Balut

Fertilized Eggs and the Making of Culinary Capital in the Filipino Diaspora

Margaret Magat

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781350257962
• eBook ISBN: 9781474280334
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this book, Margaret Magat explores both the traditional and popular culture contexts of eating balut. Balut-fertilized duck or chicken eggs that have developed into fully formed embryos with feathers and beaks-is a delicacy which elicits passionate responses. Hailed as an aphrodisiac in Filipino culture, balut is often seen and used as an object of revulsion in Western popular culture. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, reality television programs, travel shows, food blogs, and balut-eating contests, Magat examines balut production and consumption, its role in drinking rituals, sex, and also the vampire-like legends behind it. Balut reveals how traditional foods are used in the performance of identity and ethnicity, inspiring a virtual online cottage industry via social media. It also looks at the impact globalization and migration are having on cultural practices and food consumption across the world. The first academic book on balut, this is essential reading for anyone in food studies, folklore studies, anthropology, and Asian American studies.

1

Why Eat Balut? Consumption and Tradition

While balut entered the popular imaginary of the West only fairly recently, it has long been a part of the Philippines’ culture. In The History of Mankind (1896–1898), geographer Friedrich Ratzel describes that “the Tagals are said to have learnt from the Chinese to eat eggs that have been sat upon, with the chick in them, as tit-bits” (1896–1898:432; as cited in Magat 2002). The indigenous Igorots, who live in the highlands of Luzon, Philippines, were noted as eating eggs that have been developed, or “until there is something in the egg to eat” (Jenks 1905:143).

By the 1950s, balut was as ubiquitous in Manila much like “hotdogs” in the United States (Maness 1950:10), and it was hailed as the “national passion” (Mydans 1997). It is now found widely beyond the Luzon region and sold throughout the Philippines such as the Visayas and in the southern region of Mindanao (Reyes-Estrope 2017).

What has taken balut from its relative obscurity as an ordinary street food to be a famous attraction in the West? What are the factors that have influenced its popularity? This chapter situates the cultural practice of eating balut within its traditional and historical contexts. Fieldwork conducted in a duck farm and farmers’ markets as well as interviews with balut producers and distributors provide a picture of balut production and distribution in the United States. In examining the cultural factors involved in eating balut, this chapter sets up the subsequent chapters that investigate why balut consumption has become such a visible, often-contested act in the United States.

The egg and its contents

Most everyone is familiar with the unfertilized egg, that when boiled, results in a solid yolk and a soft white albumen. A balut egg, in contrast, is a fertilized egg that has a growing embryo inside it. When boiled for about 20 minutes, a 17-day-old balut egg, as it is preferred by Filipinos, has four noticeable components: the soup or broth, the yolk, the embryo, and the white or hard albumen. To consume it properly, one first taps the wide part of the egg to crack a hole in the shell. After peeling off the shell and membrane, the soup is sipped before the egg is further peeled and the entire egg is eaten in two or three bites. Sometimes, the albumen or white part of the egg (called bato or rock for its tough and rubbery texture) is discarded but it is edible. Depending on the age of the balut egg, the embryo may already have discernible feathers, bones, and a beak. One can tell a balut egg is fresh if the liquid broth is still present. If not, that egg is most likely old or dried up. The majority of my online respondents describe balut as delicious, with the broth tasting like “intense chicken soup.”

The embryo or chick is relatively a tiny one at 17 days, the preferred stage for Filipinos. There is hardly a feather or any hard bones that are felt at this stage. The older the balut, the more the embryo is developed with a more defined beak, head, and feathers. The perfect balut is balut sa puti (egg in white) where the embryo is wrapped in the albumen and unseen when one first cracks open the balut. The other kind of balut is mamatong balut where the embryo “floats” on top of the yolk and the hard albumen. In mamatong balut, one is confronted with the bird from the beginning, which may explain why traditionally, Filipinos eat the balut quickly and not linger over looking at it. It is said that one way to tell if a balut is mamatong balut would be to drop it in a bowl of water to see if it floats. If it rests on the surface of the water, then it is believed to be a mamatong balut, and if it sinks, then it is thought to be balut sa puti.

Balut is best eaten warm and not cold, with a twist of salt or splash of vinegar, chile, or with herbs the way it is enjoyed in Vietnam and Cambodia. It is meant to be eaten with friends and family or in a social setting where drinks such as beer and other alcoholic beverages are available. These drinking sessions are called “inuman” in the Philippines and one normally serves balut as a pulutan (appetizer) in these kinds of events. This social aspect of eating balut is confirmed by the majority of my online respondents who ate balut with others.

Influenced by Chinese medicine, balut is considered by Filipinos to be a “hot” food that will increase the yang and raise the qi. Therefore, it is not prescribed for individuals suffering from fever. Some of my interviewees also noted its high cholesterol amount. But others like balut distributor Butch Coyoca believe that balut is a “powerbar, a superfood” that compensates with vitamins for those who are not sleeping enough (Magat 2002).

Although balut is usually consumed as a snack or pulutan, it can also be served as a dish with rice. It can be put inside dough and baked in a ramekin as it was prepared in the Philippines, or fried in garlic with lots of butter as it is done in Matthew’s Grill, a popular restaurant in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The presence of balut has been documented in Greenland and in places as diverse as Sydney, Rome, and Prague; in short, wherever Southeast Asians, especially Filipinos, work and congregate as one of the largest diasporic populations.

In 2019, the Philippines’s population was estimated to be about 109 million, and its capital is Manila (Figure 1). Described as the world’s most densely populated city with about 46,000 people per square mile (Weller 2016), more than 12 million live in the greater Metro Manila area. Imposing skyscrapers and air-conditioned megamalls packed with luxury goods command attention and invite consumption while numerous shanties and poverty-stricken communities are evidence of the uneven economic development in this predominantly Christian country.

Figure 1 Map of the Philippines.

About 11 percent of Filipinos work as Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in over 100 countries. The top 10 countries are the United States, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, Italy, United Kingdom, Qatar, and Singapore, and Figure 2 provides estimates of the number of OFWs in those respective countries. Overall, the diaspora population of OFWs is estimated to be twice the population of New Zealand (Gonzalez 2012:16). In 2017, OFWs sent back an estimated $28.1 billion in remittances (Cuaresma 2018). A visible product of those remittances can be seen, for example, in new subdivisions in Batangas where mansions with Roman columns and gleaming marble were built with the funds from those OFWs working and living in Italy (Magat 2003).

Figure 2 Map showing Filipino diasporic population in top 10 countries—Courtesy of Commission on Filipinos Overseas.

As testament to the cosmopolitan experiences and tastes of its citizens, food of all kinds can be found in Manila. From the best Spanish tapas restaurants to Mediterranean eateries, hamburger chains to shawarmas on the go, Filipinos are familiar with foods from around the world. “The country’s food taste are now shaped by a transnational population proud of its regional culinary traditions and open to new ideas brought to the country by overseas foreign workers” (Orquiza 2013:184).

In addition to the variety in cuisines, regional variation is evident within the archipelago. Three main regions of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao are known for particular dishes. In Ilocos Norte, in Luzon, pinakbet makes use of bitter melon and fermented shrimp paste, while spicy chilies and coconut milk are enjoyed in Bicol in the Visayas region (Magat 2015). In Mindanao, both Indian and Arab influences are evident with the heavy use of spices (Fernandez 2003:65). But some dishes such as adobo, sinigang, and kinilaw are found throughout, albeit with variations in preparation and ingredients. A favorite snack, balut is one of those foods that can also be found all over the Philippines, despite its past history when it was eaten more in Luzon (Lopez 1986:363).

Balut is a food of the everyday and has now arguably become a dish identified with the Philippines, despite its consumption throughout Southeast Asia. This is because balut is found “all the time and everywhere—on streets, at stalls, outside movie houses, outside nightclubs and discos, in markets; by vendors walking, sitting, or squatting; at midnight and early dawn, at breakfast, lunch, merienda, and dinner time” (Fernandez 1994:10).

No matter if the setting is urban or rural, balut can be easily be procured in the Philippines. In transport centers in the city, where a high rate of customers is vying to catch a crowded bus or jeepney, balut vendors hawk their wares in the spaces where people jostle on their way to catch rides. In the rural areas, balut vendors wander the streets and call out in a sing-song voice that they have balut. The urban areas also now have balut in expensive malls (Figure 3), whereas in the rural provinces, it can easily be found in a sari-sari (mixed-mixed or variety store) that caters to locals. As one heads out of Manila city into the countryside, balut can be found in the commercial plazas that have sprouted along the highways, where one can fuel up on gas and food.

Figure 3 Organic balut by Green Babes in the Philippines.

As of May 2018, during a trip to the Philippines, I noted the average price of 17 pesos to 20 pesos per balut egg, or 33–38 cents at the current exchange rate. This makes the $4.00 price tag per balut egg in New York restaurants particularly eyebrow-raising. Balut is sold by itself or with salted eggs, which have traditionally been eaten with tomatoes and onions as a type of salad or used as a topping for bibingka (a type of rice cake). Salted duck eggs have made its way into flavoring potato chips and being featured on “putopao,” a hybrid combining puto (another type of rice cake) with siopao (char sui bao, or meat bun).

Despite the decline of the balut industry in Pateros, a municipality in the Metro Manila area, balut is still tied to its reputation. Pateros is now mostly a residential area, however, and there are plans by the municipal government to buy incubators for its residents as an attempt to reinvigorate the balut-making tradition (De Guzman 2017). The fact remains that access to clean water is what ducks need and Pateros no longer has that. Balut vendors can still be found in Pateros but they obtain their eggs elsewhere (De Guzman 2017).

Balut remains a part of the cultural landscape as well as the soundscape of the Philippines. At night, in local neighborhoods or around nightclubs, bars, or transportation centers, one hears the howling call from vendors advertising its availability. Each vendor would often have his/her own style of calling “bal-uuuut!” which can vary from person to person. The balut eggs are carried in baskets covered with materials to keep the eggs warm. They are served with a twist of salt, along with other condiments such as vinegar and chile. In short, balut can be readily obtained whenever a speedy, protein-filled snack is needed.

The hawking cadence of the “balut” call has been parodied in songs and YouTube videos, but it is a part of Filipino culture that has not translated to the United States where balut is sold in farmers’ markets, Asian grocery stores, and duck farms like Metzer Farms in Gonzales, California. The one exception I know about is of a New York restaurant that provides balut accompanied by the servers calling out “ba-luut!” whenever a patron orders the dish.

A brief foray into the geography and history of the Philippines is essential to understand the influences of what is now called Filipino cuisine. More than anything, it is a record of the historical trading, 300-plus years of colonization, as well as the contemporary influences that have left marks on the dishes that have become “Filipinized” through the process of indigenization via modes of preparation, condiments, and local ingredients (Fernandez 2003).

Philippines: geography and history

The Philippine archipelago is made up of over 7,000 islands with terrain composed of mountains, streams, valleys, and bays that influence regional varieties in cuisine. Only about a thousand islands are inhabited and its coastline is measured at 36,289 kilometers long. From the northern tip of the Ilocos region to about a thousand miles to the south to Mindanao, the archipelago contains an astonishing variety of endemic species, animals as well as plants. For example, more than 100 endemic mammal species live in the Philippines, including the Philippine tarsier. In some areas of Luzon and Mindanao, the topography is 25 million years old while other parts of the country are estimated to be 100,000 to 10 million years old (Francia 2010:25).

Little is known about the natives who occupied pre-colonial Philippines as they relied on oral tradition and documents which were written were destroyed by the Spanish. The oldest written document that has been found in the Philippines is the Laguna Copper-Plate Inscription, dated 900 CE. Discovered in 1989 by a worker near the mouth of the Lumbang River in Laguna, the copper plate writing, a debt acquittal, included Sanskrit and old Malay languages. It proved that the country or at least a part of it had an organized customary law system in place some 600 years before Spanish colonization, and that there was a thriving relationship with Java and other nearby kingdoms (Postma 1992). By the tenth century, China had become a trading partner as well (Scott 1989).

The first time Westerners set eyes on the archipelago was on March 16, 1521, when the Portuguese explorer named Ferdinand Magellan under the employ of the Spanish caught sight of the island of Leyte, in the Visayas region (Karnow 1989:34; Rafael 2000). Magellan had been in search of s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Series
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword: In the Light of What We Don’t Know
• Introduction
• 1 Why Eat Balut? Consumption and Tradition
• 2 A Nation in an Egg
• 3 The Sensual and Supernatural in Balut Lore
• 4 Performing Identity through Balut-Eating Contests
• 5 Balut: The Super Clickbait of the Internet
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Imprint