Asín tibuok is a rare Filipino artisanal sea salt from the Boholano people made by filtering seawater through the ashes of charred coconut husks. Asín tibuok has a sharp taste with smoky and fruity undertones. Today, asín tibuok is only made by a handful of families and is considered an endangered heritage food.
Artisanal salt-makers, called asinderos, were once important professions in Philippine society, but today the craft is nearly extinct due to the time-consuming traditional methods of producing asin tibuok and the hard work that goes into it.
Asinderos cannot compete with the cheap imported salt prevalent today in the Philippines. The passage of Republic Act No. 8172, the Act for Salt Iodization Nationwide (ASIN), in 1995 also placed additional stress on local salt-makers, forcing many to give up the tradition altogether.
Asín tibuok literally means "unbroken salt" or "whole salt" in the Cebuano language of the Boholano people on the island of Bohol. The traditional method of producing asin tibuok can only be carried out from December to May due to the fluctuations in seawater salinity during the rainy season.
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How Is Asin Tibuok Made?
To produce Asin Tibuok, asinderos begin by soaking coconut husks for several months in special pits continuously refilled with fresh seawater during the tides.
The soaked husks are then chopped into smaller pieces and dried for several days, at no point during this drying process can the husks be rained on or the sea water will be washed away, and the entire process ruined.
Once fully dry, the husks are burned for several days in a large pile until completely reduced to ash. This is a long, hot process that must be watched over to ensure the fires are constantly fed and don’t burn out. The ash is then collected for the next step.
The ash, or gasang, is gathered into a large funnel-shaped bamboo filter.
More seawater is poured over the ash, allowing the water to leach the sea salt from the ashes and produce a brine. The brine, called tasik, is collected in hollowed-out coconut trunks placed beneath the funnels.
The brine, or tasik, is then poured into special clay pots and placed over a special furnace. The pots of tasik are allowed to slowly boil, continuously replenished by asinderos with more tasik as it evaporates.
Eventually the water evaporates entirely, and the pots become filled with just the remaining sea salt. Cracks are formed in the pots revealing the solidified mass of salt. Once cool enough to be handled, the asin tibuok are sold along with their cracked pots.
