How to Make Bagoong Pangasinan: Heavenly, Stinking Fish Sauce

A visit or a drive-by Pangasinan won't ever be complete without noticing stalls and stalls of various Pangasinan pasalubong in bottles called bagoong and patis, but it's more enlightening if a short visit to a bagoong factory, particularly in Lingayen, would be made for a short cultural tour of bagoong making.

How to make Bagoong?

Bagoong's ingredients are just fish (usually galunggong (round scad), dilis (anchovy) and tirong (similar to dilis)), solar salt (naturally evaporated salt from seawater sourced mainly from the towns of Bolinao and Anda, Pangasinan) and water, mixed together and left to ferment for a few months in earthen pots called burnay in Ilocos. It's a process where patis is also created.

a room full of earthen pots, called burnay in the vernacular, where bagoong fermentation process takes place for a few months
burnay jar with bagoong up close
a motion-blurred picture of a bagoong maker stirring the stinking concoction of fermented fish, salt and water
patis (fish sauce) and bagoong for sale at a roadside stall selling pasalubong on the national highway in Lingayen, Pangasinan

With the mixture of fish, salt and water fermenting inside the clay pots (the burnay) for a few months resulting in the exotic aroma loved by many, hated by some, combine it with calamansi for a truly Filipino dip for almost everything or an ulam by itself to underprivileged Filipinos.

Bagoong is loved so much by Filipinos that it's not uncommon to see them at airports trying to "smuggle" bottles hand-carried only to be intercepted at destination airports abroad by customs and quarantine people (e.g. Australia and the US).

Bagoong, the stinking fish sauce of Pangasinan: Smells like hell yet tastes like heaven.


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Rufina Patis Factory, Malabon