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Asin tibuok, nicknamed the dinosaur egg, is one of the rarest salts in the world. Only a few families on a small island in the Philippines still make it. | Still Standing
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- Title
- This "Dinosaur Egg" is One Of The Rarest Salts In The World | Still Standing | Insider Business
- Authors
- Insider Business
- Duration
- 18:29
- Published
- Sep 29 2023
At the end of the video, that leche flan ice cream with the salt sprinkled over it sounds delicious.
Very cool that a traditional method is making a comeback. It's unfortunate regarding the law disallowing the salt to be sold in the country, but I also understand the health implications of not using iodized salt. I wonder how difficult and expensive it'd be to add iodine. At the same time, does that change the tradition? By adding something that wasn't there in the original?
The second section of the video showing sea salt being made the traditional way in Bali mentioned that the salt farmers there formed cooperative which iodizes the salt for all of them. However that's an air-dried flake salt, which probably makes the iodizing process easier (e.g. video on how they do it in South Africa). Whereas asin tibuok is made by boiling sea water, and so it comes out in big, incredibly dense lumps, which likely makes iodizing it far more difficult (or even impossible?). There are supposedly only a handful of asin tibuok makers left now too, which probably means a coop would be far less effective at spreading out the costs. :/
I just had some a few days ago! But it was sprinkled on a chocolate truffle so to be honest I couldn't really taste it. I should have asked for a little bit to try on its own. (The chocolate truffle was great though.) The dinosaur egg appearance is, indeed, impressive. We were told that due to the high demand and the fact that only two elderly men are still making it, cooking time for the salt was reduced from a month to 8 hours. Still impressive.