Ikan Asin - Salted fish

For Indonesians, salted fish is a fairly popular and popular food. In the past, salted fish was often underestimated and considered a lower-class food. Because the price is relatively cheap, salted fish is used as one of the final menus when financial conditions are being hit by depletion.

But now it's different salted fish is now quite expensive in the market both traditional markets and modern markets. Several types of salted fish are currently the favorite of people, such as chicken feather salted fish, cotton salted fish, salted fish cork, salted fish sapat/sepat (spade fish), and salted jambal (catfish) fish. From the type mentioned above, salted fish is a type of salted fish that is expensive per kilo, now sold in the market.

Salted fish is now one of the foods that are no longer considered cheap. But now it has become a relatively expensive dish. In addition to the types of food that are now made with the basic ingredients of salted fish, they are now also very diverse. The high price is also due to the fact that it is increasingly difficult to get fish which is usually as easy to get as it used to be.

Each region in Indonesia has a mainstay of products that will be processed salted fish from the region. And processed in the form of food with different flavors and tastes. Although the basic ingredients are the same as salted fish.

Salted fish is quite popular, perhaps because the territory of Indonesia consists of islands and has quite a lot of river channels. Kinds of freshwater fish and saltwater fish are quite abundant indeed in Indonesia, let alone talking about the past. As one of the wealth owned by the Indonesian people with various types of animals, especially fish.

With the preservation method, salted fish makes spoilage longer than uncured making salted fish more valuable for fishermen. It is not easy or just to make it because there are many stages that need to be considered in making salted fish.

For the Indonesian region, which is often known as the best-salted fish producer, is from Sumatra and Kalimantan (borneo). Especially the coastal areas and areas that are traversed by rivers. These two different island regions produce their own unique types of salted fish. And both are famous for their salted fish products known for their authentic processing and crispness.

For me personally, I really like cotton salted fish and spicy salted fish. For salted cotton fish, apart from being able to be processed into a variety of dishes, one of the easiest and most delicious is to cook it dry like crackers. While the fish peda (tuna fish) is processed with spicy green chili sauce, it makes me feel more appetizing.

Salted fish served with hot rice and accompanied by sambal terasi (shrimp paste) is very tempting for Indonesians. Simple but very tempting when faced with food like this before the eyes. Together with the family in a cottage in the middle of the rice fields enjoying lunchtime is a dream that is often coveted to do.

If I'm not mistaken, salted fish has also become one of the export products for Indonesia abroad. This means that what used to be considered lower-class food actually contributed to the income of the state treasury in the end. And maybe this is also one of the reasons why salted fish is expensive at this time, the price is competitive with the price of food which was expensive at first. Apart from that, it is also due to the current reduced supply of fish or it is not as abundant as it used to be regarding the fish produced. Plus habitat destruction and also due to fishing methods that are not in accordance with existing regulations.