Yesterday my wife made some trout jerky. I got to thinking and realized I had a photo I'd taken while killing time a long long ways up the Nam Ou beyond all roads.
I was staying in this woman's extra room for the night, she was slow cooking dinner and I had nothing better to do than try to set my camera still to take a low light time exposure.
Most of this province is without any sort of road whatsoever and there are still large numbers of all sorts of game and predators. Tiger, sambar, pig, and muntjak. Fishing probably isn't bad either as evidenced by what is drying over the fire.
Back on subject.
The smoke that curls up from the fire is enough to keep the flies off and there is even a little heat for drying. Those are the two elements of jerking anything and the method is still in wide use throughout the world in places without refrigerators. Keep the flies off and dry it out.
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We have a screened drying thing we hang in the sun. Bought it off the net.
Prior to setting it out in the yard the fish was marinated in a combination of oyster sauce, salt, sugar, and bang nua, (a secret asian ingredient westerners don't like to know about)
The fish was left out all day and got fairly dry, the temperatures have been in the nineties. Below is the finished product.
At this point you could toss the fish in a basket, your backpack, the freezer, we just cooked it in oil.
Below a bamboo table for eating at while sitting on the floor.
On the plate fish, glass plate fried sticky rice in egg batter, sticky rice in basket, little dish jeo bong a dipping sauce of dried cow skin and veggies, larger dish beef jerky with sesame seeds.
Drying prior to deep frying changes things, the bones become much more brittle and you can eat them easily. Children like them because they are crunchy. Got to be a great source of calcium.
We eat all fish immediately that are given to us by our neighbor Bill. He always insists that we don't freeze anything. I'd assume because the bag limits include any fish you have preserved in any manner.
If you're going fishing, good luck.