What's the craziest thing you ever ate?
This past weekend, I tried the much recommended Sliced Spicy Beef Tendons at Szechuan Gourmet. Although I loved the dish for its heat and the zip of the flavors involved, the weirdly gelatinous yet hard texture of the meat, plus the peculiarity of the animal part itself got me thinking about crazy dishes I’ve had in the past, and how this dish was way at the top of my list of the craziest foods that I ever ate.
So, what the craziest thing you ever ate?
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53 Comments:
a big mac at MacDonald's, i like to live on the culinary edge.
Lilartist at 4:32PM on 10/20/08
Korean chrysalis larvae. I don't recommend them.
simon at 4:39PM on 10/20/08
Oh Simon! I just threw up in my mouth a little. :-O
izatryt at 4:43PM on 10/20/08
@simon... FYI... chrysalises or larvae but not both... either way, good for you for trying! We Americans tend to be so squeamish of nutritious foods that are widely eaten elsewhere.
I myself am very open-minded and will at least take a small taste of most anything. But my biggest obstacle is texture. No matter how good it tastes, if it feels icky in my mouth (or worse, going down my throat), all bets are off.
So no wormy larvae type stuff for me.
;)
That said, the craziest things I've ever eaten are the things I tasted without having any idea what they were, usually in a foreign country, served by somebody who spoke no English, and visually unidentifiable. Often turned out to be nothing extraordinarily scary, but when something looks really weird, and you have zero idea what it might be, I'd say that first bite feels pretty damned crazy.
LoCo at 5:10PM on 10/20/08
Japanese beatles! I was only 2 yrs old but they must have been good. I ate three as my mother stood there screaming.
NanaJoie at 5:16PM on 10/20/08
Probably oxtails, at a graduation party this summer. (Very hoity-toity -- don't ask.) Ooh, actually, no; would shark be crazier than oxtails? I tasted that one Christmas Eve when I was pretty young -- it was actually fantastic: very salty, with a consistency similar to scallops but a little softer. Delish!
kfarrel3 at 5:17PM on 10/20/08
you mean as a consenting adult? probably escargot. i was in paris. i can say that i did, and now i'll never have to do it again.
cybercita at 5:22PM on 10/20/08
carpenter ants, night crawlers and raw Maine lobster (which looks exactly like dog slobber from a St. Bernard, and I'd have to imagine a similar taste)
No it wasn't some exotic trip to a far off east asian country... It had a special purpose. It was the only way I could secure unlimited beer for me and two of my buddies at an Island party at UMaine Orono.
Pavlov at 5:33PM on 10/20/08
Armadillo stew was a regular meal at our house, but other people think it's weird. Alligator sausage - yummy. A few ants once - very citrusy.
eatingoutwest at 5:45PM on 10/20/08
When I ate them, it was in a dark norepan and I was distracted by the karaoke, the johnny walker black and the soju. If you ever want to trick someone into eating bugs, that's one way to do it.
simon at 5:46PM on 10/20/08
Alligator sausage is very tasty, there's a pizza place here that serves it! Yay!.
Pocky. (Just kidding, but I do think it's strange how many people love it so. I wasn't impressed.)
This weird fruit that a friend found on the ground. It was green, citrus in nature, and might have been an unripe orange, but definitely the best citrus fruit I've ever had. Just the right amount of sour, sweet, and amazingly juicy. I want to go find that house again and steal their fruit tree.
I need to get out more.
nightowl at 5:51PM on 10/20/08
Definitely Balut, which is a fertilized duck (or chicken) egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell.
The first one was not a very pleasant experience. There was not a second one.
TodayIsTomorrow at 5:57PM on 10/20/08
i'm not sure on the spelling but i say kibbe. it's syrian or my nieghbor's where anyway. raw steak groun 3 times by the butcher. mix with wheat germ and some other grain. they make into a loaf. make a cross on top and chill it in the freezer for a short time. you put some on a pocketless pita with raw onion and cooked hamburg. you can't drink anything except for a mouthfull of something because your belly could rupture when the grains mix with the drink. they called it friendship food. i wouldn't eat it until i was grown. now i crave it.
dearrie at 7:10PM on 10/20/08
@dearrie---Kibbe is my FAVORITE food!
my craziest is probably calves brains...I was maybe 7 and trained quite well to not ask too many questions when eating. needless to say they were delicious until I found out what they were!
veggieout at 9:14PM on 10/20/08
@veggieout= did you eat it the same way?
dearrie at 9:19PM on 10/20/08
Probably buffalo meat. I'm not all that wildly adventurous. It was delicious, though. I would definitely eat it again.
@Today--I grew up around a lot of Filipinos and have seen Balut served at a church potluck. Seeing was enough. Also the fish heads that were served next to them *gag*
buffy at 9:40PM on 10/20/08
ostrich carpaccio
smile at 10:46PM on 10/20/08
Fish gizzards (wasn't aware fish HAD gizzards until then), fish sperm, snow frog (described as the fat lining the reproductive organs of certain kinds of frogs), silkworms, cordyceps (that fungus that invades the body of insects and eats them from the inside out)...lots of things but I guess those are the most conventionally "weird".
fuuchan at 11:05PM on 10/20/08
black pudding ---sausage made by cooking blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled.
tudogostoso at 11:10PM on 10/20/08
@simon: I know the stuff. They taste like plastic!!
smile at 11:45PM on 10/20/08
Chitterlin's (prounounced "chit-lins"; boiled pig intestine in some sort of murky broth). Someone brought a big ol' mess of 'em to a potluck one Sunday afternoon. I had just moved to the south and was being introduced to everything typically "Southern". It smelled like a pot of hot steaming death, and I only managed one chewy mouthful. Typically, one would wash the chitterlins out with a garden hose...wash out the POOP, that is, before boiling them. Yeah. Not yummy.
juliebugsmama at 10:37AM on 10/21/08
Lamb Spinal Cord
Beef Cheeks
Blood Chocolate Pudding (served at St. Joseph's Day)
My mother used to make something she called sofrito but it wasn't an herb mixture as in the Latin culture. It was beef esophagus and windpipe, both outlawed by the USDA. She knew a friendly butcher back when everyone had their favorite and he used to give her the contraband. She cooked it in tomato sauce and we had it with macaroni. Out of this world.
therealchiffonade at 10:47AM on 10/21/08
In Japan it got to eat natto, fermented soybean goo, with mustard. It's not bad. Very nutty. I was told it's a health food in there.
rochellefeil at 1:57PM on 10/21/08
Fish eye balls at a neighbor's alcohol-infused "Chinese" dinner some years ago. When I was a small boy, Dad used to eat pig's feet. I didn't, but smelling them was bad enough.
Summerfield at 2:11PM on 10/21/08
i just threw up in my mouth. nasty eye balls. i worked with some cambodian ladies, every meal they would put all their food together and on fridays their table would get rowdy. they were fighting over how many eye balls the other one ate. eeeewwwww my toes are curled just thing about that.
dearrie at 5:35PM on 10/21/08
I once had a big plate of cultural insensitivity.
Tasted like chicken.
SqueezeBottle at 6:52PM on 10/21/08
dearrie -- i'm pretty sure kibbe is Syrian, but i've never heard of serving it raw. Its usually a small fist-sized loaf of bulgar wheat encasing some ground meat, and the whole thing is fried and sometimes served in a pita like a falafel.
As for my weird foods:
*horsemeat sashimi (tastes like tuna)
*natto (fermented soybeans -- looks, smells, and probably tastes like what would happen if you forgot some soybeans sit in the back of the fridge for about 6 months)
*uni -- also known as sea urchin gonads (tasty! sometimes smells like feet)
*pig's head (porky, gelantinous)
*chicken feet (chewy and rubbery)
*cooked, drained ramen noodles with ketchup (mom's derranged idea of cheap spaghetti)
mh330 at 7:51PM on 10/21/08
Cicadas, fried with lots of garlic and chile peppers, lovingly prepared by my Thai sister-in-law, whom I had just met. How could I not? Lots of scotch helped, but really...except for the nasty legs that stuck in my teeth, they were pretty tasty.
SueZeeQ at 7:57PM on 10/21/08
I'm Lebanese and my dad used to make Kibbeh. It can be raw, baked or fried. I've never heard anything about it expanding in your stomach though. I used to not like it one bit, but now I love it.
As for strange things I've eaten: tripe, jellyfish, shark fin, chicken feet, beef tendon. Shark fin is the only one I liked.
FoodPorncess at 7:58PM on 10/21/08
i was told because of the grains, they would expand .
dearrie at 8:25PM on 10/21/08
The bulgur is soaked in water, so it has already expanded.
SqueezeBottle at 8:37PM on 10/21/08
i don't know how they made it. i just remember being told not to drink much.
dearrie at 8:55PM on 10/21/08
That sounds suspiciously like the pop rocks & soda myth.
buffy at 9:01PM on 10/21/08
could be. but i didn't want to find out. ..just like when they told me if i ate apple seeds i would have a apple tree growing out of my mouth. same thing with fingernails. the dreams i had, well that's a whole other thread...
dearrie at 9:45PM on 10/21/08
I live in the Canadian arctic and have tried whale, seal and walrus. Like they say, when in Rome.......
Arcticsushi at 10:42PM on 10/21/08
Frozen raw whale meat in Japan. We thought it would be fun to randomly point at the kanji on a menu in Kyoto. Not so fun when something came out that looked sort of like raw beef, sashimi-style, each slice enrobed in a layer of ice. The waiter wouldn't tell me what it was until I finished eating. The flavor was like slightly fishy beef, as bizarre as that sounds, but I'd eat it again.
bialy at 11:18PM on 10/21/08
Sea cucumber w/ soy sauce and garlic, and raw, frozen, salted pork fat, sliced thin and just thawed enough to melt in your mouth. On the same night.
The first was horrible (especially since I had to eat double for a squeamish friend). The second was surprisingly good...think butter and you're not far off.
Both were enabled by vast quantities of vodka and a desire not to create an international incident. That night we also had freshly-caught scallops from the Russian Pacific, served raw with nothing but a squeeze of lemon, which may be the best thing I have ever eaten.
tnword at 12:24AM on 10/22/08
When I was a kid I would eat matches and deodorant. I would also sneak spoonfuls of Crisco. Raw biscuits and raw hamburger meat with Lawry's season salt. I haven't had that since I was in 6th grade. I ended up with major food poisoning.
gammypie at 7:32AM on 10/22/08
@simon- props! i'm living in Seoul now..everytime I smell them, I run away. My mom loves them because they used to eat them for protein when she was growing up here..ickkkkk
machellebelle at 8:37AM on 10/22/08
@tudogostoto - Black pudding's on my list, too. I'm moving to Yorkshire next year though, so I'd better get used to it!
Also, reindeer meat. Very gamey. Mine are pretty lame.
embolini9 at 3:19PM on 10/22/08
Oh, and also, when I was 7 I ate a piece of dog food. On a dare. And promptly threw up. But I won 50 cents, so I totally think it was worth it.
embolini9 at 3:24PM on 10/22/08
Ooh! I had nail polish on a cracker once, on a dare. It was as bitter as you'd expect.
Also, I've tasted play-doh, but hasn't everyone?
nightowl at 4:34PM on 10/22/08
I ate pig ears last week - they were just as awful as I should have expected!
kittie at 9:21AM on 10/27/08
tnword - funny you say that about raw scallops, I hated them! I love scallops so was excited to try them at a raw bar. Both my date and I could barely swallow them. Granted, we're in NYC so maybe they weren't the freshest, but it tasted like I took a bite of seaweed and sand that had been sitting in the sun too long. . .
cb1414 at 9:37AM on 10/27/08
A live goldfish on a $50 bet, which was originally $100 till the guy realized that I would really do that, or steak tartare, which I had in Provence this summer, which was phenomenal.
Faither at 9:47AM on 10/27/08
Wedding cake.
PerkyMac at 10:17AM on 10/27/08
Crazy cake.
pjracz10 at 10:52AM on 10/27/08
You all are much more adventurous with your diet then I.
Happy eating!
bringdis2dabank at 11:17AM on 10/27/08
@gammypie- that sounds like pica.
Kerosena at 11:20AM on 10/27/08
Probably live termites in Central America, the big kind that make mud huts on the side of trees...besides trying to run back out of my mouth (like a very large ant) they had a good crunch, and I suppose because of the 'chemical liquid' inside their bodies to break down wood, after the initial crunch it was like a dark greens salad/lettuce taste.
Not to bad.
They say their good for excellent source of protein, vitamins, and minerals for surviving in the jungle without food.
BuildMyBistro at 11:21AM on 10/27/08
ants as a kid!
snowmoonelk at 12:33PM on 10/27/08
@tnword
You should try sea cucumber sashimi...while cooked sea cucumber (usually reconstituted from dry) is mushy and rubbery, the sashimi is crunchy and clean tasting.
@kittie
I love pig ears ._. Chilled with a super spicy chili-flecked sauce...mmm...
@SqueezeBottle
I'm not sure if I should laugh or not...
fuuchan at 12:50PM on 10/27/08
an entire bottle of cough syrup when i was three, not the kids stuff either...i slept for like 30 hours straight afterwards lol. my mom walked into her room and i was passed out on her bed, with the empy bottle in my hands and red stickyness on my face.
with my brother and i, my mom had poison control on speed dial. no lie.
delilah at 1:35AM on 10/28/08