Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

blacang (also spelled blachan), the Malay and most common name for a SE Asian fermented shrimp paste, which is called terasi or trasi in Indonesia, kapi in Thailand, and bagoong in the Philippines. What is called balichǎo in Macao is more or less the same thing. A form of blacang is also found in Burma and Sri Lanka.

This has a somewhat different flavour from the fish pastes of the region but plays the same sort of role in cookery. Blacang is always cooked. It may be crushed or ground and mixed with other spices and flavourings into a paste which is then fried; or it may be fried or grilled by itself before being combined with other spices.