Prahok

Prahok (ប្រហុក, prahok) is the salted, fermented fish paste at the heart of Khmer cooking, eaten with rice and used to season soups, dips and sauces. It began as a way to keep fish through the year, and its main ingredients are fish and salt.

Illustration inspired by prahok makers on the Tonle Sap.

Tradition details
Khmer name	ប្រហុក
Also known as	prahoc; prohok; prohoc
Practice type	Foodway
Usual occasion	December to January
Subjects	Food & Foodways

The fish and the season

Prahok is traditionally made from trey riel, a small mud carp, and Cambodia's currency, the riel, is named after this fish. Trey riel, the Siamese mud carp, lives in the Mekong, in flooded land, rice fields and canals, and in the Tonle Sap River and Lake. When it is not to be had, other fish are used. Most prahok fish are small, such as riel and lihn. Larger fish, among them ros, chdor, kha ek and sorn dai, give a boneless prahok of fish meat.

Making prahok follows the yearly movement of fish in Cambodia's rivers, lakes and floodplains. When the Tonle Sap River reverses its flow at the end of the wet season, the fish migrate, and production peaks in December and January. Most of the year's catch comes in from December through March, when falling water gathers the fish together. In the Khmer calendar the prahok season runs from the month of Bos to Phalkun or Chet, the low-water season, when villagers near rivers, canals and lakes travel by cart to the river to fish or buy fish. Fishermen stay by the river day and night, and shelters rise along the banks.

Making prahok

The work is traditionally a two-day process passed down in families. The makers cut off the heads, then remove the scales and guts. They tread the fish with bare feet, in a river or stream or in small flat buckets, to press out scales, entrails and oil. The fish are washed again and again until they turn white, since leftover oil can make prahok smell bad and spoil it. Fish that look bad or sick are taken out, so that only the best remain. The fish are pressed and drained, then set in baskets covered with banana leaves and weighted with stones for about 24 hours.

The next day the fish are mixed with coarse salt, spread on mats and dried in the sun for a day. In village households, small portions are then pounded in wooden mortars for about 20 minutes, with more salt added to taste. The paste goes into open earthenware jars, set in the sun by day and covered at night against insects. Each day the liquid that rises to the top is taken off and used as fish sauce. After about a month, when no more liquid forms, the prahok is ripe.

Some makers salt the fish in three stages rather than all at once. After the first salting the fish rest overnight and are dried in the sun for two hours; after the second they soak for four to five days; after the third they are packed into a jar with a pestle. A bamboo stick and salt water are used to press the prahok down and keep it from cracking. Each time some is taken out, the rest is pressed down again and covered with more salt to keep the air out.

Aging

The longer prahok ferments, the stronger it grows. Household makers usually keep it for five to six months before its taste and smell are right. Sellers may cut this to one or two months, which ichLinks holds gives a poorer smell and taste in cooking. Well-made prahok keeps for years. BBC Travel and Cultural Survival give up to three years for the finest prahok, Dine With The Locals no more than four, and ichLinks four or five. Makers at Phsar Prahok in Battambang ferment theirs for about two weeks, and the Phnom Penh Post gives a range from 20 days to several years. Finished prahok is a gray or brown paste with a strong smell and an intense flavor, and only a little is needed. Its smell has earned it the nickname "Cambodian cheese."

In the kitchen

In the countryside, plain prahok is eaten with steamed rice and is an important source of protein in a diet built on rice. It is also served as a main dish with rice and vegetables, and some people eat it straight from the jar with fresh vegetables. It flavors soups such as samlor kako, a spicy soup of fish, pork or chicken, vegetables, prahok and kroeung, and it is a key part of fish amok, a fish curry steamed in banana leaves. It is the base of dips such as prahok ktis, a rich, spicy dip of prahok, minced pork, pea eggplants, coconut milk and kaffir lime leaves, and teuk kreung. Prahok also serves as a garnish and as a base for sauces, stir-fries and stews.

Prahok is eaten raw, steamed, fried, grilled or cooked in banana leaves. Prahok chien is mixed with beef or pork and chili peppers and eaten as a dip with cucumbers, eggplants and rice. Prahok kab and prahok ang are wrapped in banana leaves and cooked under rocks beneath a fire or over coals. Prahok chhau is pounded with lemongrass, lime juice, fresh peppers and eggplant, and eaten with rare beef or as a dip for vegetables and fruit. Other dishes include grilled prahok, prahok kreoung and sour prahok. In Siem Reap Province, prahok sharpens a sour soup of duck and bitter palm fruit, and a newer dish, kuy tiev prahok ktis, joins noodle soup, fish, prawns, prahok, spices and coconut milk. When a dish calls for prahok neither as a paste nor as a dip, kapi, a fermented shrimp paste, often takes its place.

In tourist restaurants in Siem Reap and other cities, prahok is often used sparingly or left out, because chefs believe foreign visitors may not like its flavor and smell.

Meaning and significance

Prahok is regarded as the hallmark and cornerstone of Khmer cuisine, and its flavor sets Khmer cooking apart from the other cuisines of the region. A Cambodian saying, "No prahok, no salt," describes a dish without flavor. In the provinces, people going to meet a future mother-in-law cook a good prahok ktis to make her smile.

Fish provides 66.3 percent of the animal protein eaten by Cambodian households. Cambodians eat an estimated 18 grams of prahok per person each day, and it is a main source of animal protein and iron. It also supplies essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals, and eating it with vegetables helps the body take in protein, vitamin A, calcium, iron, zinc and iodine. Prahok has long supported the nutrition and food security of rural families, and farmers kept it as a long-term reserve. Other animal proteins and refrigeration are now easier to come by, but prahok is still widely eaten for its cultural and culinary value.

History

Prahok grew out of the need to keep fish from seasons of plenty when there was no refrigeration. BBC Travel places it in Cambodian kitchens since the Angkorian era, from the ninth to the fifteenth century. In the past, people from inland areas traveled to markets to buy trey riel for prahok, and the fish was traded for set amounts of rice. As of 2009, farmers from outlying provinces still traveled far to trade rice for prahok.

Under the Khmer Rouge, from 1975 to 1979, food shortages brought widespread starvation and prahok became scarce. The regime's policies kept Khmer traditions, including food traditions, from being passed on. In 2009 Cultural Survival found prahok beyond the means of many rural and urban Cambodians, because of widening wealth gaps and rising food costs. It also reported that trey riel numbers fell after record catches in 2006 and 2007, which it linked to rising water temperatures, and that this made prahok harder to find and afford.

Recipes and preservation methods have kept changing, with different salts and spices. Some modern prahok-like products use mineral acids or alkali instead of fermentation, and many consumers say they lack the flavor of traditional prahok. Fish may now be crushed by machine instead of underfoot; Cultural Survival notes that machines may miss bad fish and leave too much fat, though fat matters to the flavor. A dried prahok powder, made from locally caught trey riel to soften the smell and ease storage and export, had won second place in a prahok-processing competition by February 2024. Vegetarian prahok has been tried with green jackfruit and mushrooms.

Variations

There are at least two main methods, set apart mostly by the fish: one uses small fish of the carp family, such as Rasbora and Thynnichthys, and the other uses snakehead and other larger fish. Producers in Battambang also make prahok from freshwater prawns. Prahok differs from region to region, and consumers often buy from makers they know for the flavor they prefer. Specialty markets in Phnom Penh sell prahok from producers across the country. Villages and families keep their own recipes. Some prahok is made with tamarind, palm sugar or chili, and prahok from Siem Reap can contain small red ants.

Community

Prahok is made across Cambodia, especially in communities along rivers, and by most local families, some of whom make only what they can afford or borrow money to make it. Making it has long been community work. Men and women cut and clean the fish, and children crush them underfoot. Whole families work together at the peak of the season, and businesses hire extra workers. Selling prahok is an important income, especially for families and widows with few other ways to earn. Children learn to preserve fish by working in small family businesses, so the knowledge passes from one generation to the next. Fishermen, household makers and market vendors carry on the practice, including producers along the Mekong, and Khmer chefs cook with it today.

Phsar Prahok in Ek Phnom District, Battambang Province, is one of the province's largest production sites. It has sold prahok since the 1990s because it lies near a river rich in fish. About 50 stalls there make hundreds of kilograms a day and sell wholesale to retailers across Cambodia, and the market has become a tourist site. Producers sell the fish organs to farmers and the roe to restaurants and food vendors. Concerns about hygiene and chemicals led the National Police to order inspections of the market, and Camcontrol checks whether producers add chemical preservatives.

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