Shutki

Ingredients

The fish

• 150 gdried fish, shutki
• bought dried, not home-dried
• see the note
• loitta, Bombay duck, or churi, ribbonfish
• from a Bangladeshi or Indian grocer
• see the note on sourcing

For the bhorta

• 3onions, roughly chopped
• 1whole head garlic, cloves peeled
• 6to 10 dried red chillies
• or to taste, this is a hot dish
• 3 tablespoonsmustard oil
• see the note
• 1 teaspoonturmeric
• salt, to taste
• a handful of coriander leaves
• chopped

To serve

• plain boiled rice
• plenty of it
• a wedge of lime
• fresh green chilli
• dal

Directions

1. Cook it with the windows open. It should be properly dry and hard. Check the packet. Break the fish into pieces. Rinse it in several changes of warm water. Rub it between your fingers.
2. Soak it in warm water for twenty minutes. Longer for the hard thick kinds. Pull out the heads, tails and large bones.
3. Wash your hands with lemon or soap afterwards. Dry-roast the fish in a hot pan. Roast the onion pieces too, or fry them. Until they are soft and charred at the edges.
4. Pound everything together. Use a mortar, a stone grinder, or your hands. It should be coarse rather than smooth.
5. Pound it if you can. Work the mustard oil in raw at the end. Taste before salting. Fold the chopped coriander through at the end.
6. Serve it in a small mound beside a large plate of rice. It is intense and salty and hot. Reduce it if you want to, and it will taste flatter. Anyone watching their salt should know that.
7. Seal it well or the whole refrigerator smells. The dried fish keeps months in an airtight container in a cool dry place. Check it for damp and insects.

Technique

• Buy it dried. The atlas gives no drying method because safe drying needs dry heat, moving air and constant attention — fish that dries too slowly spoils rather than dries — and it is a coastal dry-season trade with no domestic equivalent.
• Pesticide misuse on open drying yards is a documented problem in Bangladesh: insecticides have been used to keep flies off drying fish and studies have found residues on market samples. Buy from a reputable grocer with proper packaging and labelling, and prefer imported product that has cleared food safety checks. This is a documented problem rather than a universal one — plenty of dried fish is produced cleanly, and the atlas records both rather than alarming or hiding it.
• Improperly handled fish can develop high histamine, causing scombroid poisoning, which mimics an allergic reaction. Cooking does not destroy histamine, so source and storage are what control it.
• Rinse it in several changes of warm water, rubbing it between your fingers. That removes dust, surface salt and anything picked up in drying and transport, and the step matters.
• Dry-roasting the fish for five minutes until it smells toasted is the key step. It drives off the raw dried smell and concentrates the flavour into something savoury — the difference between good shutki and unpleasant shutki. The smell peaks at this moment and settles afterwards.
• Soak it enough to handle but not to mush; some texture is wanted.
• Taste before salting. The fish is salted and the soaking removes an unpredictable amount.
• Work the mustard oil in raw at the end. Raw mustard oil is the flavour of a bhorta and cooking it away loses the pungency.
• Mustard oil is high in erucic acid and is commonly sold labelled for external use only in the US, Canada and the EU, where it is not approved as a food oil. It has been used as a food oil across South Asia for centuries — the regulatory position and the culinary tradition differ, and the atlas records both and takes no side. A neutral oil works and the dish loses its edge; a little mustard powder brings some of it back.
• Pound it rather than blending it. A blender gives a paste; a bhorta should be coarse, with bits of fish and onion visible.
• Char the onions rather than merely softening them. That smokiness is the point of a bhorta rather than a mistake.
• Cook it with the windows open. The smell gets into fabric and stays for a day, and some families cook it outdoors for exactly that reason. It is a genuinely divisive food that Bengali households argue about, and the atlas says so rather than pretending it is universally loved.
• It is eaten in small amounts — a spoonful flavours a whole plate of plain rice, and that contrast is the meal. Plain rice, nothing seasoned.
• Judge dried fish by hardness: properly dry, pale to amber, smelling strongly of dried fish. Damp, soft or bendy fish, mould, insect damage, or a rancid or ammoniac smell all mean leave it.
• Bombay duck is a fish, not a duck. The name is a colonial corruption.
• Store the dried fish airtight in a cool dry place and check for damp and insects. Freezing keeps it and also controls insects.
• Wash your hands with lemon or soap afterwards — the smell stays on skin.

Substitutions

• Any dried fish works: loitta, churi, chingri, dried prawns.
• Dried prawns give a milder, sweeter version.
• Neutral oil replaces mustard oil, with a flatter result; mustard powder recovers some of the edge.
• Fresh red chillies replace dried, giving a brighter, less smoky heat.
• Shallots replace onions and are sweeter.
• A little tamarind added to the mash gives sourness.

Variations

• Shutki bhuna cooks the fish down into a thick dark curry.
• Shutki with taro stem, kachu, is a Sylheti favourite.
• Chepa shutki is the soft pressed kind, fermented rather than simply dried.
• Dried prawn bhorta, chingri shutki bhorta, is the milder relative.
• Shidol is the fermented Sylheti paste made from dried punti.
• Maleh in the Gulf is the brined rather than dried counterpart.

History

Dried on coastal racks in Cox’s Bazar and the Chittagong coast during the dry season; a preserving trade older than refrigeration in Bengal.

Frequently asked questions

What is Shutki?

Shutki is a charcuterie & cured from Bangladesh: sun-dried salted river and sea fish, cooked into pungent curries and mashes. Dried on coastal racks in Cox’s Bazar and the Chittagong coast during the dry season; a preserving trade older than refrigeration in Bengal.

How long does Shutki take to make?

Shutki takes 20 minutes plus soaking of preparation and 25 minutes of cooking. The recipe makes serves 4 as part of a meal. It is rated medium to make.

What can I substitute in Shutki?

Yes, within limits. Any dried fish works: loitta, churi, chingri, dried prawns. Dried prawns give a milder, sweeter version. Neutral oil replaces mustard oil, with a flatter result; mustard powder recovers some of the edge. Fresh red chillies replace dried, giving a brighter, less smoky heat. Shallots replace onions and are sweeter. A little tamarind added to the mash gives sourness.

What is the most important thing to get right in Shutki?

Pound everything together. Use a mortar, a stone grinder, or your hands. It should be coarse rather than smooth.