balut

balut - /ba-lùt/ (Tagalog [Metro Manilan, Lagueño and Bulaqueño), Batangueño, Mindoreño, Cebuano, Boholano, Waray, Ilonggo, Masbateño, Bicolano, Ilocano, Pangasinense, Itawis, Ibanag, and Capampangan, Surigaonon, and Zamboangueño delicacy) [n.] boiled fertilized egg of itik (mallard duck), approximately 16 to 19 days old of incubation with the almost fully developed embryo or chick inside the shell.

Other local name:

• a.k.a. balut sa puti in Tagalog

The cooked duck embryo of a fertilized duck egg is so-called balut sa puti because the biggest part of the embryo is still wrapped in egg white, fondly called by Pinoys as bato (stone) being the toughest part of balut that would require a lot of chewing to fully masticate it. 

The famed balut sa puti is in the center stage among the pulutan (food served with the wines) when the classy Planet Grapes of Tuscany, McKinley Hill in BGC introduces their concept of pairing world-class wines with Pinoy street foods themed as "wine meets street food." Here, a hard-boiled balut egg becomes the centerpiece.

A table setting of  Planet Grapes' "wine meets street food" with balut egg as the centerpiece on each plate.

Balut has found also its way on classy food stalls such as this bucket of balut  eggs offered to customers at daytime Mercato Centrale in Bonifacio Global City (BGC - The Fort), Taguig City

Removing the shell before your eyes under an open light is not for the weak at heart. It is suggested that you eat balut without looking at the egg content, or better yet eat this while hiding in the dark.

Balut is eaten by first cracking an opening at the tip of the egg by tapping it lightly against a hard surface. Using the finger, the shards on the cracked portion are removed to expose the veiny thin film that would easily peel off or burst open, further exposing the watery content (amniotic fluid) of balut. More often, the thin film on the side would adhere and peel off with the shard of the shell. A pinch of salt is then sprinkled into the hole and/or doused with a little amount of vinegar. 

More often, balut is cracked and opened only on the top side, then a pinch of salt is sprinkled all over the exposed boiled chick. The juice (amniotic fluid) is then slurped or sipped out.

The juice (amniotic fluid) in the egg is immediately sipped out or slurped to savor the taste. When drained, the rest of the shell is cracked open and discarded to expose the whole content of the balut. 

Sprinkling more salt or dousing more vinegar may be needed before biting or mouthing the whole content of the balut. 

For those who cannot brave the sight of the veiny yolk and the hairy dead chick, it is advised to take balut at night or in a dark room or unlighted places. This probably is the reason why balut is popularly sold and available in the streets at night. 

Balut is not unique to the Philippines, as it can be found also in other Asian countries where it is known to have another name and is served or eaten with different condiments. 

Balut is high in protein and is valued by Pinoys for its nutritional benefits, considered by most locales as vigor enhancing delicacy and as an aphrodisiac.  

Click the image for you to find out why it is advised that you eat this delicacy at night or under the cover of darkness. Disgusting for some. It's yucky but yummy exotic food for those who have tried it.

Balut is sold in almost all cities and big towns all over the Philippines. In Bacolod City, the egg is always kept warm over a steamer that is also used in heating boiled peanuts.

In Guadalupe Nuevo (Tulay), Makati City, workers would stop to buy and eat balut from a sidewalk stall beside the Guadalupe wet market.

Vendors and bargain hunters in Divisoria of Tondo, Manila are also offered the delicacy.

Balut has no marking - Marking boiled eggs with a distinctive line or mark using a pencil or pentel pen is done to easily distinguish balut sa puti from the balut penoy, such as this tray of balut with a bottle of spiced vinegar sold on the sidewalk under the viaduct in Alabang, Muntinlupa City. The marked eggs are the balut penoy, while the unmarked ones are balut sa puti. 

Production of balut is also done now in other provinces throughout the country where eggs of itik are available. 

The famed balut in Pateros of Metro Manila no longer originates in this town after duck farming was wiped out by the intrusion of modern development in Metro Manila. 

Most duck eggs used in making balut in Pateros are now sourced from the duck raisers in Pampanga, Bulacan, and Nueva Ecija provinces. 

Due to the limited supply of duck eggs, commercially produced brown chicken eggs are now fast becoming an alternative to making balut, known as balut itlog manok.  

While in Cebu City, balut is available day and night at the Fuente Osmeñia Park.

Balut eggs can also be served in several ways. It can be cooked in tomato sauce to become balut caldereta or balut afritada, or in a soup like a balut a la pobre, and as paste or spread for bread, as in balut pate.

Though considered a delicacy by some Pinoys, balut is considered unclean or filth by the followers of the Islamic faith and is Haram (forbidden) in Islamic Laws because it comes under the heading of eating maytah, or that the animal has died without being slaughtered properly. 

Eating maytah is definitely Haram according to Islam. Thus, balut should not be served to Muslims so as not to offend or insult them.

Crazymix meme on FB

Related posts:

Balot itlog manok

Orange egg barbecue

Ebun a barag

Guinness's largest serving of balut in Pateros

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Edgie Polistico

one-day-old chick

Freshly fried one day old chicks at the Public Market of Alabang, Muntinlupa City.

one-day-old chick – (wan de owld tsik; Tagalog delicacy) [n.] deep-fried one-day-old chick. 

A delicacy in the Philipines that is made with a chick of a fully fertilized chicken egg or the day-old chicken (DOC). The chick could  had just been hatched or is about to be hatched on that day. It is another gross-looking Filipino street food but is considered a favorite delicacy by some locals because of its savory taste. 

Another tray of still to be fried one day old chicks found in the grocery of Market Market in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City.

If the chick in the egg is still to be hatched, as in between 20 to 21 days of incubation period, the eggs are prematurely cracked open and the chicks are removed from the shells. The chicks are then parboiled to easily remove visible hairs and then fried in deep oil until  crisp and reddish or brownish-orange in color.

Fried one-day-old chicks are served either skewered in bamboo sticks or put in a plastic cups and drenched in spiced-up vinegar or sweet brown sauce.

A gruesome story behind one-day-old chicks.

Did you know that the major source of one-day-old chicks delicacy are culled male chicks from the egg farms?

It is a practice for poultry producers that they would favor to grow female chicken for meat as they grow faster.  They would routinely and systematically remove the male chicks at the very start of growing the chick in a process known as culling or the harvesting and killing of chicks.

In the industry of growing chickens, chicken farmers would start to cull their chicks out of fear that the cost of poultry production will continue to rise while poultry  income would drop due to low farm gate prices or too much overhead expenses.

Poultry farmers would routinely  cull male chicks  as part of their cost-cutting strategy for poultry production and to increase their return on investment.  Male chicks are not grown  for meat as they would cost more to feed and house than they would produce income.  

Biologically, it is impossible for male chickens to lay eggs as they do not have ovaries where eggs are developed inside the chicken's body. Only female chickens have an ovary and are able to lay eggs. The females could also lay eggs continuously even if there is no male chicken present. Yes, they can spontaneously develop an egg inside their bodies and lay eggs all by themselves. Males have no role in the egg-laying process.  The females (hen or pullets) would only need a male (rooster or cockerel) when it comes to fertilizing an egg to produce another batch or next generation of chicks. 

Thus, male chicks are deemed worthless in the egg industry and they are mercilessly culled or brutally killed.

Culling usually starts as early as when the undesired chicks are hatched or just a day-old chicks. In big poultry farms, chicks are routinely culled by shredding them alive, though some farmers would electrocute, suffocate in bags, or gas the chicks to death before macerating them. Some would resort to brutal killing by using extremely cruel techniques of shredding chicks alive, burning, crushing, drowning, electrocuting, gassing using CO2 gas, or suffocating them in bags. 

In 2021, it was reported that a total of more than 6 billion chicks are killed every year around the world by industrial farmers as they are considered useless by both egg and chicken meat producers.

However, in the Philippines, culled chicks are sold to street food entrepreneurs  who would then fry the chicks in oil and sold as a delicacy.    

The advancing technology of eliminating male chicks.

Even when in-ovo sexing technology is implemented to help abolish the culling of male chicks, as what the animal welfare activists are lobbying for, Philippine's one-day-old chicks delicacy will not totally disappear in the food map. In-ovo sexing is just a process of determining the sex of a chicken before the egg hatches. Thus, fully developed chicks are still there waiting to be cracked open and fried into a "one-day-old chick" Pinoy food delicacy. 

What may likely stop male chicks from fully developing and being allowed to hatch and be culled is the use of "endocrinological gender identification" technology, a kind of test similar to a human pregnancy test. It is done during the 8th to 14th day incubation period when a sample of liquid from each fertilized egg is taken and examined for the presence of a female hormone by looking for a color-changing reaction. The female eggs continue toward hatching, while the male eggs will be removed and used for animal feed for us Filipinos, we can boil these eggs and pass them on as the chicken version of balut penoy.

But endocrinological gender identification is far from becoming a normal practice aside from being a very costly process. There is an issue that complicates this process - that it is uncertain when an embryo becomes a chick to feel pain. Some researchers say chick embryos can begin to experience pain at day 7 of incubation. If true, sexing the eggs 8 to 14 days after incubation would end up trading animal welfare problems even if electricity is used to help anesthetize the eggs.

Unless technology is developed that can control and change the sex of chicks before they even hatch, culling male chicks will not stop.  The technique could be the use of hormonal treatments, where the future fertilized egg will permanently produce all-female laying-breed chicks. From then, culling chicks will be eliminated and one-day-old chicks may start to dwindle and disappear in the street food markets.

References: 

• Poultry World, "Philippine farmers cull chicken early to improve local prices," Jul 11, 2012, https://www.poultryworld.net/Broilers/Markets--Trade/2012/7/Philippine-farmers-cull-chicken-early-to-improve-local-prices-WP010623W/

• Animal Equality,  "STOP THE MASSACRE OF MALE CHICKS," https://animalequality.org/action/ban-chick-culling

• Danovich, Tove K., "Why the US egg industry is still killing 300 million chicks a year," Vox, Apr 12, 2021, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22374193/eggs-chickens-animal-welfare-culling

• CNN Philippines, "France to ban mass shredding of live chicks," Sara Spary, Saskya Vandoorne and Fanny Bobille, CNN, Jan 30, 2020, https://cnnphilippines.com/world/2020/1/30/france-bans-chick-shredding.html?fbclid=IwAR29lVpv_FInQ-fEhjc3ZDLHOkk2hX8sEzGAnCMkGKyXUSsOT2t3BH3ynzU

All photos by Edgie Polistico in this blog are copyrighted. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

See Index of Entries here

If you liked this post and our site, share it.

Let us know your opinion on the subject. Feel free to comment in the comment section, below. It is important for us to know what you think.

Tell us what other topics you would like us to write, share, and discuss about.

For more about Filipino food, see  this Philippine Food, Cooking, and Dining Dictionary. It is OPEN and FREE.

Continue to follow my blogs. You can also follow and learn more by joining us in our Facebook group. Have more bits and pieces about our kind of food, ingredients, and ways of cooking, dining, and knowing food culture across the 7,641 islands of the Philippines.

Encouragement and enthusiasm are not enough. I also need moral support, prayers, and anything else that can uplift my spirit and keep my good reasons. Keep them coming. All I know is that I am happy with what I am sharing and giving away. If you are pleased and happy with what I am doing, just smile and please share the happiness. Keep sharing and include to share the PHILIPPINE FOOD ILLUSTRATED. I feel energized when my blog becomes one of the reasons why you are happy and smiling.

Edgie Polistico