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| Dried QueenFish |
Queenfish is called common name of a species of beautiful fish, delicious taste not only famous in Vietnam but also popular in the Southern Asia such as India and community of Southern Asian in Europe.
Being called as Nu Hoang or Queenfish, its meat having a very tasty, white, tough, sweet-smelling of fish oil when we are grilling fish. . Like a countrygirl was her parents named in the birth certificate with the name of beauty: Nu Hoang, but she likes to live in the rural context with cleaning, chore, going out the field for bail out water. So, her family called Queenfish for the same as people.
Highlights of this fish species has 10 to 12 black on the herbody spots look like the same fingerprint, each side has 5 or 6 spot lying on the backbone. Weight of Queenfish maximum is approximately 5 - 7 kg, drying out the range of 1-1,2 kg. This weigth of fish catching in Vietnam is very small amount of compared with catching in the Indian Ocean. The fishermen in Thailand and India, Bangladesh can catch up to 40-50 kg / pcs.
How to process drying Queenfish is mainly cooking the whole fish or cutting the pieces of fish to preserve with salted fish. Please say a little about the taboo of the fishermen when they catch the Queenfish. Their Psychology are not comfortable for catching the queenfish. The mainly reason in the first spots on the backbone of Queenfish, seamen in Kien Giang province said : It seems to be in the old day, Queenfish has guilty in the heaven,so it hided itsself to the earth for becoming the Queenfish, but heaven soldiers did not catch this fish. So, it has got a few fingerprints on the skin appears.
In the Western, species of Handock also having similar story to the Queehfish. But Handock fish which I saw fish market in Hamburg on Oct 2006 only two fingerprints with forefinger at the top of the fish gill and weight of Handock is about 5-7kg/pcs. Handock with Sailfish, Salmon, Codfish and the types of cold water fish is selling fast in Europe market.
Back to the Queenfish, we are processing of this product with Kingfish ( called name in Viet Nam Ca Thu Hu) by method of salted fish. Rate of 30% curing salt, preserving with salted fish about 48 hours, and we are using the method of fish fat process before making salted fish to during exposure of Queenfish no fat oil..
You should be got out my experience should not be doing Queenfish with size 10-12 cm because this is a small fish, its meat is fewer than its skin that its skin is not eating as delicious as meat, so the very low price, even buying before paying money after.
In short, a method of processing Queenfish should be processed as Wahoo, the materials of Queenfish should be selected 10kg upwards, fillet, gill off, stomach off, boneless cleanly preserving with salt of 30%, layer of meat, salt layer in the plastic box, the time of preserving with salt as described above mention, and some other simple secrets of processing fish.
After preserving with salt completely, drying under the sun enough to dry, then cutting each fish is about 200 gr/pcs. Depending on how to pack your customers request having vacuum or not? How to process sterlized method or not ?
