Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Fish and seafood from Eastern Himalayas

Suka ko maachaसुकाको माछा

Suka ko maacha is a smoked, dried river fish of the Eastern Himalayas, made from Schizothorax rubbed with salt and turmeric and hung above the kitchen fire. It is not deliberately fermented, but lactic acid bacteria, yeasts and Bacillus live in the finished fish. It is cooked into curry.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Suka ko maacha itself.

Short entryFish and seafood

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedA household practice with no fixed amounts in the sources read.
River fish (Schizothorax richardsoni), guttedno fixed amount recorded[tamang2016]
Salt and turmeric powderno fixed amount recorded[tamang2016]
Start
Drag the bar or press Play
Close-up: salt moving into a fish

What changes: Gutted fish are rubbed with salt and turmeric

Step 1 of 3
Gut, wash and rub with salt and turmeric
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactococcus lactis
L. mesenteroides
Enterococcus faecium
Pediococcus pentosaceus

Output: salted, turmeric-rubbed 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

Suka ko maacha is a smoked, dried river fish of the Eastern Himalayas, made from Schizothorax rubbed with salt and turmeric and hung above the kitchen fire. It is not deliberately fermented, but lactic acid bacteria, yeasts and Bacillus live in the finished fish. It is cooked into curry. Lactic acid bacteria (Lactococcus lactis, Leuconostoc mesenteroides, Enterococcus faecium, E. faecalis, Pediococcus pentosaceus, Weissella confusa), isolated from sukako maacha, gnuchi, sidra and sukuti together does most of the fermenting.

What makes this one different

Boundary entry. Suka ko maacha is smoked and dried, not fermented on purpose. Studies group it with gnuchi and with the sun-dried sidra and sukuti.

Related ferments

History and sources

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

Thapa et al. (2006) describe it as one of four traditional smoked and sun-dried fish products of the Eastern Himalayan regions of Nepal and India.

  1. [thapa2006] Thapa N., Pal J., Tamang J.P. 2006, Phenotypic identification and technological properties of lactic acid bacteria isolated from traditionally processed fish products of the Eastern Himalayas, Int. J. Food Microbiol. 107(1):33–38, doi:10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2005.08.009 (abstract)paper
  2. [bhutia2021] Bhutia M.O., Thapa N., Shangpliang H.N.J., Tamang J.P. 2021, High-throughput sequence analysis of bacterial communities and their predictive functionalities in traditionally preserved fish products of Sikkim, India, Food Res. Int. 143:109885, doi:10.1016/j.foodres.2020.109885 (abstract)paper
  3. [tamang2016] Tamang J.P., Watanabe K., Holzapfel W.H. 2016, Review, Diversity of microorganisms in global fermented foods and beverages, Front. Microbiol. 7:377 (table of fish products)paper