Dried Shrimp of Rach Goc

Over the river mouth at Rạch Gốc, the sky has only just opened a thin streak of light. A shrimp maker is already standing by the drying racks, looking up at the clouds to guess whether today will bring sun.

In this seaside hamlet, people make tôm khô, the Vietnamese name for dried shrimp. Here the sun is a partner that works beside them all day long. They boil the shrimp at first light, to give this partner plenty of time to dry the shrimp. They only hope no sudden shower comes today.

The clouds thin out and drift apart. A pale pink rises along the horizon, and the water at the river mouth brightens with it. The shrimp maker nods and turns back into the kitchen.

The fresh catches have arrived. Some come in with the nets from the open sea. Others come from ponds beneath the mangrove forests along the shore, where people raise a shrimp they call tôm đất.

The workers tip the shrimp out and wash them thoroughly. Sitting around the heaps, they sort them by the handful into sizes. The big ones go to one side, the small ones to the other.

Many of the shrimp passing through their hands grew up where the river meets the sea. They lived in brackish water full of silt, rich and plentiful with food. Some are river shrimp, some sea shrimp. Coastal people know every way to catch them. Some build fish traps, some lift dip nets, some throw cast nets.

Far out off Rạch Gốc, people set stake nets. Rows of net poles stand in the open sea in long lines. Between each pair of poles hangs the mouth of a net, open to the fish and the shrimp. Each month, shrimp are usually caught on the full moon tide and on the tide of the 30th day of the lunar month.

In this land of plentiful shrimp and fish, an old folk verse draws a whole family bound to the rivers and the sea. The verse goes: The father throws the cast net, the mother works the net, the child holds a fishing line. The son-in-law sets the stake net, the daughter-in-law sits by the fish trap.

The pot on the stove has begun to sing. Here they boil shrimp in water salted by a practiced hand, never in plain water. Under the pot, the fire has to burn evenly. The cook sits close by, never letting the flame leap too high or sink too low.

When the water boils, the cook pours in the shrimp and never looks away again. The cook waits for the moment the shrimp are just cooked through. The shrimp slowly turn red. Their bodies grow firm. The meat draws in and pulls away from the shell. At that very moment, the cook lifts out the whole batch.

The shrimp come out hot. The cook lets them drain, then waits for them to cool on their own. By now it is full daylight, and the sun has reached the drying yard. The workers carry the shrimp out to the wooden racks. They spread them evenly over large mats woven from long split strips of bamboo. Before long, the whole yard glows with the red of cooked shrimp.

The sun climbs higher. By noon it pours down hard on the rows of racks. The workers walk along each rack, turning the shrimp without pause. Hands turn the shrimp, and the sun dries them. One side goes down, the sun warms the other, and each shrimp dries evenly from head to tail.

Still, if this partner overdoes it, the work is spoiled. Shrimp left out too long take on a sharp smell like ammonia, and their color fades. Everyone dreads a sudden downpour. Now and then a dark cloud drifts across, and a few people look up, just as they did at first light.

But the cloud only passes over. The sun stays on the racks.

Past noon, on the row of racks across the yard, the batches laid out earlier are now dried just right. When a hand turns them, the dry shrimp rustle. The workers scoop them into cloth sacks. They tap the sacks gently, at a steady pace, thump, thump. Inside, the dry shells slowly loosen from the meat.

Everyone pours the shrimp onto sieves and shakes them again and again until the broken shells fall away. They throw out the heads and shells and keep only the meat. Last of all, they sort the shrimp by size once more, so that every piece matches. These days, many workshops have machines that help with shelling and sizing. Shrimp can also be dried in an oven instead of the sun.

In the shrimp maker's hand, a fistful of finished shrimp shines a natural pinkish red. The meat is dry yet still supple, with a deep sweetness. Tôm đất is prized above all the rest. Its meat is firm, and its roe gives it the red color.

It takes a great many fresh shrimp to make a little dried shrimp. Through the boiling pot, across the drying racks, then through the sieve, each shrimp grows lighter and lighter.

When the first settlers came to open up land and build villages along this coast, there were more shrimp and fish than anyone could eat. So they boiled the shrimp, sun dried them, and stored them to eat little by little through days of rain and storm. In those days, dried shrimp was made only for the family's own table. Some went as gifts to relatives who lived far away. Only later did people begin making it to sell. In 2023, the craft of making dried shrimp in Cà Mau was recognized as part of the cultural heritage of the whole country.

The fires in the shrimp workshops burn red all through the days before Tết, the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. Across the south of the country, dried shrimp is a familiar dish for holidays and for the New Year. And in Cà Mau, almost every home sets out a plate of tôm khô dưa kiệu at the start of the year. It is dried shrimp served with dưa kiệu, pickled bulbs that look like small onions.

Their partner the sun leans lower, then slips off the racks. The batch boiled at first light has had one full day of sun. On the far row of racks, the thump, thump of the sacks has gone quiet too.

Out at sea, the small huts of the stake net keepers look like birds' nests hung on the rows of net poles. The keepers sit there, waiting for the high tide to run strong to lower their nets. On some nights, whenever they see a boat heading toward the nets, they signal it to change course with a lamp that lights up in the middle of the sea.