Bizarre Foods with Juergen R. Schreiter
My own “Bizarre Foods” is a travel and food blog hosted by Juergen Schreiter on www.JuergenSchreiter.com
This first session is about a Asian speciality called Balut.

Watch my Balut experience here:

If you try Balut for the very fist time you may avoid a room with bright light. The first glimse at the opened Balut egg is very unusual for western people. Beside this very bizarre look at the fertilized duck egg the taste is very good and intense. Just taste like a normal yellow part (eggnog) of a chicken egg, only stronger.
The best recommended drink with Balut is an ice cold Beer!

More about Balut and this Asian speciality here:
A balut (spelled standardized as balot) is a developing duck embryo (fertilized duck egg) that is boiled and eaten in the shell. It is commonly sold as streetfood in the Philippines. They are common food in countries in Southeast Asia, such as Laos (khai look in Lao), Cambodia (pong tia koon in Cambodian) and Vietnam (trứng vịt lộn or hột vịt lộn in Vietnamese). They are often served with beer. The Tagalog and Malay word balut means “wrapped”.

In the Philippines, balut eaters prefer salt and/or a chili, garlic and vinegar (white or coconut sap) mixture to season their eggs.[2] The eggs are savored for their balance of textures and flavors; the broth surrounding the embryo is sipped from the egg before the shell is peeled, and the yolk and young chick inside can be eaten. All of the contents of the egg may be consumed, although the white albumen may remain uneaten depending on the age of the fertilized egg. This white albumen may have an unappetizing cartilaginous taste and is tough and rubbery in texture. In the Philippines, balut have recently entered haute cuisine by being served as appetizers in restaurants, cooked adobo style, fried in omelettes or even used as filling in baked pastries. In Vietnam, balut are eaten with a pinch of salt, lemon juice, plus ground pepper and Vietnamese mint leaves called rau ram (southern Vietnamese style). In Cambodia, balut are eaten while still warm in the shell and are served with nothing more than a little garnish, which is usually a mixture of lime juice and ground pepper.

Shelled and fried balut
A similar preparation is known in China as maodan (Chinese: 毛蛋; pinyin: máo dàn; literally: “feathered egg”), modan (Chinese: 末蛋; pinyin: mò dàn; literally: “end-stage egg”), wangjidan (Chinese: 旺雞蛋; pinyin: wàng jīdàn; literally: “flush egg”) or huozhuzi (Chinese: 活珠子; pinyin: huózhūzi; literally: “living bead”). Chinese traders and migrants are said to have brought the idea of eating fertilized duck eggs to the Philippines. However, the knowledge and craft of balut-making has been localized by the balut-makers (mangbabalot). Today, balut production has not been mechanized in favor of the traditional production by hand. Although balut are produced throughout the Philippines, balut-makers in Pateros are renowned for their careful selection and incubation of the eggs.[citation needed]

Fertilized duck eggs are kept warm in the sun and stored in baskets to retain warmth. After nine days, the eggs are held to a light to reveal the embryo inside. Approximately eight days later the balut are ready to be cooked, sold, and eaten. Vendors sell cooked balut from buckets of sand (used to retain warmth) accompanied by small packets of salt. Uncooked balut are rarely sold in Southeast Asia. In the United States, Asian markets occasionally carry uncooked balut eggs. Alternatively, they can be mail-ordered. The cooking process is identical to that of hard-boiled chicken eggs, and baluts are eaten while still warm.

Underaged balut with visible chick
Duck eggs that are not properly developed after nine to twelve days are sold as penoy, which look, smell and taste similar to a regular hard-boiled egg. In Filipino cuisine, these are occasionally beaten and fried, similar to scrambled eggs, and served with a vinegar dip.

The age of the egg before it can be cooked is a matter of local preference. In the Philippines, the ideal balut is 17 days old, at which point it is said to be balot sa puti (“wrapped in white”). The chick inside is not old enough to show its beak, feathers or claws, and the bones are undeveloped. The Vietnamese often prefer their balut mature from 19 days up to 21 days, when the chick is old enough to be recognizable as a baby duck and has bones that will be firm but tender when cooked.

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