes below are those of Shidal, the closest documented fish and seafood ferment, shown as a guide to the method, not as a record of Karati, bordia and lashim.

Short entryFish and seafood

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo recipe or amounts are published in the sources read.
Small river fish, one species per product[bhutia2020]

Total time across the steps of Shidal: 3.5 months – 13 months

Start
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What changes: The small fish are gutted, washed and dried in the sun

Step 1 of 6 · steps of Shidal
Gut, wash and sun-dry the fish
Time
12–15 days
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Oil for the pots is extracted from the entrails of the fish.

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

Karati, bordia and lashim are dried fish products of Assam. They are a boundary case, dried rather than fermented in a vessel, but market samples in Guwahati carried lactic acid bacteria, Bacillus and yeasts.

What makes this one different

Unlike ngari and shidal, small fish packed into sealed pots to ferment for months, these are simply dried, yet they carry lactic acid bacteria and Bacillus at high counts.

Related ferments

Variants

  • KaratiGudusia chapra.
  • BordiaPseudeutropius atherinoides.
  • LashimCirrhinus reba; in Sikkim and Darjeeling made only for home use.

Safety

None of the selected bacterial isolates made biogenic amines in the lab test used; the study's abstract reports no measure of amines or histamine in the fish itself. No mould was found in any sample.

History and sources

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

  1. [thapa2007] Thapa N., Pal J., Tamang J.P. 2007, Microbiological profile of dried fish products of Assam, Indian J. Fisheries 54(1):121–125 (abstract)paper
  2. [bhutia2020] Bhutia 2020 thesis, Table B (species pairing and home-use note)other