Gipang is a dark, crunchy, and sweet treat that reportedly originated in Brgy. Amanperez, this town. Part-pinipig and part-pop rice, it comes in a brick shape and sold in separate plastic bags in the market.
According to the residents there, they have been making gipang since they were young, and that the tradition of making gipang goes back to their ancestors. According to their own estimate, commercial production started in the 1950s-1960s, when all households in the barrio produced or cooked gipang.
In Rosita Manlongat de Vera's makeshift production area, it can be seen that gipang is essentially made of deremen, the glutinous rice that is toasted at immature stage and blackened with charcoal, giving it a smoky flavor, and traditionally used on All Saints' Day to make a rice cake called inlubi, which is cooked in honor of the dearly departed.
To make gipang, she said, the deremen is made into binotang deremen, deremen that is puffed a bit by frying it in oil with molten molasses on an arms-length flatbed steel fryer and, once done, the whole thing is quickly partitioned into blocks and hauled off. Timing is reportedly important, so as to achieve the desired degree of doneness. The result is an interesting combination of flavors and consistency: chewy, crunchy, smoky and sweet at the same time. Like pinipig, though not flattened into flakes, this greenish-gray treat is often used as topping in halo-halo or eaten as is.
It is also being sold outside of the town.
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