Puto Bumbong Recipe

Name: Puto Bumbong Recipe
Prep time: 24 h
Cook time: 4 min
Total time: 24 h 4 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Filipino
Ingredients: 1 cup sticky purple rice or pirurutong; 1 1/2 cups glutinous white rice (malagkit); 2/3 cup long grain purple rice; 5 cups water for soaking the rice; 1/2 tbsp salt; butter or cooking oil (for greasing the bamboo tube); 3/4 cups muscovado sugar or panutsa; 1 cup freshly grated coconut; 1/2 cup softened butter; cheese (optional)

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Puto bumbong has become a favorite in a Filipino Christmas. It seems like it has become an icon. Every last quarter of the year beginning in late October stores will pop up selling this yummy treats and people will flock to get a taste of it. It is not a Filipino Christmas without them on the feast table. But did you ever get curious about how it is cooked and why it is called that way? Read on to this Puto Bumbong Recipe to find out.

Puto bumbong is one of the many puto variants in the Philippines. Puto is a steamed rice cake that is traditionally made from slightly fermented rice dough. Bumbong, on the other hand, is a bamboo tube. Puto bumbong is a rice cake steamed in a bamboo tube and that is why it is called “Puto Bumbong”. Its main ingredient is the sticky rice called pirurutong which is deep purple to almost black in color. This gives the delicacy the unique purple color. Pirurutong is mixed with a larger ration of white glutinous rice. Regular white rice may also be used to give the dish a less chewy consistency.

Bumbong steamer or lansungan is used to cook puto bumbong. It is made with bamboo tubes called bumbong.

The rice grains are soaked in water over night, traditionally salted water, to give it a slightly acidic fermented aftertaste. It is then drained and packed in a bamboo tube greased with oil or butter and then steamed. When steam came out from the tube it means the puto is ready.

Recipes using alternative ingredients have emerged. Purple yam is used instead of “pirurutong” or sometimes just the white glutinous rice and then added with food coloring. But these varieties are usually frowned upon because it is considered inauthentic.

Puto bumbong is served topped with grated coconut, muscovado sugar and cheese

This rice cake is usually sold outside churches during Simbang Gabi. It is a night mass which is a a devotional nine-day series of Masses practiced by Filipino Catholics and Aglipayans in the Philippines in anticipation of Christmas. Other kinds of rice cakes are also sold like bibingka, suman malagkit and puto with cheese.

In this Puto Bumbong Recipe, we will try to capture the traditional taste of the Filipino Christmas favorite treats.