Keropok/Fish Cracker Kuala Ibai

KEROPOK- How it is made?

Having eaten kropok? How does it taste?

Do you know how it is made?

Why not have your own made keropok?

First, get the ingredients: (i) 1 kg of fresh sea fishes such as Mackerel/Sardines;

ikan selayang or sardines, suitable to make keropok lekor

 (ii) 1/2 kg of sago powder/starch;

 (iii) salt and sugar; and (iv) Chilly sauce or Thai Chilly Sauce if you prefer hot sauce.

Secondly, wash fish and remove flesh from fish bone,  but do not blend the meat/flesh. Remember that the traditional way is to crash the fish with locally made equipment called "lesung batu" or "lesung kayu" or mortals perhaps I can describe.

a wooden mortal

The idea is to crash the fish flesh without adding water, not like the one using blender as it reduces the original taste of the fish.

Thirdly, add 1/4 of sago into the crashed meat. Crash them together using the lesung batu or hand mortal. Add some sugar or salt accordingly. You can taste the stuff to ensure it suits yours. Squeeze and roll the blend to ensure all ingredients mix together and create its pastry in a cylinder type looks for 1 feet long each and about 1 inch thick. You may have up to four or five rolls, depending on the length and the thickness of each roll.

Fourthly, boil about 5 liters of plain water. When the water is boiled, put each and every rolls into the pot for at least 1/2 hour. Move each of the rolls to ensure all of them are really cooked.

Fifthly, take out all rolls, let them little bit cooler. You may eat the rolls now. This stuff is called "keropok lekor" now. Cut some small portion of the roll, deep it into the chilly sauce and have your own made keropok lekor. 

You may fry the roll and this stuff will be called "keropok lekor goreng" or fried keropok lekor.

Sixthly, you may have the boiled rolls ready for slicing. Slice it into thin pieces or layers for all rolls. You may have plenty of pieces which locally known as "keropok keping" or pieces of keropok.

Next, dry it under direct sun light for couple of days until it is hard and dry. Now you have a small stock of keropok keping ready to be fried to become a fish cracker.

Now, you can pack and bring it to anywhere. Just fry the stuff and you may serve you guests with fish crackers of your own brand.

Remember, the percentage of sago and fish flesh are very important. Less sago more fish will make the taste of the roll a bit fishy and to me, it is good. However, this mixture is not good to be a keropok keping because it is not expanding much after being fried. Less fish more sago will make the keropok keping expanding or size up to double of its original size. But the taste is not as good as the one with more fish. So, may be you know now, why some fish crackers are tasted differently. For business purposes, they have to reduce fish in the mix to cut cost because sago is very much cheaper than fish.

Having learned how to create keropok, you may try it with your own paste now. It is cheap and worthwhile to try at home.