Garum
“Rotting fish guts” is most the most common introduction to Garum. An ancient sauce originating in Carthage and popularized in the Roman Empire, garum is made out of heavily-salted fish left out in the sun until it digests itself into a pungent amber liquid.
Fermentation?
Strictly speaking, traditional garum isn’t made by fermentation. The broadest definitions say that fermentation requires microorganisms to break down food, but technically garum is all enzyme activity. In a process called autolysis, protease enzymes found in the digestive tracts of the fish break down the cells down releasing glutamic acid, the basis for umami.
Autolysis is a major part of decomposition of dead flesh, but to limit nasty bacteria and funghi producers include an absurd amount of salt, to kill off any bacterial activity. In garum this process goes until the fish and its flesh is completely liquified. As long as your fish is fresh, this is incredibly safe. As an aside this is the same basic process behind dry aging steak, just much slower.
Internet Replications
The internet is full of people attempting to replicate this, but there’s two prominent examples I want to highlight, Max Miller and Sohla El-Waylly (who consulted with the former). Max Miller is a historian and youtuber who does deep dives into historic or ancient food and attempts to replicate it at home. For his garum he used fresh mackeral, salt, and left it outside, stirring frequently, until it liquified
Sohla, a trained chef, applied modern sensibilities to her version. Instead of dry-salting the fish, she submerged the fish in a very high-concentration brine in warm water. She also added herbs and sapa. If you’re going to try this at home, I’d probably go with her approach.
Koji is a colony of grains innoculated with the fungus aspergillus oryzae used in the production of many Japanese fermented products like soy sauce and sake. These grains are rich in these protean-dissolving proteases and in recent years, koji has become sa magic ingredient. Shio koji, a dissolved form, can be added to things like salad dressings and soups to give off a sweet, savory flavor, but can also act as a super-marinade rapidly breaking down vegetables and meats
Noma, the 3-Star restaurant in Coppenhagen, is famous for their test kitchen and fermentation lab where they have expanded the definition of garum into anything with animal proteins: beef, crickets, and even bee pollen. One twist is that they throw koji into the mix to expedite this process from months to weeks. This is because koji is chock-full of protease enzymes that digest proteins. Technically this process is no longer autolysis, but the result is the same. A funky, salty liquid full of Glutamic Acid, the foundation of Umami, or MSG
Smoked Mushroom Garum
Speaking of Noma, they released a product on their website, “smoked mushroom garum”, it is $25 for a small bottle, but from the reviews it seems as though a little bit goes a long way. This technically doesn’t involve any animal protein, but instead uses oat protein.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C9C51f_oPPQ
The Internet
There are hundreds of people online creating their own garums, mostly replicating the ancient method or using one of Noma’s recipes, but there’s a few creative stand-outs. First of all, there are a number of plant-based “garums” and if I’m going to be a stickler, I’d call these Shoyus instead. Still interesting and tasty, here’s a guy making what he calls “Ramp Garum“. There are many people brave enough to attempt meat-based garums. For example PresDaddy on Reddit for some interesting homemade garums including shrimp and ants. Reddit user RapportRaptor, using a similar process, makes Sea Urchin Garum.
In the coming months I plan on attempting mushroom garum and some sort of seafood garum. I will post updates here. (unless it doesn’t work and then you won’t hear about it again).
Related Posts
