BALUT Craving Satisfied

Last night my tita invited me to buy a balut.
Balut vendors tend to come out at night.
You can eat your balut street-side, or take it home.
Balut is Filipino street food made by hard-boiling a fertilized and incubated duck egg.

Balut is a boiled egg that contains not only a yolk but also a semi-developed duck embryo. Often hailed as one of the Philippines’ most iconic and exotic delicacies, it is cracked open and eaten with a dash of salt and not much else.

To make it, the duck eggs are brought to the magbabalot (“mag-ba-ba-loht,” balut maker) on the day the eggs are laid. The fertilized duck eggs (determined through candling) are incubated in baskets surrounded by warmed rice husks until they’re ready to be boiled and sold.

Vendors used to shout “Baluuuuuuuut!” as they walked the streets or pedaled around, drawing out the second syllable for as long as they could.

But truth be told, when you eat balut, you don’t pick the contents apart and stare. The way to eat it is to crack open the shell at the narrow end and peel off a small hole in the membrane lining the shell. Sprinkle in some rock salt and slurp out the clear sabaw, or “soup”—this is your appetizer! (Technically, it’s, um, amniotic fluid.) Then peel and eat as you would a hard-boiled egg, and expect a bit more texture. Dipping salt and/or vinegar are added to taste.

@nenennikka