Balut/Balot/Baloooooooot

The ultimate Filipino street food that is likewise a challenge both for other Filipinos (who does not want to try this) and even foreigners are our famous Balut. Balut is a duck embryo or duck fetus or the unborn duck or even the infamous and one of the most popular "weird" foods in the world.

How to Make Balut

1. Select eggs that are fit for incubation. Eggs should come from mated flocks, and be not more than five days old. They should have thick shells without any cracks.
2. Preheat the selected eggs under the sun for three to five hours.
3. Heat some unpolished rice in an iron cauldron or vat until it reaches a temperature of about 42 to 42.5 degrees C (107 to 108 degrees F).
4. Put 100 to 125 eggs into a large cloth made of either abaca (sinamay) or nylon.
5. Place a layer of heated rice at the bottom of a cylindrical bamboo incubator basket (45 cm in diameter and 60 cm deep, Fig.1 and Fig. 2(1031)), and place a bag of eggs on the rice. Alternate the bags of eggs with the bags of heated rice. Eight bags of eggs will fit into the basket. Bamboo baskets can be arranged either in a single row along the wall of the balutan, or in double rows placed in the middle of the balutan. Rice hull is firmly tamped down between baskets as an insulator.
6. Turn the eggs at least two or three times a day ( Fig. 3(717)).
7. Heat the rice in the morning and in the afternoon on cool days.
8. Candle the eggs on the 7th, 14th and 18th day to select infertile eggs; D1 (dead embryo on first candling) and D2 (dead embryo on second candling). The infertile eggs, both D1 and D2, are removed, hard-boiled, and sold as a snack.
9. Eggs containing a normal embryo candled on the 16th to 18th day should be hard boiled and sold as balut or hot vit lon.

Scorching hot balut (hardboiled duck eggs with a partially developed 16- to 18-day old duck embryo inside) and penoy (an infertile incubated duck egg or with dead embryo) for a mid-afternoon snack for my then 12-year-old daughter (her sister was taking a nap) and a late lunch for me. You can see the partially developed duck embryo covered in egg white in the balut photo (left). I cracked the shell before taking the photo to be able to identify the parts. The veins are visible from the interior of the shell. The yolk is divided by the white which contains the embryo. The round part at the bottom is what we call bato (rock), a hard white inedible part of the balut. (Although I'm eating this part, depends on how hard it is)

This penoy is what we used to call penoy na may sabaw (literally, soupy penoy) when we were kids because, unlike ordinary harboiled eggs, this kind of penoy is more like custard. In some instances, such as the one in the photo, the center has the consistency of the yolk of a hard-boiled egg while around it is the custard-like part. According to the young vendor, it is (now) called higupin, literally, for sipping.

Whenever Manong Balut shouts at night in the streets that I want to have Balut with vinegar and salt. Wow!!! I feel energized. There is a Filipino saying that "pagkumain ka ng balut, ito ay nagpapalakas ng tuhod." (If you eat Balut, it strengthens the knees.)

It is considered a delicacy in most Southeast Asian countries, even in Hawaii. In the Philippines, Balut is considered an aphrodisiac and believed to have high protein content.