Balut Is a Filipino Egg Delicacy

Tagged with eggs, fish, philippines on June 24, 2024

Whenever I think of balut, I think of the egg with legs in the old cartoons from the 1960s. A chicken that’s not quite ready to hatch.

Balut is a fertilized developing egg embryo, boiled and eaten from the shell. It can be a chicken egg or a duck egg. Balut made with a duck egg is supposed to be the most common, but how would I know?

Balut Isn’t Just a Street Food Anymore

Perhaps it started out that way, but it’s now sold in various markets. I remember, when I was in the Philippines in the 1980s, frequently hearing the street vendors yelling out “balut” as they walked from street to street. I haven’t heard it at all since I started living here (since 2006). Perhaps it’s because our house isn’t close to the downtown areas, or perhaps it isn’t as popular as it once was.

I have two daughters-in-law, Cathy (a Filipino like my wife, Josie) and Diann (married to a Filipino). Cathy can eat balut every day of the week. I doubt Diann has ever tried one, and I doubt she ever will.

Cathy found balut at a place called Seafood City in Waipahu, one of the many cities we regularly visited on the island of Oahu in Hawaii a few years ago. I didn’t know where else it was sold on the island, and I wasn’t inclined to find out. We went to Seafood City on the occasions when she wanted fresh fish, dried fish, balut or some other food Filipinos seem to be fond of.

After her military husband (my younger son, Jon) got transferred back to the mainland, she found out about a farm that could make them and ship them to her home. Now she can eat all the balut she wants. Josie can eat balut, but she isn’t as fond of it, and she won’t order it from someone she doesn’t know.

Filipino Cuisines and Delicacies

Some Filipino dishes are excellent, and some aren’t good at all. I don’t like bagoong (fermented fish or shrimp paste), but I’ve had pakbet a couple of times, which is made with it as an ingredient. I won’t touch dinuguan (made with pig blood).

Most of the rice and fruit-based dishes are exceptional, although I can’t name them all. I like halo-halo and ginataan when I want something sweet (which is a rare thing nowadays). Anything made with rice is usually good to go.

I tried a single balut once in 1983, but I couldn’t do anything more than drink the “juice” from inside the shell. It wasn’t the smell or the taste that kept me from finishing it. It was the thought of what I was eating. I’m sure I wouldn’t have had a problem with it if I hadn’t been sober at the time, but I was. From what I remember, most other Americans couldn’t eat it while sober back then either.

Balut is something I might eat again when I’m starving to death, after an apocalypse or something.

Image by Ischaramoochie at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons