Hai Giang fish sauce

(Baonghean) - Visiting Hai Giang 1 Fish Sauce Processing Village, Nghi Hai Ward (Cua Lo Town) in this sunny season, just arriving at the village entrance, you can smell the strong aroma of the sea from the ripe fish sauce. Summer is also the most ideal time of the year for fish sauce makers to dry the fish sauce, the sun will evenly ripen the fish, creating delicious drops of fish sauce, shimmering golden like honey. This is also a simple gift from the sea that makes many visitors from all over the world remember Cua Lo beach.

The salty taste of salt and the sweetness of fish further highlight the characteristics of Nghi Hai coastal village. Originating from the available natural conditions of exploiting fish and shrimp from the sea, since ancient times, people here have known how to process fish sauce to serve daily consumption needs. Over time, the demand for fish sauce has increased, many households in Nghi Hai have developed the fish sauce processing profession to supply the market like other essential goods. During the subsidy period, people in Hai Giang 1 mainly worked as workers in 3 seafood processing factories, including the Freezing Factory, Cua Hoi Fishing Factory and Nghe An Seafood Company. During the years working here, workers were trained with high professional qualifications and accumulated a lot of experience from the production process. When the State abolished the subsidy mechanism and switched to developing a market economy, factories and enterprises had difficulties in doing business, so workers returned to do household economy. The village's fish sauce making profession also began to form from here.

Le Thi Kim and her husband Hoang Van Vo, who used to work for Nghe An Seafood Company, retired under the 176 regime. Like many others, they opened a fish sauce processing facility at home using traditional methods. Born and raised in this coastal countryside, Kim's love for seafood processing was kindled since childhood. With the knowledge of being trained in fish sauce processing at the Company, since 2002, her family has been making fish sauce to supply the market. At first, they worked on a small scale, processing 10 tons of fish/year. Gradually, they expanded the production scale. Up to now, the family's annealing tank system has a capacity of 200 tons, and annually sells 30,000 - 40,000 liters of various types of fish sauce to the market, mainly serving the provincial market and tourists to Hanoi. Now the Vo Kim fish sauce brand - Hai Giang 1 block is famous throughout the region.

Regardless of the weather, there are customers who come to the facility to buy fish sauce to eat and to sell in other localities. Customers who eat it often and are addicted to Vo Kim fish sauce, many people in Vinh City, when the product runs out, call down, Ms. Kim will carefully pack it and deliver it to the customers. As for tourists in Hanoi, they call to buy dozens of liters of delicious fish sauce at a time, Ms. Kim will send a bus to transport it to their place. For many years, Vo Kim fish sauce facility has regularly sold to customers in the capital and is increasingly expanding its customer base. Hanoians love the traditional fish sauce of Nghe An, which is both rich and retains the flavor of pure sea fish. That is why they often buy fish sauce at traditional processing facilities, without additives or preservatives.

Ms. Le Thi Kim shared: To have liters of delicious fish sauce, the raw materials must be fresh fish that has not been preserved, impurities removed, then mixed with salt to make the sauce. When enough sauce is put into the tank, continue to cover the surface of the sauce with a layer of salt about 3 cm thick to prevent insects from invading and rotting the sauce. The process of drying the sauce until the fish sauce product is produced requires a long time and elaborate processing through each stage such as pressing, draining the water, drying in the sun, caring for the sauce, extracting the fish essence... to produce drops of delicious fish sauce with a rich flavor of the sea.

The annealing tank system of Vo Kim fish sauce processing facility in Hai Giang 1 block.

Mrs. Nguyen Thi Bien's family in Hai Giang 1 block has been making traditional fish sauce since her ancestors. In 1972, Mrs. Bien came to her husband's house and saw dozens of earthenware jars filled with the fragrant smell of ripe fish sauce, and she has been doing this job ever since. Up to now, after more than 40 years of working in the traditional profession, having gone through many difficulties in the profession with difficult output stages and difficult to buy raw materials, she has never been discouraged. Before and after, she has remained faithful to the traditional fish sauce making profession to provide her hometown people and tourists from all over the world to enjoy bowls of clean, pure fish sauce every time they come to Cua Hoi and Cua Lo beaches.

Mrs. Bien often produces overlapping products to have products to sell all year round without ever running out of goods. Currently, Mrs. Bien's family has 40 fish tanks, salting over 15 tons of fish every year to produce 4,500 liters of grade 1 and grade 2 fish sauce, mainly serving the consumption needs of the province and tourists to Hanoi. Previously, her family had a pickup truck, specializing in transporting fish sauce, dried fish and squid to sell in Nam Dan and Thanh Chuong districts. Now, customers often come to her house to pick up the goods, Mrs. Bien does not have to transport them far away. Her family's fish sauce is famous for its deliciousness in this area, because Mrs. Bien absolutely adheres to the traditional processing method from fresh sea fish and clean, dry salt for many years, without additives or preservatives.

Mrs. Bien confided: “Fish sauce ripens under the sunlight, so every April and May, we start salting fish. This season, the sun is strong, the fish ripens naturally, producing jars of delicious fish sauce with high protein content, amber color, the longer it is left, the sweeter it gets. My family usually dries it thoroughly after 2 years before selling the fish sauce, because after 1-1.5 years, the fish sauce still has a fishy smell. During the 5 months of the dry season, every morning we drain the water to dry in the sun, in the afternoon we pump the fish sauce into the fermentation tank, we persistently dry it under the sunlight to have delicious, rich fish sauce, the more we stir and dry it, the more delicious the fish sauce becomes, making those who taste it once remember it forever. When the fish sauce is ripe, I usually drain it into a ceramic jar and dry it for another 2 months until the fishy smell of the fish is gone before bottling it for sale.”

Hai Giang 1 fish sauce processing village has 70 households specializing in producing traditional anchovy fish sauce, producing an average of 450,000 liters of various types of fish sauce each year to serve the needs of domestic consumption and tourists. The fish sauce here is recognized by the Intellectual Property Office - Ministry of Science and Technology as the exclusive brand of Hai Giang 1 fish sauce (Cua Lo). Every year, tourists from all over the world come to visit and buy fish sauce with the Hai Giang 1 fish sauce brand as gifts. The reason Nghi Hai fish sauce is favored and trusted by customers is because the product is processed from an abundant source of fresh sea fish arriving at Cua Hoi fishing port every day, creating clean fish sauce bottles, meeting the desires of consumers. In recent years, Cua Lo beach tourism has been constantly developing, in the parties of tourists at restaurants and hotels, a bowl of Hai Giang 1 fish sauce with the rich flavor of the coastal countryside of Nghe An is indispensable. In addition, every year on the occasion of the traditional Tet holiday, Hai Giang 1 fish sauce is a practical gift for relatives and friends, expressing deep affection. On long trips carrying passengers back to their hometown, they do not forget to bring liters of delicious fish sauce imbued with the heart of the person who made it.

For the people of Nghi Hai ward (Cua Lo), working in this profession not only solves local employment and develops the family economy, but the people working here share the same passion to preserve the traditional profession to forever exist as a product serving tourism.

Quynh Lan