Drying Prawns in Sekinchan

In an effort to take my nieces and nephews out to the nature, instead of just visiting malls when they came up to KL for their holiday, we took a 1.5 hour drive down to Kuala Selangor and Sekinchan.

We stumbled upon a dried prawn cottage industry when driving along the small lanes in Sekinchan's fishing village, known as Bagan Sekinchan.  It's the first time for all of us as we did not know how are dried prawns made.

The shelled-prawns are first poured into a big tank filled with salt and water. After boiling them, they are taken out to dry under the sun.  As it was a very hot day during our Thursday's visit, we were told that 5 hours would be sufficient to dry the prawns.  The dried prawns will then be placed in a machine that would crush their shells.  The tiny dust of shells would be separated when the prawns are filtered. That will then be followed by the difficult task of picking out the bigger pieces of shells from the prawns. The work involved are tedious and that explains why dried prawns are pricey at RM40 per kg.



A worker spreading out boiled prawns for drying under the hot sun.


Prawns are boiled in the big tank with salt water before it is dried.



The dried prawns that are ready to be collected.



The tedious tasks of picking shells pieces from the prawns.