Tinungbo, Cooking Rice In Bamboo

Tinungbo is an early Ilocano way of cooking rice. There could never be any race or tribe to cook rice like this but this traditional way of cooking have been here particularly to the race living in the northern part of the Philippines. Well, of course, when it comes to survival, you may have experienced cooking rice the way we cook it.

Tinungbo is simply cooking the rice using the bamboo. That's it, no more than that. No secret ingredients and no special way of cooking the rice. Just like you are not just using the rice cooker or the pan to cook the rice. There is bamboo variety called 'bolo' that best suit to cook the rice grains. The bolo bambo have thinner skin which help the rice to cook faster.



So how they do it?
First, rinse and clean the rice grains with water. Then choose the good part of the bamboo to cook the rice. Put a little hole at one end of the bamboo. In that hole, put the rice and the right amount of water. Close the hole with rolled leaves or anything that can be inserted in the whole to close it.

How to cook?
Make fire. Above the firewood put the bolos with  rice and allow to cook it for several minutes. If you have been cooking rice, you should know how many minutes it take to cook the rice. But if not sure, just let it in the firewood but not letting the bamboo be burned.

The rice cook in the bamboo will taste just like any ordinary rice-- well of course, it depends on what variety of rice you cooked-- it may be white rice, brown rice, pink rice. But because it was cook in the bamboo, there is a little distinct taste when compare rice cook in iron ore or rice cooker.

Anyway, this is the traditional way of cooking rice of the early Filipino. But until now, once in a while, you can find some people cooked their rice in the bamboo-- especially in the rural villages.