Ut Dinh shrimp crackers

Mrs. Cai Thi Dinh with her shrimp cracker product. Photo: DANG LINH

Although her family has hundreds of hectares of rice fields, and she has to worry about farming all year round, for Mrs. Dinh, the greatest joy is not in the season of heavy rice grains, but in... each batch of square, fragrant, crispy shrimp crackers. She said that in the past, her mother was very skillful, making all kinds of cakes: pork skin, sponge cake, sandwich cake... When she was young, her mother told her to learn the trade, she just smiled and said: "It's very hard, I won't learn!". Who would have thought that later she would love making cakes more than anyone else. Perhaps, the fate of the profession has crept into each batch of flour, each piece of cake dried in the sun, and then one day, it rose up into a true passion.

At first, Mrs. Dinh tried making shrimp crackers the way she remembered from the times she helped her mother, but the first batch was fried, the crackers were not puffy, crispy, or chewy, she smiled but felt sad inside. She failed and tried again, batch after batch, sometimes she got bored and wanted to give up. But thinking "if you keep failing and giving up, what can you do?", she started again. She took notes, compared, thought of ways to mix the dough, changed the ratio of shrimp, refined flour, egg whites, and spices. The shrimp were raised ecologically in the rice fields, just caught from the square, still fresh, washed and ground by machine, mixed well with the dough until it was really soft, spread thinly and dried in the sun.

The batch of rice paper after many failures was now crispier, golden brown in the pan of oil, Mrs. Dinh was so happy that she was moved to tears. The aroma of shrimp mixed with the fatty taste of flour, the scent of sunshine, all made the cake crispy, with a "crack" you can feel the taste of home spreading in your mouth. She said, the best rice paper is fried over medium heat or put in an air fryer. Friends who tried it all praised, saying "Ut Dinh's rice paper is better than other places, the shrimp smell is fragrant but not fishy", and then invited each other to order. From then on, the good news spread far and wide, some people even brought the rice paper to Korea and the US as gifts.

Seeing that Ms. Dinh was doing well in business, the local government supported her, guided her in registering a trademark, and completed her application to join the OCOP program. As for her, despite her constant work in the fields, she still took the time to attend the "High-tech Agriculture " class opened by the Provincial Cooperative Union. "Learning to know how to make packaging, preserve, take beautiful photos of products, and post them on Facebook and Zalo for customers to see. Doing business without learning and changing will make it difficult to last long," Ms. Dinh acknowledged.

Ut Dinh brand shrimp cracker products meet 3-star OCOP standards. Photo: DANG LINH

Ut Dinh shrimp crackers were recognized as a 3-star OCOP standard product at the end of 2024. Now, her dedication is known to many people, both supplying to the commune market and accepting online orders. As Chairwoman of the Board of Directors and Director of Bao Mon Agricultural Cooperative, Ms. Dinh hopes to develop the Ut Dinh shrimp crackers brand not only to enrich her family but also to create jobs for cooperative members, raising the value of shrimp raised by local people.

Looking at the neatly arranged stacks of shrimp crackers, the packaging printed with bright red shrimp, next to the QR code that can trace the origin of the product, Mrs. Dinh shared with radiant eyes: "I hope that in the future, Ut Dinh shrimp crackers will be known by more people, so that the shrimp raised in my hometown will have more output, people will have more jobs, and can improve their lives."

DANG LINH

Source: https://baoangiang.com.vn/banh-phong-tom-ut-dinh-a464597.html