Balut eggs (also spelled Baloot, Baalut, Baluge, or Balute.)
Balut eggs are fertilised duck (sometimes chicken) eggs that are at the stage of development where there is a nearly developed embryo inside. The balut egg then boiled and usually eaten with salt, just like a normal boiled egg.
I think balut eggs might be the yuckiest looking food I have come across so far in researching for this site. Although we have no hestitation in eating eggs, or even young animals (not usually birds, but still) – balut eggs just push all of the ‘eww’ buttons in my brain.
Balut eggs are fertilised duck (sometimes chicken) eggs that are at the stage of development where there is a nearly developed embryo inside. The balut egg then boiled and usually eaten with salt, just like a normal boiled egg.
So where is this deliciousness eaten? Well in the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam it is actually quite common. You can easily pick balut eggs up from a street vendor (usually cooked), no need for a fancy restaurant in this case. Though in the Philippines in particular, popularity is increasing and you can now pick up your pre-baby duck in an omelette or even baked in pastries.
Interestingly, the age of the egg before it is cooked varies between cultures. In the Philippines, the perfect Balut egg is normally 17 days old, the point where the chick does not have beak, bones or feathers. In Vietnam however, they prefer their Balut eggs to be 19-21 days old, the point at which the bones of the chick will be firm, but they soften considerably when cooked. In case it’s hard to imagine what a 17-21 day duck foetus looks like, here is a 15 day old egg floating in hot sauce.
And here’s a photo of a balut egg I believe is more towards the 21 day mark:
Balut eggs can typically be purchased from a street vendor who will often keep them warm in a bucket of sand. Duck eggs that are not properly developed after nine to twelve days are not sold as balut eggs but instead 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.
After seeing these balut eggs, I’ll never quite look at my fried egg quite the same way again!
<
32 Comments until now.
OMG..whyyyyy do humans insist on coming up with these disturbing recipes that are guaranteed to have caused terrible pain to a tiny baby animal? Oh, I’m just ill. Yuck.
That is sick! I think that people just enjoy finding new ways to inflict pain and suffering upon smaller lifeforms.
these chicks dont seem to understand that if we were that small and helpless to a duck they would probably slurp us down their beaks too
WTF? Suzy and Layla, get over yourselves. It’s not like they pluck the thing from under its mother and boil it alive.
It is incubated only to the point of desired consumption, then it is removed from incubation — meaning the bird inside stops developing and is not so much as killed as it is never hatched to begin with.
There is no “terrible pain” with balut. It is a food rooted in history and culture and nothing to do with your jaded insinuations of ‘people are so mean and evil’.
If you must armchair advocate for suffering animals, try spilling your guts to the people who raise and slaughter bovine for veal. Now THAT’S cruel.
Kamusta ka ?
I just had the dish a day ago and was initially irked out. It’s a duck abortion! However if you just avert your eyes while you’re eating it, you’ll be fine. Thank you Tomas for shining some light on the dish’s preparation and silencing some overzealous animal rights enthusiasts.
Animals abuse, no way! More like human abuse! DISGUSTING!!! Who would eat something like that unless they were brainwashed to believe it was yummy?!
*barfing*
Dudes, this is what we called different cultures. Open up your mind and see the world out there. There are things way worse around your back alley than this. It is a dish of other country…so respect it. Or should i say eating beef or pork meat is a abuse as well. Dont eat it! You are killing the animals! Fools
Of course, people just wanted to inflict pain onto helpless baby animals.
Alternatively, in a time when they could not just go to the nearest 7/11 at 3 in the morning, people were probably forced to eat everything they could digest.
As time progressed humanity shed some things (eating mouldy bread) and kept others.
But then, that is probably too sane & reflective for your poor outraged souls.
NOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM
I think its delioush
I couldn’t eat it but my Filipino co-workers aren’t that fussed. One of them says she likes it, the other says that she can only eat it in the dark when she can’t see what it is. Apparently taste-wise it’s just very chicken-y, it’s just looks and texture that’s the deal-breaker for me.
if you hadn’t try it and you think it’s sick, just keep your mouth shut.. you don’t even know what they put in your average daily meals you eat on a daily basis.. this is a filipino delicacy. you do not hear any prejudgments from us filipinos and neither should we from you.. you think we are inflicting pain? then why don’t we all turn vegetarians? try thinking twice before you utter your words.. that’s filipino culture for you! respect it..
Well for me,it is culture..Being a Filipino,I also eat balut..but you still can’t say that unnecessary things,you don’t even know our culture,it’s not that we even say nasty things about other cultures..but if you still make a fuss about it,,atleast we don’t eat crap for the fun of it like you dislikers do,,dumbass!!
i like it when in my class kanina we make experiment about that it is interesting cause’ it is good.it is ok to eat balut than to eat fetus in japan they really eat fetus so i like balut than in fetus ewwwwwww!!!…… for fetus
watched youtube lately, found out americans love to drink their urine or eat their faeces for fun… if that’s your culture, fine with me, just leave me out of it… same way goes with you, close minded morons, if you don’t want to try eat, just shut up, we don’t need your prejudices…
I think it is absolutely disgusting and I couldnt touch it. Tomas thats exactly what they do! They take it out from under a mother hen and put it in a pot of boiling water. I’m sure it tastes nice but I would be thinking about what I was eating, like guts, veins, feet, feathers, bones . . . etc Yuck. We dont know whether it feels pain but I’d say by day 20 of incubation the nerve cells would be developed enough to feel pain. But almost every animal we slaughter feels pain. So there isnt much difference between this and beef on your plate . . . only beef isnt disgusting.
What’s so cruel about that? The chick never felt any pain. No blood was shed. Compare that to butchering mature cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, fish, etc. They are the ones who experience the much more cruel pain and death, and not contented with their death, the butcher goes on and chops their body parts and even grinds parts of them.
Balut may look disgusting, but it is delicious and rich in calcium. If you eat eggs and chicken/duck, then what’s wrong with eating in between?
I’d love to try out Balut. Where can I buy it from Malaysia – KL or PJ?
What are some foods that people tend to either love or hate?…
Balut. It’s a Filipino dish that consists of fertilized duck (and occasionally a chicken) embryos that are that boiled “alive” and served in their shells. It smells terrible and tastes worse. In the Philippines, it’s often served with and it’s con…
[...] http://www.junch.com/balut-eggs/ [...]
[...] from Bizarre Foods.) Bills was one of the only non-Asians that I know that could eat and stomach Balut. We also sat through many great conversation during our monthly lunches, our sushi making club, [...]
it’s not actually new in the philippines like others would say… it’s part of the culture here .. it’s just up to you if you would eat it or not .. if you’re so disgusted then don’t eat it .. it’s that simple
Filipino delicacy? What is unique about it? Anybody can do this. I rather have lobster or stake… with little salad and on the side. A glass of wine would be fine as well. Thanks.
What a yummy balot! I really miss to eat you. Well, to those people who say yukky! well you are very wrong! This kind of food has a lot of vitamins. The Food Composition Table for Use in East Asia provides the following breakdown for nutrients in BALOT: embryonated duck egg-188 calories, 13.7 grams of protein, 14.2 grams of fat, 116 milligrams of calcium, 176 milligrams of phosphorous, 2.1 milligrams of iron, 875 micrograms of retinol, 435 micrograms of B-carotene equivalent, .12 milligrams of thiamine, .25 milligrams of riboflavin, 0.8 milligrams of niacin, 3 milligrams of ascorbic acid.
I have to admit that since this is not part of my culture the first link my mind makes at the sight of this is not exactly ”food”.
Then again, crabs and lobsters are really just big aquatic arthropods (bugs), yet they are sooooo tasty.
When you think of it, an egg is really just a female ovulation and yet we have no problem eating them and finding them delicious.
I don’t think its cruel at all, I don’t see how these chicks can feel anything when they are incomplete fetuses still under construction in their eggs to begin with. Much less cruel than to be born and suffer in horrible conditions for several months before being killed like all these other born chickens we eat.
I am not Philipino and I don’t think I will eat balut, however, I believe some people are just so close minded when emiting comments on how “disgusting” “yucky” or “ewwy” this looks. If you had been raised surrounded by these types of dishes it would be completely normal to you and not disgusting. Think that for other cultures…eating lobster or turkey might be disgusting too. Just because you are not used to eating this it doesn’t mean is disgusting. I would rather eat this than go through a McDonald’s drive through and get a 1,000 calories hamburguer and extremely greasy fries.
I’ve had balut when I was very little, don’t know if I would still eat it now that I have been away so long, but I remember it being very tasty. I can recall that it tastes somewhat like a regular boiled egg with salt and a little meat.
To those who aren’t very educated: It is very disrespectful to put down and make judgements on a culture you are unfamiliar with and to say such things with such discriminatory attitude is very ill-mannered. Would you feel very happy that a person misjudged your culture? If it doesn’t bother you, it may bother other people of your culture.
So you inconsiderate people should get off your high pedestal and do some cultural research on the varieties of ethnicity around you and possibly get some culture in you so you don’t sound ridiculously childish.
Just saying.
I just only eat the yellow part, not the actually baby duck. It’s really good and when that part is soft, it’s kinda creamy to me.
Balut is the perfect snack! Why do you think we Pinoys are so down and chill and sexy as hell? Go ask Tony Bourdain. Oh and yeah, m’man Harry Connick too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQUYcjFOmI0&feature=related
Go eat our food, visit our beautiful country – it’s more fun in the Philippines.
If would say that this delicacy is some kind of cruelty, then why are you “people” discriminating this kind of food would eat animals who produces it?crabs? lobsters? they’re also smaller lifeforms, they’re also cooked alive in your fu… pan.I would suggest eat green! you tiny heart.
yah! filipinos. those people insinuating others culture are some kind of a poor close-minded. they did’nt think before hinting some negative thoughts. Isn’t it disgusting that people might say that the’re really some kind of a dunce?by the way “DC and the other dunce” do you know what lobsters and crabs usually eats?hahaha..better not find out or else you might say that you’re also disgusting. think before you utter.
I now live and work in Bangkok, Thailand at an Institute of Languages at a large public university. I am an academic editor, translator, researcher and writer, Although I have quite literally been a world traveler, I have mostly lived in Asia and the Pacific for more than thirty years.I lived and worked in Japan for more than twenty years. I have been living in Thailand for about six years now. I have been in the Philippines perhaps a hundred different time and have widely traveled in the country, usually by ferry and bus over a period of more than a quarter of a century. I maintained apartments in the Philippines for a number of years. The point of interest here is that just three or four days ago a Philippine friend, Juan Carlos, brought me ang manga limang balut (five balut) from the Philippines and i have so far devoured three. It is better to eat warm and fresh balut in the Philippines with ice cold San Miguel serbesa (from Spanish “cervesa”) and green papaya in the presence of your lover. It is not one of favorite foods, but I completely agree that American fast food is infinitely worse–and it saddens me to see how much Filipinos seem to enjoy KFC MANOK [chicken] when they have their own wonderful MANOKAN.What is better than Philippine TAHONG (especially in Panay) or lapu-lapu (especially in Mindoro)? I love sashima of course with the hottest waseba, but some of my favorite Japanese dishes are not found outside of Japan, just as one cannot find the best local sake. Nothing is better than NANBANJINKAMOMISOSOBA (SOUTHERN BARBARIAN DUCK MISO SOBA. i eat the extremely spicey Thai dishes that some Thais cannot eat. What is better and healthier than Thai PADOK (catfish from the Mekong) or SOM TOM and the rest. I ate snakes in China and small rats in rural Thailand. There is great food in Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia, even Cambodia where I eat the giant spiders. I eat what the locals eat everywhere (the Middle East, Europe, Oceania, Mexico and Latin America, Oceania, including wonderful Australian vegemite) and even Africa. “Food is culture” and bigots are by definition uncultured, ignorant, narrow, without imaginations and developed intelligence in view of being so obtuse
I do worry about the pain aspect of BALUT,but I doubt the embroyo fails pain when the egg is boiled. I hope this is correct, Much worse is the boiling of lobsters and crabs (cf. the late David Foster Wallace’s long essay on lobsters). I have seen animals treated horrendously in Buddhist countries and supposedly “spiritual” India. The Chinese, Koreans and Japanese all treat animals horribly, but this comes out of a long tradition in which famine was common. Nothing is worse than American factory farming and goose stuffing in France for liver pate. In spite of my vast respect for both Judaic and Islamic cultures, I sometimes worry about the preparation of kosher and halal food in which the animals are bled. There should be little pain if the butcher is trained as they should be, but one wonders. In any event, it is ugly, ignorant, vicious and absurd to look askance at other cultures even though one must be honest about unnecessary pain being afflicted. I am an American and I am very thankful I do not have to live there and have not done so for many years (though there are good places–San Francisco and New York City, say).
Regards, Jack Clontz in BKK
Comment!