It started out by a friend saying she wanted salted eggs for lunch. I told her I had seen them at a nearby mall, and she turned down the offer by saying those were balut, not salted eggs (the red itlog na maalat). Which made us begin debating what exactly goes into making balut. She said that her uncle who owns a balut/penoy/itlog na maalat farm in Pateros (the duck egg mecca of the Philippines) buries all the eggs in salt for 5 to 10 days, that all those eggs are called salted eggs because of the process. Which to me sounds wrong. If a duck egg on its way to being balut is buried at an early stage, it would 1. end up tasting like itlog na maalat what with the salt "cooking" the inside; and 2. any young embryo on its way towards getting cooked by the 17th or 19th day is never going to grow properly if it's salted.
So if there's anyone out there that can lead us towards proper balut light, do drop me a comment. I know you can buy a uncooked balut and cook it for a few minutes to get to your balut readiness stage, but how do they develop to the right stage? Are they simply kept warm? or is my friend right with the salting?
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Pike Market Peonies
6 comments:
You mean red salted eggs are duck eggs? I didn't know that, I thought they were chicken eggs, and only balut and penoy were duck.
as far as i can rememeber watchuing batibot showing the makings of Balut.. u dont recall them burying ti in salt
Mila, check out Sidney's series on street food which features balut here: http://my_sarisari_store.typepad.com/my_sarisari_store/street_food/page/3/
I seem to recall he also did one on salted eggs, where they did bury them,let me try to look for it.
here you go: (it's such an amazing series!) http://technorati.com/tag/salted%2Beggs
For the salted eggs, the eggs are buried in MUD that's heavily mixed with salt. I was in Victoria, Laguna, last week to buy itlog na maalat and balut fresh from an itik farm, and that's what they told me there. As for the balut ... I don't know, I guess you they must be fertilized then cooked when the duck fetus is already there.
Hi Katrina, I think there are red eggs that are of the ducky persuasion, not all of them are chicken eggs. But I got confused by my friend saying that balut was also set into salt for a few days during fertilization. Didn't make sense to me.
Hi Sakai, thanks for that reference, I'm sure they wouldn't mess up our childhood brains by putting out the wrong info on batibot.
Nena, thanks for the link to Sidney's balut series. Learned a lot!
Hi FM, mud bath! Very spa-ish for the eggs.
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