It's not that Gross...

It is quite strange how come Filipinos got the names of these foods. For those who have no idea about this, maybe you should take a glance of each Filipino food that will really blow your head off. I’ve listed five of the most “out of this world” names for food that you can only encounter here in the Philippines. I just warn you just that these are just names, they are edible and delicious.

5. IUD, HELMET, ADIDAS and BETAMAX – These are names for foods; I’m not having any mistakes with my list here. These three street foods are all chicken parts. See, how thrifty the Filipinos are? Nothing’s wasted. IUD is the chicken’s intestines, Helmet is the chicken’s head and lastly Adidas is the chicken’s feet. The Helmet and Adidas are first cooked in adobo style (marinated with sot sauce and spices) before grilling while IUD is gently washed, soak and also marinated before grilling. Betamax, on the other hand is made up of dried chicken blood that is cut into small squares resembling into a betamax tape. The small squares chicken bloods are then on put into bamboo skewers and slightly roasted.

4. QUECK- QUECK and TOKNENENG – Obviously it came again into the fowl family. Queck Queck came from Quack Quack, the noise that these feathered fellows often produced. It is a hard boiled egg, coated with orange batter and then deep fried. Queck Queck has a small version made up of quail eggs and it was called Tokneneng.

3. TIRA TIRA – Tira Tira or molasses candy. It is one of the icons of Filipino sweets that is made of raw caramelized sugar formed into tubes, about 2 inches long. It has a bubbly texture and very much elastic that you spend your time pulling it just to break it into pieces. That is why it is named Tira Tira from the Spanish word Tirar which means pulling.

2. SUNDOT KULANGOT - This is a native delicacy which is hard to find now a days. I bet there are only few Filipinos today who knew this food. This originally came from Baguio, the Summer Capital of the Philippines. It is made of water, glutinous rice and lemon molasses. The three ingredients are combined together, heated until attain the perfect consistency. The fun part, it is poured on little pitugo shells and sealed. To this, you will need a stick made from bamboo to get the thing out the shell. Just like when you’re picking your nose, that’s why it is named that way. But don’t be deceived with its name because this one is really good.

The Pitugo Shell

1. DIRTY ICE CREAM – to cap of my list of the weirdest names of foods in the Philippines, I put the dirty ice cream on the top of my list. Who in the world would eat dirty ice cream anyway? Actually, it’s not really dirty. Back in the old days, ice cream dealers bred their own cows and milked them with their own hands to ensure the freshness and sanitation of the milk that is needed to produce this particular ice cream. In short, all of the process is being done with their bare hand that’s why it created a negative connotation that the ice cream is dirty. Up to this point, it is still called dirty ice cream even if the technology regarding its process is very much different. But still the taste as well as the manner of selling is still the same.

Images from Flickr.com