What the F*ck is Balut?
Photo by: Kathy Stenger
Even Andrew Zimmer would have a hard time swallowing some of the outrageously gnarly shit Asians choke down. Consuming a pseudo-fetus is probably frowned upon by most Americans, but it’s totally the norm in Southeast Asia. Locals eat the shit out of fertilized duck and chicken eggs, known as balut in the Philippines or trung vit lon in Vietnam. These wildly popular embryonic treats are typically sold by rowdy street vendors and are a late-night favorite among drunken revelers (maybe as a sticking-a-finger-down-your-throat puke provoking alternative?). Forget Fear Factor and all the other weird stuff they hawk on the streets down there; balut is the ultimate food challenge.
Preparing a balut is pretty easy. Looking for something to occupy a rainy evening with your hostel-mates? Take a partially incubated egg, boil it for twenty minutes, crack it open, and enjoy the savory flavor of an aborted bird fetus. Duck is the bourgeois alternative to the everyman chicken egg; if you’re trying to be nasty-fancy-pants, a near-quacker is the way to go. Whichever you use, the tricky part is incubating it. Most methods of mass-producing baluts are frowned upon.
Photo by: margauxlicious
Trained balut-makers will carefully handpick the fertilized eggs and store them in baskets under the sun for eight days to make sure an embryo develops. Each egg is individually inspected (and likely close to rotten after days in the sun and not in the fridge) and those that pass inspection are given another 8 to 10 days to incubate. In the Philippines, baluts are allowed 17 days to mature before consumption, but in Vietnam they let ‘em cook 19 to 21 days. This ensures that the embryos are about as chicken-like as you can stomach, with feathers, a beak, and stronger bones—the Vietnamese like their fetuses crunchy! Street vendors keep baluts stored in buckets of sand to retain warmth and sell them for a mere $0.15 each.
Photo by: Mike Barish
Eating a balut for the first time can be slightly scary, but just like oral, it doesn’t taste as bad as it looks or smells ( although, doing it in a dark room won’t make it any less gross). When you’re ready to ingest, use the underside of a spoon to crack a hole at the top of the egg and pierce through the gauzy membrane underneath the shell. It’s kind of like popping a cherry, though slightly less satisfying. Tip it into your mouth and suck out the amniotic broth surrounding the embryo. Once you’ve drained the juices, it’s time to get freaky with the main attraction—warm up by eating the veiny yolk first. First-timers may prefer to eat the embryo one, feathery, bite at a time, but real pros will pick it up by the head, letting the little body dangle lifelessly, and swallow the thing all at once. Don’t worry—you won’t have to stare death in its face, its eyes are usually closed. Get rid of the gamey, feathery aftertaste by downing a pint of beer or a shot of cognac.
Like most drunk munchies, there’s a longer story to eating balut than meets the mouth. You like hot wings and chili cheese fries because they remind you of your preservative-laden childhood—Asians like balut because it’s a social food known for bringing people together. There’s nothing like bonding with dead birds over a game of Mahjong or Bau Cua Ca Cop. While avian fetuses don’t seem like the sexiest thing to eat on a date, they’re actually considered to be a highly potent aphrodisiac in the Philippines.
Photo by: segagman
To eat it the Vietnamese way, add salt, pepper, and rau ram (Vietnamese coriander) to your egg and wash it down with a swig of light Tiger beer. Filipinos prefer their baluts dipped in salt and a chili vinegar sauce, but they’ll also fry ‘em in omelets or fill baked pastries with their beaked-goodness. Baluts are best enjoyed when bought straight from a food vendor in Southeast Asia, but if you can’t make it that far east, you can try one from most Asian supermarkets or Asian-friendly farmer’s market in the States.
It doesn’t matter which came first for a balut—this hybrid delicacy is both chicken AND egg and enough to repel both carnivorous and vegetarian Westerners. If you’ve got enough balls to eat one, not only will you get a healthy dose of calcium, protein, B-carotene, but you’ll also earn some serious foodie bragging rights (as long as you omit the part about your puking feathers all afternoon).
A sassy, spunky, and spontaneous globetrottress taking the world, one passport stamp at a time.
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exaggerated article…theres a smaller chicken or even jaz the yellow part can be seen, so y did u choose the bigger one (the one wid beak,feet etc already)..ders a BALOT sa PUTi they called…try to have a new research and not to focus in just one vendor who sold that bigger chix yuckiness balut..
Balut is really delicious. Just don’t think of the fact that it’s a chicken or duck fetus and you’ll surely look for more
By the way, I love your website! It’s cooooool!