Filipinos are capable of doing incredible things.

After years of documenting our local foodways for

, one of my many realizations is just how ingenious Filipinos truly are. We are creative and inventive in how we cook, produce, package, and harvest our food. While many Filipinos may not have electric microwaves, stoves, or other expensive Western equipments, we have unique, vernacular tools and machines, rooted in ancestral knowledge and adapted with modern improvisations.

We maximize what we have, we make the most of everything and waste nothing. We can create ovens from scrap materials and repurpose or modify basic kitchenware to fit our needs. But our ingenuity goes even deeper. We know how to use hundreds of plant materials—fibers, wood, and vines—to make kitchen tools, craft sophisticated fish traps, or funneling devices that produce concentrated, high-quality brine for artisanal salt making. We have hundreds of traditional food packaging and containers with intricate designs, crafted from palms, pandans, and other plants, used by us long before the arrival of lifeless plastic wares. We know how to utilize the earth, we make claypots and jars that we used for cooking, storing, and fermenting. There are countless examples of this resourcefulness throughout the archipelago. And this is only in food; there is so much more to discover in architecture, folk medicine, textiles, etc.

We are so accustomed to hearing that we have one of the lowest education levels and that our skills don’t measure up to those of our neighboring countries. Since colonial times, we’ve been bombarded with the idea that our knowledge and ways are somehow inferior. But I know this isn’t the full story. Filipinos are naturally intelligent and resourceful, it’s the limitations of the system that often hold us back from reaching our full potential. With more resources, opportunities, and relief from poverty, I’m confident that Filipinos could achieve even more remarkable things.

Cooking in Cebu

Bibingka of Catmon, Cebu cooked in an oven made with metal sheets. Coconut husk is used for fire.

Steamer in Sulu Archipelago

A modified kettle used as a steamer for putu or piyutu, a type of fermented cassava eaten as a source of carbs in Sulu archipelago.

Roasting in Pangasinan

Roasting rice grains for Pangasinan’s dërëmën over hot embers in an improvised device made with a buyóg (an earthenware pot originally used for fetching water) with an attached metal sheet to catch the grains.

Fishing in Antique

Traditional way of fishing in Antique called Kinaban. It is made with bamboo and a vine called hipgid. The platform is placed in a river, and when the water rises and recedes, all freshwater species such as shrimps, eels, and fish are trapped and collected.

This is also practiced in many parts of the Philippines.

Cooking in Capiz

Binakol cooked in large bamboo node in Capiz. Cooking in bamboo is practiced throughout the Philippines.

Filtering in Zambales and Guimaras

Tatabagan, filtering device used in asin sa buy-o in Zambales. Salted soil gathered from the mangrove area are placed inside the device which the locals describe “baligtad na bubong”. The mechanism filters the saltwater, turning it to a clean concentrated brine.

Kaing, woven baskets, are used for filtering saltwater in the production of tultul in Guimaras.

Ashes from burnt salted driftwood, or dagsa, are placed in these baskets. Fresh batches of saltwater are poured into the kaing to create a highly concentrated brine called tuma, which will later be cooked to make salt blocks.

Nets in Capiz

Surambaw, a type of lift net in Capiz. But this is also practiced in many lakes and sheltered coastal areas in the Philippines.

Ovens in Cebu and Ilocos Sur

Molo Bingka in Iloilo

Containers in Basilan, Tawi-tawi, and Pangasinan

Cooling Device

Karamba, a cooling device made with clay pots placed on top of bamboo platforms, with a water basin underneath. It is used to cool down hot sugarcane syrup that will later pulled and turn into traditional sweet called balikutsa. Earthenware has natural cooling properties, and balikutsa makers further enhance this by pouring water over the outside of the clay pots to speed up the process.

The use of earthenware in the Philippines is traditionally used for food, particularly in cooking, storage, and fermentation.

For Fermentation

Burnéy, used for fermenting vinegar. I was told by a local that each batch of vinegar has unique nutritional properties since each jar has different composition of flora or microorganisms.

Ladle for Asin Tibuok

Grater in Quezon

Container of Sundot Kulangot

Traditional Fish Trap

Traditional fish trap called bubo.

Our genius is all around us, woven into countless aspects of our lives. You don’t even have to look closely; it’s everywhere.