HANGING RICE

"Hanging rice" is the English term Cebuanos apply to something called puso, which is, essentially, boiled rice.

Essentially, puso is rice wrapped in woven strands of palm frond. A large bundle of small packets is tied together, and that's why puso are referred to as hanging rice in English. The advantages of puso over rice cooked in the traditional way are manifold. Puso evolved centuries ago, and to this day the woven palm leaves remain a viable form of packaging. The rice is kept free of dust and insects, and the packaging material is completely natural and biodegradable. The fact that the rice is packaged is the crucial driving element which provides the raison d'etre for puso. If you think about it, puso are all about efficiency and productivity.

Think of it at outsourcing. Since the rice is packaged, it can be delivered. This means that, instead of having to cook the rice yourself, you can concentrate on barbecuing and serving your customers, while someone else delivers the rice. It may seem inefficient to wrap rice in leaves and then boil it, but the reverse is true thanks to the extra margin of productivity generated by the division of labor and the benefits of mass production. Incredibly, this concept of outsourcing rice production was invented long before the term "outsourcing" - before the Spaniards arrived in this part of the world, in fact.

Usually, one puso retails for between 2 and 3 pesos. If the cost of rice, energy, labor, and transportation is taken into account, this is incredibly cheap. Puso are proof that traditional craftsmanship - we're talking about the weaving of palm leaves here - can stay competitive in contemporary times. I've tried calculating an estimate, and it's clear that puso producers rely on razor-thin margins. The market is large, and competition between manufacturers is intense.

Puso are eaten almost exclusively with barbecue. I've never seen or heard of anyone eating puso with, for instance, beef stew. In fact, barbecue restaurants are the only places you can get puso. Expensive restaurants do not serve puso, and you can't buy puso in shops. Now, barbecue is eaten with the hands, and the fact that the rice in puso has been compacted in to a fairly hard mass makes it easy to eat with your fingers. That's another advantage.