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Fish and seafood from Vietnam

Mắm tôm chua (Huế)mắm tôm chua

Fresh whole shrimp are fermented with salt and cooked rice or sticky rice, plus chilli, galangal, garlic and vegetables such as carrot, bamboo shoot or papaya. Sealed away from air at room temperature for 4–6 weeks, the shrimp sour and turn brown-red to brick-red but stay whole. A Huế provincial technical regulation sets its salt, shrimp content and safety limits.

Fully documentedFish and seafood13 monthsFamily: Mắm (Vietnamese fermented fish family)

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe regulation sets product limits but no recipe or batch amounts; makers use their own.
Fresh whole shrimp, free of foreign matterAt least 50% of the finished product by weight[qcdp-tomchua]
Refined salt (to TCVN 9639:2013)[qcdp-tomchua]
Cooked rice or cooked sticky rice, from rice free of mould and weevilsA 2024 study describes roasted sticky rice powder for tôm chua[qcdp-tomchua][phan2024]
Chilli, galangal, garlic, carrot, bamboo shoot, papayaOther ingredients named by the regulation; each must have a clear origin[qcdp-tomchua]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 13 months

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Starting material: fresh whole shrimp with nothing else mixed in

Step 1 of 5
Choose fresh whole shrimp
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Lactobacillus farciminis
Lactobacillus futsaii
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

Fresh whole shrimp are fermented with salt and cooked rice or sticky rice, plus chilli, galangal, garlic and vegetables such as carrot, bamboo shoot or papaya. Sealed away from air at room temperature for 4–6 weeks, the shrimp sour and turn brown-red to brick-red but stay whole. A Huế provincial technical regulation sets its salt, shrimp content and safety limits. Made in 5 steps over 13 months. The longest step, keep, takes 12 months (Phan Thi Hang G 2024). Salt is up to 10 % (Ủy ban nhân dân tỉnh Thừa Thiên Huế 2020). Lactobacillus farciminis and Lactobacillus futsaii does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step12 monthsReported[phan2024]Keep
Saltup to 10 %Set[qcdp-tomchua]Salt the shrimp

What makes this one different

Unlike salty mắm tôm paste, the shrimp stay whole and sour with cooked or sticky rice, at no more than 10% salt; Huế regulates it as a local product with its own technical standard.

Shrimp content
At least 50% of the product weight is shrimp
Histamine limit
No more than 150 mg/kg

Related ferments

Safety

QCĐP 2:2020/TT-H caps sodium chloride at 10%, histamine at 150 mg/kg, E. coli at 3 MPN/g and S. aureus at 10 CFU/g, and Salmonella must be absent from 25 g. Use fresh shrimp, refined salt and rice free of mould. The regulation sets no minimum salt and no pH limit, and a sealed jar does not stop Clostridium botulinum, which grows without air. WHO names fermented fish, not shrimp specifically, among the foods that have carried its toxin. It says the bacterium will not grow below pH 4.6, but that acid does not destroy toxin already formed. So do not eat a jar that has not soured, and do not take sourness alone as proof that a jar is safe.

Hazards the sources name: Salmonella (must not be detected in 25 g); Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Clostridium perfringens (capped by the regulation).

History and sources

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

In a 2022 article by the Vietnamese intellectual-property news site Sở hữu trí tuệ, Huế food researcher Nguyễn Xuân Hoa says the old records hardly say who created tôm chua Huế, and that folk stories trace it to the south. By the tradition he repeats, Queen Mother Từ Dũ, whose family came from Gò Công, brought the Gò Công sour shrimp to the Huế court, where it was refined and later spread to ordinary households. The same article says a collective trademark for Tôm chua Huế was first sought in 2009 [sohuutritue2022].

  1. [qcdp-tomchua] Ủy ban nhân dân tỉnh Thừa Thiên Huế 2020, Quyết định 31/2020/QĐ-UBND ban hành QCĐP 2:2020/TT-H, Quy chuẩn kỹ thuật địa phương Tôm chua Huế (local technical regulation for Huế sour shrimp; replaces QCĐP 1:2018/TT-H)spec
  2. [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 (Table 1, tom chua), doi:10.17221/162/2024-CJFSpaper
  3. [tat2019] Trương Quốc Tất, Nguyễn Duy Khánh, Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Thắm, Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai, Nguyễn Thị Phương Trang 2019, Phân lập, định danh và khảo sát một số tính chất có lợi của vi khuẩn lactic từ tôm chua ở thị xã Gò Công, tỉnh Tiền Giang, Hue University Journal of Science, Natural Science 128(1E):87–98 (abstract)paper
  4. [sohuutritue2022] Sở hữu trí tuệ news site 2022-10-07, Đi tìm nguồn gốc thương hiệu 'Tôm chua Huế' - đồ chấm tuyệt hảo tiến vua (in search of the origin of the Tôm chua Huế brand)web
  5. [who-botulism] WHO, Botulism fact sheetgov