Kinuday and Etag: The Cordillera Hearth as a Food Store

A photograph of preserved meat was enough to start a conversation far from the Cordillera. At a January 2021 gathering organized by the Netherlands-based MABIKAs Foundation, participants recalled different names: kini-ing, etag, inasin and sal-lakong. They also remembered differences in meat, saltiness, aroma and storage. The foundation recorded these exchanges as part of a project to document knowledge and childhood memories. The picture did not produce one agreed formula. It brought several places and family experiences into the same discussion. Source 1

That is a useful starting point for kinuday and etag. Their history involves preserving meat, but also distributing it, remembering who gave it and deciding when it can be shared again. The hearth held a future ingredient. It could also hold a reminder of an earlier gathering and a relationship that continued after the guests went home.

A hearth with two jobs

In Bokod and Kabayan, Cynthia Garambas and colleagues documented kinuday through interviews and observation with 15 experienced Ibaloy makers. Their 2022 paper describes salt-rubbed meat suspended in the so-olan, above the cooking hearth or shap-olan. Everyday cooking supplied smoke as well as heat for the meal below. Meat received from festivities was an important starting material, and native pork was the usual preference. The researchers recorded a household practice embedded in other work, rather than an isolated smokehouse recipe. Source 2

The arrangement makes the connection between feast and household visible. A large gathering creates a quantity of meat at one moment; a household needs food across many later meals. Keeping part of a share for later can extend both its culinary use and the memory of the occasion. The preserved piece has already travelled socially before it goes into another pot.

The makers also described different smoking woods. Alnus was valued for aroma, while availability helped explain the continuing use of other local woods, including pine. Their observations challenge the idea that there is one compulsory “mountain smoke” flavor. The household’s materials, preferences and circumstances helped shape the result. Source 2

The early record includes a gourd and a pot

Albert Jenks’s The Bontoc Igorot, based on 1903 fieldwork and published in 1905, records it-tag as salted meats, including pork and carabao. He describes storage in large gourds bound with rattan, called fa-lay, and tightly covered pots, called tu-u-nan. This matters because an old written description of etag does not automatically describe the smoked product a visitor now buys in Sagada. Salting, vessels and local variation belong to the historical record too. Source 3

Jenks also recorded live pigs and portions of pork or carabao meat in barter. His descriptions are colored by colonial judgments, which need not become our own. The practical observations nevertheless show meat as a stored resource and an object of exchange. A gourd of preserved meat belonged within an economy, rather than simply illustrating an unusual taste. Source 3

Objects make this history easier to understand. A storage vessel, a place above the hearth and the tools for cutting meat each solve a different problem. Looking at them prevents the finished food from absorbing the entire story. It also gives a museum or family-history project concrete things to document: who made the container, where it stood, how a share arrived, and what occasion called it back into use.

Why a feast sent meat home

Martin Lewis’s reconstruction of prewar Buguias describes graded prestige feasts called pedit. Guests received cooked food and raw portions to take home. The people arranging the distribution observed distinctions of rank; the finest portions did not circulate as if everyone occupied the same position. As a feast grew, the obligation to feed visitors and send meat home could require additional animals beyond the central ritual sacrifices. The scale of the gathering therefore shaped a much wider distribution of food. Source 4

Lewis’s account also describes contributions from relatives and neighbors, including rice beer, while the sponsoring couple bore the principal expense. This is a more demanding picture than a general celebration of generosity: hosting required resources, organization and obligations. Food sharing connected people, but those connections also expressed status and could be costly to maintain. Source 4

For the history of preservation, the take-home portion is the crucial link. The question becomes what happens after distribution. A feast may be remembered as a single event, but its food enters several households, each with its own timing and needs. Preserving the meat allows one occasion to supply later cooking without requiring all its shares to be eaten immediately.

In Sagada, the maker can be part of the flavor

Seng-Guan Yeoh’s Sagada fieldwork, conducted intermittently from 2014 to 2020 and published in 2024, gives that relationship another dimension. Informants described individual elders’ etag as recognizable through small differences in preparation. Elders were expected to know the craft and bring etag for communal cooking. The accounts also distinguished meat received at celebratory gatherings from meat associated with wakes and burials: the latter was subject to different rules about sharing beyond the household. Taste, memory and the circumstances of a gift were closely connected. Source 5

Such distinctions cannot be read from a package photograph. Two pieces may look much alike while carrying different histories of who gave them and where they may circulate. For a visitor, the appropriate response is curiosity and respect for the maker’s explanation. For an article or menu, it is a reason to describe the community and context, rather than treating every use of preserved pork as interchangeable.

Yeoh also observed commercial change. Some women made small quantities for market, while other producers supplied eateries and souvenir shops. Where a kitchen had moved to gas, a separate shed could still provide space for smoking. The practice could therefore move within a household’s built environment instead of simply disappearing with a new stove. Source 5

A laboratory asks a different question

A 2015 study led by Sonwright Maddul compared hot-smoked, cold-smoked and sun-dried etag. Its published abstract reports sensory, chemical, physical and microbiological examinations, with acceptable microbial results for the tested products. It also calls for further work on salinity and shelf life. This combination is useful: researchers were trying to make a product consistent enough for wider sale, while identifying questions still needing investigation. The result belongs to those tested processes and samples, rather than every piece sold under the name etag. Source 6

Standardization changes what has to be written down. A family maker may recognize the desired result through experience. A producer sending food to an unfamiliar customer must communicate a repeatable product, its handling requirements and its intended use. Documenting those matters can support the craft, provided the commercial specification is not presented as the only history the food has ever had.

A separate 2022 kinuday study by Garambas, Luna and Chua used eight trained panelists to develop 24 English descriptive terms with local-language counterparts. They compared specified samples smoked for 24 and 36 hours and found changes in selected color and flavor characteristics. The contribution is a vocabulary for describing differences precisely. It is not a general instruction to smoke meat for either duration, since a household’s cut, equipment and conditions need their own validated process. Source 7

The surprising next form: a seasoning cube

A study published by Benguet State University in June 2026 developed etag-based cubes, granules and liquid seasoning. Fifteen semi-trained evaluators described the products, and 54 untrained consumers took part in acceptance work. The detailed observations included clumpy granules and cloudy liquid, alongside recognizable flavor characteristics. These details are more informative than simply declaring a heritage ingredient ready for a global market: changing its form creates new practical problems that need to be solved. Source 8

The development poses an interesting choice. A cube could introduce etag flavor to someone who has never bought a preserved piece; it cannot convey by itself the circumstances of a ritual gift. A useful label can identify the ingredient and its makers while allowing the new product to be what it is. Innovation does not require pretending that every new format reproduces the whole social experience of the older food.

The living pig remains part of the story

The supply of meat also receives attention. In July 2026, DOST-PCAARRD reported a Benguet State University project led by Mary Arnel Garcia, building on native-pig research begun in 2014. Five farmer cooperators in Atok, Buguias and Mankayan had entered agreements with their local governments, and breeding-and-selection training had involved 18 farmers and two extension workers. The wider aim was a dependable supply of improved breeding stock. These reported activities provide a concrete link between cultural preference and agricultural work; the projected productivity gains remain an aim. Source 9

For heritage programmes, this is an essential connection. Recording a food’s name and process is valuable, but its makers also need ingredients and a workable livelihood. A preservation project becomes stronger when the people raising animals, preparing meat and selling finished products can explain their respective constraints.

Public celebration and private knowledge

Sagada’s announced programme for its thirteenth Etag Festival in January–February 2026 combined a trade fair with cultural presentations, gong activities and religious observance. In the announcement, Mayor Felicito Dula linked the event with identity and a shared future. The programme illustrates how preserved meat can serve as a public name for a much broader town celebration. A visitor encountering it through a festival is meeting one contemporary setting in a longer history. Source 10

The most worthwhile encounter leaves room for both flavor and explanation. Kinuday and etag can be ingredients, gifts, saleable products and prompts for memory. Their history becomes richer when we keep the places and people visible: the Ibaloy cooking hearth, the Bontoc storage vessel, the Buguias take-home share and the Sagada elder’s contribution to another gathering. Preserving food has also been a way of carrying relationships forward.