BETUTU
Before the cooking called betutu, Balinese must had desperate way to cook duck, as it is very difficult to make it soft despite long cooking on fire. Balinese does not like to cook duck as their meat is hard and difficult to enjoy, but ducks have been grown mostly for the need of religious rituals. While the priests as they do not eat pig or beef, after conducting the ritual they normally served with chicken or duck cuisines called "rayunan" The growing of ducks also for the production of eggs which is also used in the rituals beside people prefers to eat its egg comlpared to its meat. Beside chicken eggs, the requirments of duck eggs is a must at the certain rituals.
In the course of time, it is not clearly known who and where was the first time people experimented to make the meat of duck more taste and easy to eat. We heard the name of duck betutu and crispy duck cooking, a cooking of duck which meat is soft and very taste. This early type of duck betutu was given strong Bali traditional flavor of chili, pepper, and other spices which are not suitable for even some Balinese stomach.
Suddently around 1980s this unique cuisine of Bali became very popular among travellers in the area of Ubud, where probably travellers experimented to enjoy this local cuisine with flavor much reduced in ingredients of traditional Bali wether it was soft or crispy duck cooking. The cuisines become menus of local and internationally visited restaurants around Ubud, to mention such as Bebek Bengil, Tepi Sawah, Wayan Cafe, Coffee Lotus, and others. Since then this unique cuisine truely well known among various nation of the world.
The process of cooking betutu or crispy duck also takes long time, after given strong Bali flavours, wrapped with coconut bottom skin of the leave trunk called upih in Bali. Wrapped chicken burried in ashes of wood fire for a day or more before it is considered cooked well. Today much of the cooking uses preasure pan which takes less then 1 hour. Both methode resulting different tastes, the tradional one resulting much more better tastes, although the softness can be the same. Cooked betutu with preasure pan costs much cheaper, so probably most restaurant uses this way to serve more efficient cooking, unless a special order is given. After become betutu it is easy to make crispy duck by frying it by coconut oil. Today one can easily find a restaurant serves betutu Gilimanuk in places such as Kuta, Nusa Dua, Sanur and Denpasar city. The cost for one set of lunch or dinner for example is very fair around Rp 75.000 per portion for full size of chicken of almost 0.5 km net weight cooked duck.
