How To Cook Tinungbo

Ilocos food tinungbo

Tinungbo is the traditional method of cooking rice mostly in the mountainous part of Ilocandia.

Very few this way is being done now, during special occasions and picnic only.

Tinungbo is when you cook rice not using pan but bolo-- a kind of bamboo with thin layer. Bolo is the best kind of bamboo because of thinness that makes the heat penetrate inside and rice easy to cook.

How to cook tinungbo?

1. Choose one node of bamboo and in one end make hole.
2. Put the cleaned rice in the hole.
3. Add right amount of water.
4. Make some fire with firewoods and above it put the nodes of bamboos with rice.
5. Cook in time turning the bamboo once in a while.

Immediately served the cook rice. This is the best time to eat tinungbo, while it is still hot. Serving tinungbo after hours will make the rice harder.

Tinungbo has the distinction of taste because of the bamboo. While cooking may be challenging because of the right amount of heat but having it in the meal is fulfilling.

With rice cookers and modern tech of cooking in the kitchen trying this old school way could be rewarding to our feeling.

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.