Fish sauce is a common sauce in Chaoshan area, which uses small fish and shrimp as raw materials and is pickled, fermented and simmered to obtain a delicious juice. As early as the end of the Song Dynasty, the fishermen of Raoping Zhelin Bay made fish sauce from the salted fish juice discharged during the processing of salted fish. Later, the Raoping fish sauce production process began to be promoted to all parts of Chaoshan, and spread along with the footprints of Chaoshan people.
Zhelin Town's "Fishermen's Brand" fish sauce has been created for nearly 100 years, and was later produced by the local state-owned Raoping Raojiang Fish Sauce Factory. The factory is the earliest fish sauce production base in eastern Guangdong, founded in 1952, located in Houjing, Zhelin Town. The products produced are super fish sauce, fish sauce essence, high-quality fish sauce, fish Yao larvae fish sauce, etc., with fresh fish as the main raw material, traditional production, sun and night dew, natural fermentation, scientific preparation. It is nutritious, delicious, clear in color, unique in flavor, in line with hygiene standards, and is really a good product for cooking.
Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, there were many homemade fish sauce factories in Zhelin Town, and people would pick the fish sauce to the eastern boundary and Fujian to sell. When the Zhelin fishing team came back from the sea, it was not frozen, and the fish were flooded with local sea salt instead of preserving. When docking, some are boiled into "fish rice", some are sold directly to the market, and those fish heads or fish meat have been submerged for a long time, the locals like to put it in a large vat in their own patio and door, and then sprinkle some salt on it, cover it at night, and open it during the day to let it sprinkle the sun to make it fully fermented. After a long time, a layer of golden yellow fragrance is formed on the surface of the tank, and after being filtered with a coarse cloth, it becomes a simple fish sauce, which can be used to cook fish seasoning.
The best raw materials for fish sauce are rao larvae and river fish, so the factory was later named "Raojiang fish sauce factory". The fish sauce produced by the manufacturer pays attention to the color, flavor and flavor, and under the premise of following the traditional process, it is heated and sterilized at high temperature with boiler steam, and the sugar brine is added to become a high-grade fish sauce. At that time, the fish sauce factory strictly controlled the quality of the products when they left the factory, set up a laboratory, and divided the products into export grade, special grade, first grade, second grade and third grade "fisherman's brand" fish sauce through the inspection of the protein content of the products. It is well-known at home and abroad for its unique sweet and mellow taste, and has become a good gift for locals.
Fish sauce contains more than 18 kinds of amino acids, including 8 kinds of amino acids that are essential for the human body, and taurine, which is one of the important functional ingredients of aquatic products, is also an important ingredient of fish sauce. The fish sauce has a long-lasting fragrance in the mouth, and the aroma is overflowing, and it has the unique fragrance of fish and shrimp and other aquatic raw materials, so it is deeply loved by people.
In January 2022, "Raojiang Fish Sauce" was selected into the second batch of county-level intangible cultural heritage representative projects in Raoping County.
(Rao Wen)