Sago pearls are common here in the Philippines. (We pronounce sago differently so it was funny listening to this video.) They're used in taho, a popular dessert made of silken tofu and arnibal...
Sago pearls are common here in the Philippines. (We pronounce sago differently so it was funny listening to this video.) They're used in taho, a popular dessert made of silken tofu and arnibal (caramelized viscous brown sugar syrup) topped with sago pearls which are nice and gummy like boba pearls. It's sold by street vendors, they go around yelling "taho!", their voices can be heard from far away. I loved hearing that sound growing up-- we had regular taho vendors in our neighborhood. We'd rush outside to get some big glasses filled with taho for breakfast. Each person has their own preference for the tofu/arnibal/sago ratio-- I always asked for less arnibal and more sago in mine :)
I really wish we had that sort of street food culture here in North America! I've never had taho specifically, but I've had similar dishes. E.g. Douhua is one of my favorites and I get it every...
I really wish we had that sort of street food culture here in North America! I've never had taho specifically, but I've had similar dishes. E.g. Douhua is one of my favorites and I get it every time I go to yum cha/dim sum here in Canada. It's silken tofu in a ginger syrup, sometimes also served with condensed or coconut milk, fruit, tapioca pearls and/or red mung beans.
If you can track down where douhua is made fresh daily, I would highly recommend it for the variety as well as quality. Here's 好好 (Excellent) in Richmond BC and 人和 (Yan's) in Markham ON The amount...
If you can track down where douhua is made fresh daily, I would highly recommend it for the variety as well as quality.
The amount of work involved makes me highly suspicious of even good tea restaurants being able to make it fresh daily in house. Not that they're not tasty, mind, but if you're near a better source it's worth a try. Also the prices for buying a litre or more cannot be beat.
Sun Sun's, which used to be in the Mississauga Chinese Cultural Center, had freshly made douhua. It was a massive Chinese banquet hall restaurant where I used to go for Dim Sum several times a...
Sun Sun's, which used to be in the Mississauga Chinese Cultural Center, had freshly made douhua. It was a massive Chinese banquet hall restaurant where I used to go for Dim Sum several times a week for most of my childhood, teen years, and again in my adult life after I moved back to Canada from living abroad. They used to roll the duohua around on a trolley cart in a gigantic bamboo tub with a giant ladle for scooping the tofu out, alongside smaller containers with all the fixings for it so you could pick what you wanted in it. Sadly, Sun Sun's shut down in 2011 after decades of operation though, and I miss it dearly. :(
I still have yet to find a place that has anywhere near as good Dim Sum, nor anywhere else that has the same variety of dishes they offered. E.g. I still can't seem to find Dan Tat's anywhere. No other Dim Sum place I've been to since has had them. :( Portuguese Pastel De Nata are close enough, I suppose... but it's just not the same since they're way sweeter and the pastry is totally different. Sigh.
I also used to get Peking Duck at Sun Sun's every year for my birthday. It's where that tradition started, which I have continued to this day. Thankfully I have managed to find another place that has great Peking Duck though, Cythia's in Oakville.
Oh I feel keenly for your loss :'( it is so sad to lose "an institution" and i also bemoan the lack of dimsum varieties these days everywhere: the old chefs have probably all retired and the newer...
Oh I feel keenly for your loss :'( it is so sad to lose "an institution" and i also bemoan the lack of dimsum varieties these days everywhere: the old chefs have probably all retired and the newer gen obviously don't want to be up at 3am making them daily. How could I blame them.
What you said about coming around with a wood bucket and ladling out with the flat metal spoon yup, childhood right there. Restaurants used to have stir-fry stations with different savoury cakes (馬蹄糕，年糕，蘿蔔糕，芋頭糕etc) and fried noodles and silver needle noodles (銀針粉) as well, long gone.
I've never been to Mississauga but judging by "looks" alone Tung Hing has the looks of an old school HK bakery but the reviews are quite poor - who can say if their original bakers are still there.
Frankly if I lived in Miss I would drive to Markham for Cantonese Chinese food. :/ not that my years in Durham Region indicates they were all that amazing either, having been completely spoilt by growing up in HK and Vancouver.....
I've actually been to Tun Hing a bunch of times over the years too since it's in the same cultural center plaza, and only a few dozen feet away from where Sun Sun's was. :P It's slowly gone...
I've actually been to Tun Hing a bunch of times over the years too since it's in the same cultural center plaza, and only a few dozen feet away from where Sun Sun's was. :P It's slowly gone downhill pretty badly over the years though, as has the whole plaza, TBH. Although I haven't been back there since shortly after Sun Sun's closed, so things might have gotten better since then. Apparently there is a QJD Peking Duck where Sun Sun's was now, and it looks pretty incredible (esp their dim sum). So next time I'm in Mississauga I will have to check it out!
I've been to Markham a bunch over the years too, but it's a looooooong drive from where I am now so it's hard to justify the trip just for Chinese food, no matter how good. Although we did make a trip up there a few years ago when my cousin came to visit us from Alberta, since he and his wife wanted to try Din Tai Fung's famous soup dumplings.
BTW, just in case it wasn't clear, I'm not actually Chinese so had to google translate those dishes you mentioned. ;) My mom had a really close friend who was Chinese though, and she introduced us to Dim Sum back when I was very very young, which is when our whole family fell in love with it. But we were often the only white people in Sun Sun's and all the various other dim sum places we've been to over the years. :P
I thought so haha but I wanted to give you the words to Google in case we were thinking about the same dish in different English names :) Peking duck birthday banquet is an amazing tradition I...
I thought so haha but I wanted to give you the words to Google in case we were thinking about the same dish in different English names :) Peking duck birthday banquet is an amazing tradition I hope you keep up with it. I still haven't actually been to any Din Tai Fung yet, amazingly. How was it?
Once I googled the characters and looked at the resulting pictures I recognized the majority of them, so your strategy worked. :P I used to especially love those "turnip cakes" (蘿蔔糕) too (which...
Once I googled the characters and looked at the resulting pictures I recognized the majority of them, so your strategy worked. :P I used to especially love those "turnip cakes" (蘿蔔糕) too (which TIL are actually technically radish cakes ;).
I still haven't actually been to any Din Tai Fung yet, amazingly. How was it?
It 100% lived up to the hype. The soup dumplings were great, but my favorite dish was actually their black sesame buns. I probably could have eaten 100 of them. :P
Re: turnip/radish/蘿蔔 To add to the confusion, the Chinese characters refer to "carrot", where usually we specifically say "white carrot" when we mean daikon radish (vis a vis 青蘿蔔 green radish) --...
Re: turnip/radish/蘿蔔
To add to the confusion, the Chinese characters refer to "carrot", where usually we specifically say "white carrot" when we mean daikon radish (vis a vis 青蘿蔔 green radish) -- so the dish name in Chinese is literally "carrot cake". When I got married, we had (western) carrot cake at the wedding reception: my family got a kick out of telling everyone they were served 蘿蔔糕 at Chocobean's wedding ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Also, I am unable to distinguish between turnips vs radishes vs rutabaga by sight or taste :/
Double commenting: Sun sun has dimsums at $1.8 a dish omg nom nom nom eat till I explode. These days they're more like $10 each after tax and tip (Google maps pic)
Double commenting: Sun sun has dimsums at $1.8 a dish omg nom nom nom eat till I explode.
These days they're more like $10 each after tax and tip (Google maps pic)
LOL, yep. And it used to have all-you-can-eat dim sum on Wednesdays between 2-4pm for $15 too (although it was only the basic dishes, not the high-end stuff). It was fucking amazing! :P
Sun sun has dimsums at $1.8 a dish omg nom nom nom eat till I explode.
LOL, yep. And it used to have all-you-can-eat dim sum on Wednesdays between 2-4pm for $15 too (although it was only the basic dishes, not the high-end stuff). It was fucking amazing! :P
That sounds super delicious!! Is the silken tofu warm as well?! I grew up at the very tail end of street vendors and I miss it from my earliest childhood so so much. I've never had large sago...
That sounds super delicious!! Is the silken tofu warm as well?! I grew up at the very tail end of street vendors and I miss it from my earliest childhood so so much. I've never had large sago before but man they look so tasty
so, so tasty. I was telling my family if I had to choose between never having [ ice cream ] or [ tofu pudding ] ever again, I would choose to have tofu pudding / silken / douhua and never have ice...
so, so tasty. I was telling my family if I had to choose between never having [ ice cream ] or [ tofu pudding ] ever again, I would choose to have tofu pudding / silken / douhua and never have ice cream again. Taho is now on my bucket list: luckily I am visiting Vancouver soon and I'm nearly positive I can find it there. I hope I get to do a huge tour of south east asian countries one day as well.
Ok honestly I wouldn't know what to choose between ice cream and tofu pudding :)) Enjoy Vancouver and yes hope you get to try taho there! Feel free to get in touch if ever you visit the Philippines
Ok honestly I wouldn't know what to choose between ice cream and tofu pudding :))
Enjoy Vancouver and yes hope you get to try taho there! Feel free to get in touch if ever you visit the Philippines
Unfortunately I haven't tried anything he ate in the video myself! We don't have those locally (I think) we just have the sago pearls used in dessert and sweet beverages.
Unfortunately I haven't tried anything he ate in the video myself! We don't have those locally (I think) we just have the sago pearls used in dessert and sweet beverages.
Love making Sago into a m*lk pudding. Same with Rice and Tapioca really. Rice is more traditional, and I make it the most due to availability, but I think Sago pudding is my favourite. Actually I...
Love making Sago into a m*lk pudding. Same with Rice and Tapioca really. Rice is more traditional, and I make it the most due to availability, but I think Sago pudding is my favourite. Actually I recall 30+ years ago it was way easier to find semolina, sago and pudding rice in local shops, but it's almost all gone now. Just in specialist shops many dozens of miles away, or online now.
Edit: I forgot Semolina! How could I forget Semolina!
This guy is amazing. I saw so many types of fruits from this channel and I wish I could go on the tours. spoiler highlights What a huge tree and it's filled with starch!! It's hard tack! Which is...
This guy is amazing. I saw so many types of fruits from this channel and I wish I could go on the tours.
spoiler highlights
What a huge tree and it's filled with starch!!
It's hard tack! Which is a clever food to have if one lived on islands and want to travel often.
The noodles look almost exactly like the ones used to make Korean jap chae potato noodles. Sometimes very starchy foods take forever to cook unless you dump out the water and use a lot of extra water. The plain ones had a white center and so they look undercooked to me. Once he rinsed them and had some sauce it looks more properly hydrated.
The gnocchi shape that isn't gnocchi shaped. I wasn't prepared for how fresh they were: ive seen chocolate covered related foods and that's much closer to how my food usually looks.
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in action. I had never heard of them before today, but a few hours ago I watched another video where a YouTuber ate them. And now, here you are, mentioning them again. :P...
The noodles look almost exactly like the ones used to make Korean jap chae potato noodles.
[link warnings] Knowing more of the culinary traditions of more cultures make me reconsider if I truly am willing to try most things or just new ways of cooking mundane North American ingredients....
I think I'm willing to try almost all plant things. When it comes to animal, fungi, bacteria and others, I really actually am not an adventurous eater.
edit probably the weirdest I've eaten is cordyceps but the broth is so so so good and it's just an ex-bug that's a weird shaped mushroom by now, it felt okay to me. And then crayfish and lobsters and shrimps are basically bugs aren't they, arthropods.
So I've seen people comment before that eating bugs is no different than eating shrimp or lobster, but I think there is a difference there - with Shrimp and Lobster you peel and de-vein the...
So I've seen people comment before that eating bugs is no different than eating shrimp or lobster, but I think there is a difference there - with Shrimp and Lobster you peel and de-vein the critter before you eat it; if it's not properly prepared they're both pretty gross. I've eaten insects a couple of times, and the thing that is consistently off-putting to me is the exoskeleton. I suspect if there was a terrestrial bug that you could prepare by peeling then it wouldn't be nearly as bad to western palates.
Intriguing. That's fair: crayfish is about as buggy as they come in terms of looks. If roasted cicadas or locusts peel, and then there's some kind of shrimp like texture inside after cleaning,...
Intriguing. That's fair: crayfish is about as buggy as they come in terms of looks. If roasted cicadas or locusts peel, and then there's some kind of shrimp like texture inside after cleaning, yeah I would totally eat that.
And then the thought experiment: I eat mollusks including octopoda, so not having an exoskeleton isn't a problem. I have also eating tiny squids so having the whole critter isn't a problem either.
I think it comes down to the collision of three things: texture, "aliveness", and "baby-hood". I love eels but cannot eat noresore; yes ducks no balut; yes beef but no veal. There are foods that only hit one or two out of the three but still no.
I can see a world in which I would eat these palm grubs: no remedy for being larvae, but they have to be clearly not alive anymore, and they have to have at least a shrimp like texture.
Yeah I dunno if my criteria are exactly that, but they're at least close. I definitely don't think I could eat Balut - I think both the texture and the appearance would be waaaay too offputting. I...
Yeah I dunno if my criteria are exactly that, but they're at least close. I definitely don't think I could eat Balut - I think both the texture and the appearance would be waaaay too offputting. I have had mealworms before, and honestly they're just fine. The texture isn't bad, they don't really taste like much of anything. The only thing that might be offputting to most people is the appearance and just the knowledge of what they are, but both of those are things that can be overcome by exposure, and really if you think about it that's true of a lot of unfamiliar foods.
I have a lot of respect for the tradition of balut and it makes sense: malted grains is more nutritious than unmalted grains. But yeah I don't...think I can do it, along with many other protein...
I have a lot of respect for the tradition of balut and it makes sense: malted grains is more nutritious than unmalted grains. But yeah I don't...think I can do it, along with many other protein types, unless it's highly processed into a nondescript protein format.
For what it’s worth it’s fairly common to eat shrimp with the shell, and head, and often not deveined in not-the-US. Sucking out the goodness from the severed head is one of the best parts of shrimp.
For what it’s worth it’s fairly common to eat shrimp with the shell, and head, and often not deveined in not-the-US. Sucking out the goodness from the severed head is one of the best parts of shrimp.
I'm not super surprised about the head - I know enough folks that eat "mudbugs" (crawfish) to know that's a thing. But I'm a little surprised that people would or could eat unpeeled shrimp. The...
I'm not super surprised about the head - I know enough folks that eat "mudbugs" (crawfish) to know that's a thing. But I'm a little surprised that people would or could eat unpeeled shrimp. The shell isn't really chewable or digestible...Unless there are types of smaller shrimp with thinner shells, or ways of preparing them that I'm not aware of, that would make them more edible. Still, that's interesting and shows my biases. It's easy to assume that the way I approach a food is the only way it's done.
Sago pearls are common here in the Philippines. (We pronounce sago differently so it was funny listening to this video.) They're used in taho, a popular dessert made of silken tofu and arnibal (caramelized viscous brown sugar syrup) topped with sago pearls which are nice and gummy like boba pearls. It's sold by street vendors, they go around yelling "taho!", their voices can be heard from far away. I loved hearing that sound growing up-- we had regular taho vendors in our neighborhood. We'd rush outside to get some big glasses filled with taho for breakfast. Each person has their own preference for the tofu/arnibal/sago ratio-- I always asked for less arnibal and more sago in mine :)
I really wish we had that sort of street food culture here in North America! I've never had taho specifically, but I've had similar dishes. E.g. Douhua is one of my favorites and I get it every time I go to yum cha/dim sum here in Canada. It's silken tofu in a ginger syrup, sometimes also served with condensed or coconut milk, fruit, tapioca pearls and/or red mung beans.
I haven't tried douhua, that sounds yum! I see that Philippine taho is actually listed as a variant of that, cool.
If you can track down where douhua is made fresh daily, I would highly recommend it for the variety as well as quality.
Here's 好好 (Excellent) in Richmond BC
and 人和 (Yan's) in Markham ON
The amount of work involved makes me highly suspicious of even good tea restaurants being able to make it fresh daily in house. Not that they're not tasty, mind, but if you're near a better source it's worth a try. Also the prices for buying a litre or more cannot be beat.
Sun Sun's, which used to be in the Mississauga Chinese Cultural Center, had freshly made douhua. It was a massive Chinese banquet hall restaurant where I used to go for Dim Sum several times a week for most of my childhood, teen years, and again in my adult life after I moved back to Canada from living abroad. They used to roll the duohua around on a trolley cart in a gigantic bamboo tub with a giant ladle for scooping the tofu out, alongside smaller containers with all the fixings for it so you could pick what you wanted in it. Sadly, Sun Sun's shut down in 2011 after decades of operation though, and I miss it dearly. :(
I still have yet to find a place that has anywhere near as good Dim Sum, nor anywhere else that has the same variety of dishes they offered. E.g. I still can't seem to find Dan Tat's anywhere. No other Dim Sum place I've been to since has had them. :( Portuguese Pastel De Nata are close enough, I suppose... but it's just not the same since they're way sweeter and the pastry is totally different. Sigh.
I also used to get Peking Duck at Sun Sun's every year for my birthday. It's where that tradition started, which I have continued to this day. Thankfully I have managed to find another place that has great Peking Duck though, Cythia's in Oakville.
Oh I feel keenly for your loss :'( it is so sad to lose "an institution" and i also bemoan the lack of dimsum varieties these days everywhere: the old chefs have probably all retired and the newer gen obviously don't want to be up at 3am making them daily. How could I blame them.
What you said about coming around with a wood bucket and ladling out with the flat metal spoon yup, childhood right there. Restaurants used to have stir-fry stations with different savoury cakes (馬蹄糕，年糕，蘿蔔糕，芋頭糕etc) and fried noodles and silver needle noodles (銀針粉) as well, long gone.
I've never been to Mississauga but judging by "looks" alone Tung Hing has the looks of an old school HK bakery but the reviews are quite poor - who can say if their original bakers are still there.
Frankly if I lived in Miss I would drive to Markham for Cantonese Chinese food. :/ not that my years in Durham Region indicates they were all that amazing either, having been completely spoilt by growing up in HK and Vancouver.....
I've actually been to Tun Hing a bunch of times over the years too since it's in the same cultural center plaza, and only a few dozen feet away from where Sun Sun's was. :P It's slowly gone downhill pretty badly over the years though, as has the whole plaza, TBH. Although I haven't been back there since shortly after Sun Sun's closed, so things might have gotten better since then. Apparently there is a QJD Peking Duck where Sun Sun's was now, and it looks pretty incredible (esp their dim sum). So next time I'm in Mississauga I will have to check it out!
I've been to Markham a bunch over the years too, but it's a looooooong drive from where I am now so it's hard to justify the trip just for Chinese food, no matter how good. Although we did make a trip up there a few years ago when my cousin came to visit us from Alberta, since he and his wife wanted to try Din Tai Fung's famous soup dumplings.
BTW, just in case it wasn't clear, I'm not actually Chinese so had to google translate those dishes you mentioned. ;) My mom had a really close friend who was Chinese though, and she introduced us to Dim Sum back when I was very very young, which is when our whole family fell in love with it. But we were often the only white people in Sun Sun's and all the various other dim sum places we've been to over the years. :P
I thought so haha but I wanted to give you the words to Google in case we were thinking about the same dish in different English names :) Peking duck birthday banquet is an amazing tradition I hope you keep up with it. I still haven't actually been to any Din Tai Fung yet, amazingly. How was it?
Once I googled the characters and looked at the resulting pictures I recognized the majority of them, so your strategy worked. :P I used to especially love those "turnip cakes" (蘿蔔糕) too (which TIL are actually technically radish cakes ;).
It 100% lived up to the hype. The soup dumplings were great, but my favorite dish was actually their black sesame buns. I probably could have eaten 100 of them. :P
Re: turnip/radish/蘿蔔
To add to the confusion, the Chinese characters refer to "carrot", where usually we specifically say "white carrot" when we mean daikon radish (vis a vis 青蘿蔔 green radish) -- so the dish name in Chinese is literally "carrot cake". When I got married, we had (western) carrot cake at the wedding reception: my family got a kick out of telling everyone they were served 蘿蔔糕 at Chocobean's wedding ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Also, I am unable to distinguish between turnips vs radishes vs rutabaga by sight or taste :/
Double commenting: Sun sun has dimsums at $1.8 a dish omg nom nom nom eat till I explode.
These days they're more like $10 each after tax and tip (Google maps pic)
LOL, yep. And it used to have all-you-can-eat dim sum on Wednesdays between 2-4pm for $15 too (although it was only the basic dishes, not the high-end stuff). It was fucking amazing! :P
That sounds super delicious!! Is the silken tofu warm as well?! I grew up at the very tail end of street vendors and I miss it from my earliest childhood so so much. I've never had large sago before but man they look so tasty
Yes it's traditionally served very warm by street vendors! But more modern vendors also offer it chilled as an option. Both are great :))
so, so tasty. I was telling my family if I had to choose between never having [ ice cream ] or [ tofu pudding ] ever again, I would choose to have tofu pudding / silken / douhua and never have ice cream again. Taho is now on my bucket list: luckily I am visiting Vancouver soon and I'm nearly positive I can find it there. I hope I get to do a huge tour of south east asian countries one day as well.
Ok honestly I wouldn't know what to choose between ice cream and tofu pudding :))
Enjoy Vancouver and yes hope you get to try taho there! Feel free to get in touch if ever you visit the Philippines
Unfortunately I haven't tried anything he ate in the video myself! We don't have those locally (I think) we just have the sago pearls used in dessert and sweet beverages.
Love making Sago into a m*lk pudding. Same with Rice and Tapioca really. Rice is more traditional, and I make it the most due to availability, but I think Sago pudding is my favourite. Actually I recall 30+ years ago it was way easier to find semolina, sago and pudding rice in local shops, but it's almost all gone now. Just in specialist shops many dozens of miles away, or online now.
Edit: I forgot Semolina! How could I forget Semolina!
This guy is amazing. I saw so many types of fruits from this channel and I wish I could go on the tours.
spoiler highlights
What a huge tree and it's filled with starch!!
It's hard tack! Which is a clever food to have if one lived on islands and want to travel often.
The noodles look almost exactly like the ones used to make Korean jap chae potato noodles. Sometimes very starchy foods take forever to cook unless you dump out the water and use a lot of extra water. The plain ones had a white center and so they look undercooked to me. Once he rinsed them and had some sauce it looks more properly hydrated.
The gnocchi shape that isn't gnocchi shaped. I wasn't prepared for how fresh they were: ive seen chocolate covered related foods and that's much closer to how my food usually looks.
"This tastes like wood" (--_--)
"this taste like dirt!" (」°ロ°)」
I love his channel
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in action. I had never heard of them before today, but a few hours ago I watched another video where a YouTuber ate them. And now, here you are, mentioning them again. :P
Heh, yeah. I'm generally willing try most anything once... but yeah, no thanks.
[link warnings] Knowing more of the culinary traditions of more cultures make me reconsider if I truly am willing to try most things or just new ways of cooking mundane North American ingredients.
I think I'm willing to try almost all plant things. When it comes to animal, fungi, bacteria and others, I really actually am not an adventurous eater.
edit probably the weirdest I've eaten is cordyceps but the broth is so so so good and it's just an ex-bug that's a weird shaped mushroom by now, it felt okay to me. And then crayfish and lobsters and shrimps are basically bugs aren't they, arthropods.
So I've seen people comment before that eating bugs is no different than eating shrimp or lobster, but I think there is a difference there - with Shrimp and Lobster you peel and de-vein the critter before you eat it; if it's not properly prepared they're both pretty gross. I've eaten insects a couple of times, and the thing that is consistently off-putting to me is the exoskeleton. I suspect if there was a terrestrial bug that you could prepare by peeling then it wouldn't be nearly as bad to western palates.
Intriguing. That's fair: crayfish is about as buggy as they come in terms of looks. If roasted cicadas or locusts peel, and then there's some kind of shrimp like texture inside after cleaning, yeah I would totally eat that.
And then the thought experiment: I eat mollusks including octopoda, so not having an exoskeleton isn't a problem. I have also eating tiny squids so having the whole critter isn't a problem either.
I think it comes down to the collision of three things: texture, "aliveness", and "baby-hood". I love eels but cannot eat noresore; yes ducks no balut; yes beef but no veal. There are foods that only hit one or two out of the three but still no.
I can see a world in which I would eat these palm grubs: no remedy for being larvae, but they have to be clearly not alive anymore, and they have to have at least a shrimp like texture.
Yeah I dunno if my criteria are exactly that, but they're at least close. I definitely don't think I could eat Balut - I think both the texture and the appearance would be waaaay too offputting. I have had mealworms before, and honestly they're just fine. The texture isn't bad, they don't really taste like much of anything. The only thing that might be offputting to most people is the appearance and just the knowledge of what they are, but both of those are things that can be overcome by exposure, and really if you think about it that's true of a lot of unfamiliar foods.
I have a lot of respect for the tradition of balut and it makes sense: malted grains is more nutritious than unmalted grains. But yeah I don't...think I can do it, along with many other protein types, unless it's highly processed into a nondescript protein format.
As a Filipino who's never eaten balut. Yeah I get it :))
For what it’s worth it’s fairly common to eat shrimp with the shell, and head, and often not deveined in not-the-US. Sucking out the goodness from the severed head is one of the best parts of shrimp.
I'm not super surprised about the head - I know enough folks that eat "mudbugs" (crawfish) to know that's a thing. But I'm a little surprised that people would or could eat unpeeled shrimp. The shell isn't really chewable or digestible...Unless there are types of smaller shrimp with thinner shells, or ways of preparing them that I'm not aware of, that would make them more edible. Still, that's interesting and shows my biases. It's easy to assume that the way I approach a food is the only way it's done.