Shrimp Paste

Tiny shrimp salted and fermented until they collapse into a dense, pungent paste — grey-pink and soft in Southeast Asia, dried into firm bricks in China and Korea. It smells alarming raw and turns deep, round, and savory the moment it hits heat. A teaspoon is the difference between a curry that tastes flat and one that tastes finished.

What it is

Shrimp paste is made from small shrimp or krill, salted heavily and left to ferment in the sun for weeks to months, then ground. The salt and time break the shrimp down completely, concentrating glutamates and amino acids into one of the most intensely savory ingredients in any kitchen. Texture and strength vary by region: Southeast Asian pastes (Thai kapi, Vietnamese mam tom, Indonesian and Malaysian belacan/terasi) are soft and spreadable, while Chinese and Korean versions are often drier and firmer, sometimes sold as pressed bricks. Colour runs from pale pink-grey through to deep purple-brown with age. Almost every version wants to be cooked — toasted, fried, or simmered — before it joins a dish; raw, it is aggressive, and heat is what turns that aggression into depth.

History & origin

Salting and fermenting the small catch is one of the oldest food-preservation strategies on any coastline, and shrimp paste is the shrimp version of the same instinct that produced fish sauce. It is genuinely ancient across maritime Southeast Asia, where the shrimp are abundant, the sun is reliable, and refrigeration was not an option — a way to turn a perishable glut into a seasoning that keeps for a year. Every producing country evolved its own style and name, and those styles track the local cuisine: the sharper, funkier pastes belong where the chillies are hot and the herbs are loud. Related fermented shrimp condiments appear well beyond the tropics too, including the shrimp-based seasonings of Korean kimchi-making, where salted fermented shrimp (saeujeot) does much the same job.

Where it comes from today

Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and southern China are the heartlands, with production still often small-scale and coastal. In the West you’ll find it in the refrigerated or shelf-stable section of Asian groceries: Thai kapi usually in small tubs, Malaysian and Indonesian belacan often as a compressed block wrapped in plastic, Chinese pastes in jars, and Korean saeujeot in brine in a jar. Brands worth knowing include Pantai and Maepranom for Thai kapi, and Lee Kum Kee for the jarred Chinese style. The good ones list shrimp and salt and little else. Once opened, it keeps in the fridge more or less indefinitely — the salt does the work.

How it’s used today

Shrimp paste is a foundation, not a finish. It is the backbone of Thai curry pastes, pounded with chillies, garlic, lemongrass, and galangal, and the reason a proper red or green curry tastes bottomless rather than merely spicy. It is the soul of nam prik kapi, the Thai chilli-and-shrimp-paste relish eaten with vegetables and fried fish. In Malaysia and Indonesia, belacan is toasted until it smokes, then pounded into sambal. In southern China it seasons stir-fried greens — a small spoonful into hot oil before the vegetables go in — and in Korea, salted fermented shrimp is a standard kimchi seasoning. The rule everywhere is the same: use a little, bloom it in fat or toast it first, and let it disappear into the dish. If you can identify it in the finished food, you used too much.

Make your own

Home-fermenting shrimp paste is possible and rarely worth it. The traditional process wants small whole shrimp, a lot of salt, and weeks of sun — and it is genuinely, memorably pungent for the entire time. In most kitchens that is a hard sell, and the commercial product is cheap and excellent. Buy a tub.

Substitutes (if absolutely necessary)

• Fish sauce — the closest relative and the usual fallback; it brings the same fermented-seafood savor in liquid form. Use roughly a tablespoon per teaspoon of paste, and expect a thinner, less resonant result; see Fish Sauce.
• Anchovy paste — surprisingly serviceable in a curry paste or sambal, though sweeter and less funky.
• Dried shrimp, toasted and ground — if you have them, this gets closer than anything else; add a pinch of salt.
• Miso plus a little fish sauce — the vegetarian-adjacent approximation: miso supplies the fermented depth, fish sauce the sea; see Miso.
• Nothing — honestly, in a curry, a dish without shrimp paste is a different dish rather than a worse one. Season with salt and fish sauce and let it be what it is.

Where to find it

• Local store: any Asian grocery — check both the shelf-stable condiment aisle and the refrigerated case. Thai kapi in tubs, belacan in blocks, Chinese paste in jars.
• Online: widely available from Amazon and Asian specialty grocers; a small tub lasts years.
• Make your own: technically yes, practically no — weeks of pungent sun-fermentation for something that costs a few dollars.
• Storage: refrigerate after opening. It will not spoil in any meaningful way; it just gets darker and deeper.