After watching shows like "Bizarre Foods," and, "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations," it got me thinking, are there really adventurous foodies on this forum? Have you had frog sashimi and lizard sake and toxic blowfish? I myself have had uni, sea urchin, and tako, octopus, at sushi bars. Uni tastes like pluffmud, slightly, very oceany, and tako is this really clean taste with this rubbery texture, but good nonetheless. Since we have such a multitude of different people on here, I'm interested to see what constitutes "weird food," for everyone. So... what's the weirdest thing you've eaten?
The weirdest thing I have ever eaten is "Tripe". I was dared to eat it and being the Chim that I am, I did. I will never eat it again.
I had turtle soup once. It was pretty tasty. When I lived in Germany, a friend of the family got me to eat blood sausage. It was very nasty.
I don't know about weird, but one of the most discusting things I have ever eaten was fried chitterlings (minced pig intestines). I managed to swallow a mouthful without immediately launching it back, and even to smile to not offend my coworker who brought it in for our Christmass potluck. I have eaten tripe. It's gross, but nowhere near as bad as the chitterlings. I've had frog legs. I found them a bit stringy. They taste like chicken, if your chicken has been marinated in fish parts. I've had escargot (snails), broiled with herbed garlic oil, and it was wonderful. I've had cookes eel, which some people consider weird, and it was delicious. Ditto squid - fried or cooked in a red sauce. I love sashimi of many types, including octopus, eel, tuna, and sea urchin. Also love raw oysters and littleneck clams. I hated roast bear - way too strong a flavor. But strips of venison, almost like bacon strips, toasted over a campfire - heaven! Some people think oxtails are weird. I've made oxtail stew, and it was marvellous.
The weirdest thing I ever ate was a fried squid snack thing. I don't know exactly what it was, but a teacher brought it back from South Korea and let everyone in the class have one. It was terrible lol.
After 3 pregnancies, I've had a lot of weird stuff... well, a weird combination of foods. Like cheesecake with pickles and coffee sprinkled over the top. Steak with sugar and chocolate over it instead of marinade, scallops dipped in melted chocolate, but never really eaten anything weird like mentioned above. I think the worst I did was I got a meat pie, removed the meat, put chocolate pudding in there, cherries, banana, a dollop of ice-cream and then heated the meat and put it on the top. I ate it and I enjoyed it too. The thoughts of it now makes me want to throw up. Chim, I've had Tripe before, never again. I've also tried truffles, which is the weirdest thing I've had that wasn't a weird food combination. The truffle spread was put on truffle bread, and my gosh.... never again!!! YUCK!
Jellyfish....chicken feet (which are surprisingly delicious)...octopus...black pudding (which is like a blood sausage, and again, delicious)...escargot....good times
Octopus and sea urchin - not a fan of either. I think I spit the sea urchin back out (in a subtle and classy way, thank you). Weirdest was mountain lion. Yes, mountain lion. Someone actually brought it to a barbecue. Not a whole lion, just some of the meat. I think it was good actually...
Octopus cooked in red wine and a ton of baby onions. It's delicious and a standard favourite. Why do you think it's odd? Tripe is considered something that fixes your stomach after a night of drinking. It's usually eaten in the early morning hours. All the friends leave the bars and nightclubs and head for the Tripe shops. Snails (many recipes, all delicious). Several animals' guts fried, cooked, in a skew etc. It takes some skill to make those things, but they are considered delicacies. I love them. Fried liver is pretty great. I love how it tastes plus I get all the iron I need (I have an iron problem in my blood). As you probably guessed I am not a vegetarian.
Lol, a lot of the 'weird' things I read here don't some weird at all to me... like, squid, octopus, animal intestines, black pudding, snails... Or oysters. Let's see... I've eaten kangaroo and ostrich, but that's not really weird... I've eaten shark fin soup (sorry), hearts, livers, brains, kidneys... but that's still not weird, really...Frog legs too, but that's also not weird to me. Actually, I don't think I've eaten anything that I find really strange. But I'd love to try some haggis.
Horse was interesting. It's a bit like beef - and when I say a bit I mean a lot. Quite nice and tender as well, but I probably couldn't get used to the idea of eating Dobbin.
I've lived in so many countries that I guess I've eaten things that people might say are weird if they aren't used to them. I can honestly say that I loved them all. Truly. Tripe soup is often eaten in Turkey, and it's absolutely delicious, especially with some garlic sauce. A Ghanaian friend of mine once also made stew with tripe, also very nice. Another speciality here is lambs' intestines. They are kind of braided around a skewer and roasted. Yummm. It just tastes like lean, barbecued meat. Near us is an ostrich farm, and the meat is great, a beautiful rich colour, and low in cholesterol. I had kangaroo meat once years ago at Australia House in London, and that was nice, too, with a great texture. When we were kids in Malta, we used to take sea urchins off the rocks with knives, split them open, and eat them, to the disgust of the tourists LOL. Another thing I had as a kid, in Hong Kong, was snake. It was a bit like kalamar. The only thing that I can think of that is too disgusting to eat, is badly-cured olives, but otherwise I love them. Oh, yes, I wasn't too keen on jellied eels when I tried them, but it was the jelly that was too much for me, not the eels. It's amazing how growing up on boarding school food makes anything taste great later...
Will you kill me when I say I eat horse all the time? Edit: And I may just have eaten the weirdest thing ever this midday... my sister made me try goats cheese with chocolate paste...yuck.
I guess I haven't eaten that many "out there" weird things, like tripe or anything, but when I lived in Germany I was not so thrilled with the amount of weird cold cuts that they ate. One of my host families barely ate hot meals; it was always bread and cold cuts, both of which are things that I don't usually care for. Too much bread gags me and lunchmeat has no taste, I find. Worse still was that they didn't eat much American type cold cuts. More often it was sausage varieties, and though I tried everything I didn't like any of it. The strange thing was that my first host family cooked traditional Turkish food, which was delicious, and my other family was vegetarian and we ate a fantastic, hot meal every single night. Not to get off topic, but I just really hated those German cold cuts, or the cold, sandwich type meals in general.
How funny--one of the biggest problems my friend had (her kid went to a German-language school here in Turkey) was that her daughter would return from exchanges in Germany half-starved, or having eaten out at MacDonald s every day because of the cold meals! I just remember eating really delicious different types of bread and spicy pickles in Germany, so I'm not sure why people find them tasteless...And the cakes were wonderful. But I wouldn't like never having a hot meal, I must say.
Yeah, the cold meals made me feel sick to my stomach pretty often. I lost an unhealthy amount of weight when I lived with that family. I ended up blowing probably 200 euro that year on KFC, Doener, and pretzels. My Turkish family cooked fantastic food however. It was always delicious. And German food in general isn't bad, necessarily, but the cold cuts weren't good IMO. And I don't like bread very much, so that didn't help. But schnitzels, bratwurst, pickels, beer, and soups/stews were all fantastic.
When I was in Borneo in the jungle I ate a giant jungle cricket. Was actually quite tasty! I also had "jungle cat" stew. Very stringy and pretty rotten.
There is a place in town that is called Everything Chocolate, and they have a few dishes with bugs, worms and the like. (Odd considering it's the only kind, no competition, and nobody goes to it). Been outback and eaten, crocidile, emu, snake, dingo, echidna, which all taste the same really and arn't that exciting. I had the chance to eat blood filled Leaches off dead creatures in the water while i was up. I said no. More fun, or more exciting was going to Taipei's Snake Alley when i went overseas's. It was always something i had to mark on my must do in lifetime list.
I've never been an adventurous eater. The most exotic thing I can say is frog legs. And yes, they taste like chicken.
It really wasn't so bad. I am usually quite picky about what I eat but it was there and I was like "may as well for the craic"
Oh dear, I had forgotten that I once ate some meow mix when I was a kid. Yes, some as in plural. I think I wanted to taste all the different colored pieces to see if they had unique tastes. All I remember is that they were salty. There, that's my true confession for the week.
