, made of ground fish
Fish pastes have been a popular food in
East Asia. In China, the food is used to make
fish balls (魚蛋/魚丸) and ingredients in a thick soup known as
geng (羹), common in
Fujian cuisine. In
Japan, the earliest surimi production was in 1115 for making
kamaboko.
Alaska pollock, native to the seas around Japan, played an important role in the development of processed surimi due to its high protein biomass.
Satsumaage,
chikuwa, and
hanpen were other major surimi foods prior to 1960. After World War II, machines were used to process surimi, but it was always sold fresh, since freezing had a negative effect on the finished product by denaturing the gel-forming capability of the surimi. Between 1945 and 1950, record catches of pollock in Hokkaido (primarily for harvesting the
roe) resulted in large quantities of fish meat, so the Hokkaido Fisheries Research Station established a team to make better use of the excess. A team, led by K. Nishiya, discovered the addition of salt during the processing prevented the spongy texture that resulted after freezing, and also began using salted surimi in the manufacture of fish sausages. In 1969, Nishitani Yōsuke further discovered that the use of
sucrose, or other carbohydrates, such as
sorbitol, acted as a cryoprotectant by stabilizing the
actomyosin in the surimi without denaturing the fish protein the way salt does. The
decanter technique, developed in the mid-1990s, further improved the recovery of fish meat during the washing process. == Use and labelling ==