Recently, the famous culinary website Taste Atlas put balut on its list of the most “scary” egg dishes in the world.
TasteAtlas describes balut as a popular street food in some Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos or Cambodia. This dish is made from eggs that have formed all parts of a young duck (about 17-21 days old). Eggs are usually boiled, eaten with soup powder and laksa leaves.
The reason this dish is popular with the locals is that they think it has an invigorating effect. In addition, this is also an ideal snack in the summer to eat while drinking beer. Balut is also used by restaurants as an ingredient to eat hot pot.
Another name on the list is century eggs or Chinese millennial eggs. Prepared by incubating eggs in a mixture of salt, clay, ash, quicklime and rice husks, after a while the egg whites will solidify and turn dark brown.
This dish is said to have originated during the Ming Dynasty in Hunan, when a farmer found duck eggs in a lime tank and decided to try them. Then he added salt to the eggs to improve the taste. Today, the Chinese dish of century eggs is often compared to the rotten cheeses of the West, because if you are not used to it, they will have a strong ammonia smell like horse urine. Local people use it as an appetizer or side dish with rice, meat porridge and pickled ginger.
Oyster omelette is also named for the raw, bumpy oysters that sometimes freak diners out. This dish originated in the city of Chaozhou and the Fujian region of China. Oyster omelette is a typical dish of Hokkien – the Chinese community living in Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. The dish is usually made from small oysters that are mixed with potato starch and beaten eggs.
Depending on the region, the cook sometimes adds a bit of spicy chili sauce mixed with lemon juice to give more flavor to the dish. In fact, the city of Tainan in Taiwan (China) is known as “oyster omelette paradise” because of its seaside location, so it always makes the best dish from freshly caught oysters.
@ Vietnamnet
