MANILA (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN): Asin tibuok is one of the latest Filipino ingredients to go viral online.
Israeli vlogger Nas Daily featured the ingredient in one of his recent videos, which garnered more than 70,000 likes on TikTok alone. In his clickbaity title, he presented the ingredient as a “dinosaur egg”, but that’s not what it is.
Aside from Nas Daily, recipe YouTuber Emmymade has featured it on her channel. Instead of labelling it as a dinosaur egg, she instead called it what it is: “The rarest salt in the world.”
Asin tibuok is an artisanal salt made in Alburquerque municipality in the Philippines’ Bohol province. Its name literally translates to “whole salt” in English. It is a rare, heirloom ingredient that is dying out because of the lack of people who know how to make it.
The process of making asin tibuok is labour-intensive and consists of many steps spanning months.
In a feature on salt around the Philippines for F&B Report magazine, Nayna Katigbak writes: “(Dried) coconut husks are placed in coastal mangroves to soak in seawater for several months, ensuring each is thoroughly saturated with salt from the water.
“These are then dried under the sun, then slowly burned until reduced to ash. The ash is mixed with more seawater to form a smoky brine, after which the mixture is boiled down in clay pots to form a solid mass of salt.”
As opposed to what the Nas Daily video claimed, the salt does not necessarily taste like coconut.
“The taste is smoky, almost fruity. Chunks can be broken off for cooking and eating, and can be dipped or ground into a powder and sprinkled over food. The distinct taste makes it perfect for Asian flavour profiles,” Katigbak wrote.
Philippine food heritage advocate John Sherwin Felix, otherwise known as Lokalpedia, also sounded off on the Nas Daily video.
Felix explained that the salt does not have a coconut flavour but a smoky one instead, due to the process of filtering the brine through the burnt coconut husks.
The salt is currently enjoying its viral popularity online, but the number of asinderos, or salt makers, making it is dwindling down to almost nothing.
Mario Baluarte is one of the only makers of asin tibuok left. He started making it at the age of seven, learning the process from his grandfather, but is now 62.
In an interview with Inquirer.net, he recounted that there were once more than 40 families in his home town of Santa Fe who were making the salt, but now there are only four families in the business.
Mr Baluarte said the lack of interest in making it mostly stems from its laborious process.
“Our grandchildren are attending school. Some younger men have work. No one’s making asin tibuok. They don’t want to be burned by the salt-making process. The younger generation don’t want to get their hands dirty,” he explains.
The art of making asin tibuok may be dying, but it is still alive. With renewed interest in the salt both locally and worldwide, there is hope that more youth will continue the tradition.
Hopefully, even if it gets their hands dirty. - PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
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