New research has been carried out by Nofima to find out whether indoor dried stockfish can be produced at a more consistent high quality than outdoor dried stockfish.
Dried stockfish is a natural product that is subject to natural variations in quality, as the fish is dried outdoors so it is the producer’s best interest to ensure stable quality.
An exporter in Bergen came up with a new drying process and now Nofima has now taken the original idea and developed a process for indoor drying.
Nordahl Anthonisen of Athena Seafoods AS in Bergen came up with the original idea. He said: “It was my dream to be able to control the conditions in which the fish was dried, so that we can sell only excellent quality dried fish to Europe, and in particular the Italian market which is the biggest single market for prime quality stockfish.”
The EU project which came out of his idea was led by John-Erik Haugen, senior scientist at Nofima, who developed an efficient indoor drying process based on the optimal weather conditions for traditional outdoor drying.
But while traditional outdoor drying on racks takes approximately four months, the indoor drying process takes less than one month to produce high-quality dried fish.
The EU project has included provisional cost-benefit calculations, and these show that the new method is economically viable.
The Italian food producer Il Cepp, which has 80 years of experience with dried fish, carried out consumer surveys in Italy in which blind tests were carried sampling both the indoor and the outdoor dried fish.
Initial tests revealed that the pilot product is of high quality and just as good as those based on traditional outdoor products.
Nofima and Athena Seafoods are now working together to further develop the concept, with a view to commercialisation.
