Belacan Dried Shrimp Paste

Belacan Dried Shrimp Paste is a Malaysian product made by fermenting shrimp, grinding them into a paste, and then drying the result in blocks as shown above. There are counterparts all over South-East Asia, with Terasi being the Indonesian variety. In Thailand, you can find a similar product known as ‘Kapi’.

Belacan Dried Shrimp Paste, along with its cousins, and other non-dried pastes, can be very pungently aromatic when raw, and even actively unpleasant to some, but this ceases to be an issue once it is cooked, and the umami richness adds terrific depth to all sorts of dishes.

Belacan Dried Shrimp Paste typically comes as a rectangular block in a foil package as shown above. You can also find similar packages labeled as ‘Terasi’ rather than ‘Belacan’, indicating that the product is Indonesian. You can effectively use them interchangeably.

There are, of course, also a wide range of non-dried fermented shrimp products, or ‘wet pastes’, if you will. There are Chinese varieties, most noted for a purplish color, and a very pungent smell, and a more complex form from the Philippines called ‘Bagoon Alamang’, which often has sugar, chili, or other ingredients blended in, and tends to be a bit less pungent than other pastes.

The Texture, Taste and Smell of Belacan

Here, you can see a close-up picture of a slice of Balacan. The raw product fresh from the package has a consistency a bit like moderately soft Toffee, or a very heavy dough, in that it is pliable and can be pressed and squeezed into different shapes. If you look closely, you can see that it is mostly homogenous, but there is some mottling of different color and some visible specks of shell.

The smell is, to be quite frank, not especially pleasing, and can be very off-putting to some people. It is not as bad as some of the Chinese ‘Wet’ Pastes, which can have a rather vomit-like quality to their aroma, but it is very much a decomposed-shrimp sort of smell. As mentioned earlier though, the smell dissipates during cooking and does not affect the aromas of any cooked dish.

As for the taste, I am happy to report that it is nowhere close to the aroma, at least as far as being actively offensive. Belacan, or any equivalents, are almost exclusively cooked before being consumed, but the raw taste, if you care to try it, has a pungently low-tide sort of taste. A ‘shrimpiness’ is evident, but it is more of a generic fermented fish type quality, and indeed, it is similar to the bottled Asian Fish Sauces that are becoming increasingly more common in the West. Dried Shrimp Paste tends not to be quite as salty as Fish Sauce, or Soy Sauce, though, but this can vary from product to product so be aware of this and adjust for salt accordingly when using any of them.

In cooking, Belacan, or any other Dried Shrimp Paste, adds an Umami depth to dishes, but does not add much of a fermented Shrimp flavor unless a lot is used. In this regard, it is a bit like Anchovy Paste as used in Italian cooking, where a little added when making, say, a tomato-based sauce, improves the overall flavor but does not betray its presence. That is to say, you don’t know its in there unless you… well, know its in there.

As noted, Dried Shrimp Pastes are almost always used in a cooked state rather than raw. Indeed, it is often toasted before being used, typically by heating it in a little foil over a flame or stove element as shown above. This not only has the benefit of killing any bacteria that may be present (important for those products with low salt levels), it also improves the flavor in the same way toasting whole spices makes them more aromatic.

Once toasted, Belacan Dried Shrimp Paste can be crumbled in to a powder as seen in the above picture. This powder is now ready to be used as a flavoring agent for all manner of dishes.

Sambal Belacan

One of the primary ways in which Belacan Dried Shrimp Paste, is used, is as a component in more complex Spice Pastes for use in Curries and the like. Many people in the West are familiar with Sambal Oelek these days, but fewer are aware that this basic Chili and Salt preparation is the simplest type of a whole range of ‘Sambals’, one of which includes Belacan and is, appropriately enough, called Sambal Belacan. You can prepare this at home by blending Belecan Dried Shrimp Paste with a commercially prepared Sambal Oelek, or by grinding chilies with salt and adding the Belacan to that. An example of the latter is shown above.