Are there Fake Fish Maws?
Due to its high value and limited supply, fish maw is often imitated. Unethical businessmen use seafood such as squid, fish skin or fin soaked in hydrogen peroxide and sulfur followed by heat process to produce the fake versions. Some use pig’s skin or plastic to create them, some even collect substandard, low value and broken fish maw then pour them into a special mold and further process to make them disguised as top grade product.
Eating fake fish maw is definitely a no go as the ingredients and process of making it is unknown to us and possibly endanger your health. Which is why, we need to at least know a bit of knowledge in distinguishing real and fake Fish Maw.
How to spot real and fake Fish Maw
Color and Patterns
Dried Fish Maw has uneven golden yellow color and natural orderly line patterns.
Slight Fishy Smell
Dried Fish Maw should have fishy smell, not oily smell or any odd smell. However, the fishy smell of dried fish maw gets lessen as time pass by. Thus, try to focus in avoiding oily smell or any odd smell.
Not Perfect
The making of dried fish maw involves human labors and time consuming. Human may made mistakes in not cleaning the fish maw thoroughly leaving blood stain on dried fish maw.
Soaking
If you have bought the dried fish maw or fish maw back home, try soaking them in water. The water should be clear, not cloudy, no oily smell and leave no weird residue.
Buy Them only from reputable shops
You are strongly advised to buy fish maw from reputable shops only because at least they helps you filter out fake and substandard fish maw. Plus, dried fish maws are expensive, you would not want to get scam away few hundreds bucks. If the shop is able to be transparent in how they get their fish maw, who is their supplier and how they process it, that is definitely a bonus.
Hope this article is useful. Feel free to comment for any questions and corrections.
Thank you !
References
http://www.emperorbrandbirdnest.com/our-news/product-knowledge/about-fish-maw.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCYI9yFiPO8
https://www.yujiao.org/hjdzf/1429.html
https://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/news/20130528/00174_001.html