Granted, many of these recipes are not seen as “unusual” in their home towns, but to the average Westerner, there is something awful about each and every one. Having said that, who are we to judge without trying? I just don’t want to go first! If you have had experience eating any of these dishes, please tell us about it in the comments.
Caterpillars of skipper butterflies, which live on the maguey cactus, are toasted or fried and eaten with mescal. Since the maguey is the source of pulque and tequila, ‘caterpillar pretzels’ are a favorite in Mexico, even available canned.
Marinate larvae, sliced onions and lime leaves in coconut cream with some pepper. Wrap in pieces of linen and steam; serve over rice.
Collect ants in leaf cups, put directly into the hot ashes of a fire for just a few minutes. Remove ants and make into a paste. Add salt and ground chili, then bake. This chutney is said to have ‘a sharp, clean taste’ and is eaten with cocktails and curries.
Soak a calf’s mesentary with the udder of a young beef in cold water, blanch for 30 minutes in boiling water. Dry and cut into small pieces. Saute a generous amount of chopped mushrooms and some chopped parsley and shallots. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, and a glass of white wine. Remove from heat, and thicken with five egg yolks. Stir in the meat and stuff the mixture into the pig rectum. Tie off both ends, poach sausage for 45 minutes in stock mixed with white wine. Allow to cool in pot.
Spread unsweetened crepes with a mixture of chopped fish sperm and mushrooms bound with fish-based béchamel sauce. Roll crepes and set in a buttered dish, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and melted butter; heat dish in a 350 degree oven until top browns.
Prepare a stuffing of dormouse meat or pork, pepper and pine nuts, a tasty broth, asafetida (a spice still commonly used in Indian cooking), and some garum. Stuff the dormice and sew them up. Bake in oven on a tile.
Stuff a pig uterus with cumin, leeks, pepper, garum (fish sauce), pounded pork meat and pine nuts. Cook sausage in water and oil with some garum, dill and leeks.
Trim beef or pork heart, cut into one-eighth inches. Julienne. Marinate with sections of scallions in a mix of cornstarch, water, soy sauce, sherry, sugar, salt and minced ginger. Drain vegetables and stir fry medium hot. Pork heart must be thoroughly cooked.
This popular dish is not only a temptation for frustrated parents. Rub a skinned, eviscerated kid inside and out with: chopped nuts, parsley or coriander, chopped fresh ginger, salt and pepper. Stuff the kid with cooked rice, mixed nuts, sultana raisins or seedless grapes, plus residue of kid rubbing mix. Sew up opening, paint with melted butter, roast on a spit over charcoal (or in a 270-300 degree oven) until brown and tender. Serve on a mound of the stuffing. Guests sit on the floor and dig in.
Put olive oil in earthenware casserole. Add halved, parboiled, lambs’ brains, turn over and coat with oil, add salt and pepper, capers, crushed garlic, pitted ripe olives and bread crumbs. Bake in 400 degree oven for 10-15 minutes. Brain Casserole – Algeria – is an alternative. In Turkey, Brain Salad is commonly eaten.
Contributor: Vanilla_Sky3267
You missed out on a whole range of southeast asian foods… my ex’s family was from Laos and the addition of various insects was pretty commonplace in dishes we ate… not to mention ’100 year old eggs’ and ‘balut’ (I figured balut would would at least be somewhere on this list- fertilized duck embryo left to grow into a chick but boiled before the bones have hardened, then cracked open and eaten like a ball of meat).
Deep fried spiders/scorpions, anyone?
oh no… not the dormice! they’re too cute.
I notice that all these disgusting foods have to do with animals and their parts. I doubt there would be anything under the fruit and vegetable category deemed nearly as disgusting (with the exception of that one smelly fruit). I’m a vegetarian, so I don’t see why any of these items are any more nasty than what most Americans eat. It’s all in what you’re used to.
60. Clay: Trader Joe’s have stores in 22 states, mostly in New England and California. I couldn’t complete my monthly grocery shopping if not for Trader Joe’s!
Actually, my grocery shopping is much more complicated than once a month.
Once a month is for all non-perishable and frozen or freezable items (milk, for example, freezes remarkably well). The day’s vegetables and fruits are purchased daily.
Some things we grow.
I have several simple rules concerning what I will eat.
I will not eat anything for which, under normal circumstances, I would set out poison.
I will not eat anything which processes the internal secretions of an animal.
I will not eat anything I have to hold my nose closed to be near.
I will not eat anything if I have ever read that eating something has ever been proven (even in *ONE* case)to cause irreversible brain disease.
So far, so good.
I was working deep in Mexico for a month, a few back. We were staying in a town which got no American tourists at all, so the hotels and restaurants (meager but nice), were not set up to serve Americans…no bottled water, etc. We actually lived on beer, tequila, bread and peelable fruit.
For a month!!
Our producer forgot, just *one* day, and sucked on an ice cube…we had to have him air-lifted back to the US.
I came to detest tequila. And it was $300 a bottle.
Oh, we had some delightful times!
Dancing all night in an abandoned silver mine turned disco/dance club! Being surrounded by the Mexican army, on full alert!
Visiting a pool hall, where the “men’s room” was a culvert along one wall.
Homes 3 and 4 stories tall, the top story without a roof, and reebar sticking out, because “unfinished” buildings paid no tax.
Machine-gunned guards outside the bank.
Astonishingly different culture, and quite a learning experience.
We went from there to Cancun, and after a few hours we all wished we could go back! Seriously.
Gotta feel for that doormouse. I enjoy a good slab of meat as much as the next guy but that seems to be over the line. Who was the guy that found out fish sperm tasted good? Thats one kinky cook, if you ask me.
interesting rules segue, but ever had durian? HORRIFYING smell, but oh my god is it good!
I’m from Korea. I’ve got three…
silkworm cocoon
live octopus
dog meat
Stir-Fried Heart – reminds me of tell-tale heart hahaha.
To be honest all of the items on this list sound liek they would be delicious if you werent told what they are.
Fish sperm need to be chopped? damn.
Thank you. I have been trying to lose weight and this should ruin my appetite for weeks. I thought the Deep Fried Fish Head my wife and I had in Guatemala was bad. Then in Mexico we encountered something that can best be described as boiled mole wrapped in a sock.
I need to learn better Spanish before travelling again.
I also don’t see anything inherently wrong with eating heart, since it is a muscle, and therefore like any other meat but probably much less fat. The picture looks just like chopped steak to me.
This reminds me of a cracked article a while ago:
http://www.cracked.com/article_14979_6-most-terrifying-foods-in-world.html
The most horrifying thing is the baby mice wine in my opinion. And you though t the tequila worm was bad…
Go figure, my French ancestors came up with what are probably the most stomach turning entries here.
In certain parts of India, they make a omelette with Goats brain stuffing. have tasted it, its pretty neat..
segue (56) Its funny that you can eat only lamb. It is the only meat I cannot eat. It doesn’t agree with me.
I would never eat any of these. I cannot even eat off a bone like chicken or steak.
Oh God, Vera. I can’t believe how much we have in common when it comes to meat. I can’t eat lamb, and if it isn’t a piece of very dead, very lean chicken breast or steak, forget it.
It took me until I was well into my 20′s to even touch uncooked meat, though I have never wanted to be a vegetarian. I think the worst of these would be the dormouse. Look at the gorgeous little thing. How could anyone possibly bite the head off that.
Teapixie (74)Uncooked meat?!?! Im not there yet. My fave cut is filet mignon. No fat. No bone. No nothing but meat. I buy only boneless skinless chicken breast.
The only ones of these that I wouldn’t eat would be the bees, the sperm, and the hearts. Other than that, I could dig all of this. ^-^
Thank you Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimern
with two M’s
Number 1 and 7 don’t sound that bad!!!! Skip the rectum please..
Brotherman (77) What Andrew Zimmern eats freaks me out. I wont eat for literally days after watching his show. I do not watch any more. I literally cannot.
Number 9 is actually an amazing way to serve mussels.
Number 7 worked in a butchershop (I’ve seen worse)
Number 6 is no weirder than caviar.
Number 3 if no one told you it was heart you would love it!!
Number 1 mmm! sweatbreads!!!
I don’t see why people are repulsed with so much on this list? I really don’t get it? Its just animal parts, and it makes me laugh how everyone is so OMGGROSS about the pig rectum sausages. They ARE clean, and the castings of most sausages are animal intestines anyway… not really much different. Far out grow some balls.
The worst dish I’ve ever heard of was one made by nomadic Eskimos (I think): they catch a seal, kill it, then bury it in the ground. About a year later they come back, dig it up, and eat it.
Stuff a pig uterus with cumin…. giggle..
I would happily go for 1, 3, 8, 9 and 10. Seriously.
Manov (83):
That’s not a dish! lol.
…It’s a hangi!
I must be weird, most of these don’t particularly gross me out. Pig rectum least of all, all sausage used to be stuffed in gut, the rectum is just the end of the guts. I’ve had heart (yum) and brains (yuck – too soft, too buttery, just icky). I am gonna take a pass on the fish sperm, actually the only thing on the list that makes me queasy.
I think you forgot one. “Balut” from the Philippines. If you can eat this, I think all of these ten recipes above can be easily digested. Check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut
Brain tacos are widely available in Chicago…yummy!
my mom cooks up venison or beef heart, runs it through a grinder, and adds dill pickles and miracle whip to make an absolutely addictive sandwich spread.
oh, and chocolate-covered ants are lovely-crispy, like a Hershey’s ‘Krackle’ bar.
well I WAS hungry about a minute ago. that’s taken care of now.
66. malfore: for a fruit, I might bend the rules on smell.
Okay, here’s a question. Why are fish eggs (ova), considered delicacies, but fish sperm considered yucky?
Hmmmmmm
Same reason that a pizza is not a pizza until you put your fists into the dough!
No no no.
A pizza is not a pizza until it comes out of the oven!
Seinfeld.
P.s.
I wonder how many of these within the list are considered aphrodisiacs?
You know, because all one might need to spark up their ***** life is a healthy dose of Stuffed Dormice.
thats henious…. great list
I don’t eat any kind of sausage (Just what the hell is in it anyway?)or salami, or bologne. Won’t eat hotdogs. Steak, chicken breast, or veggies all ok. Fruit is too sticky. I don’t like sweet things. I know I’m a freak.
Uhm … brain tacos … ITALY?? I’ll grant you that using lamb, olive oil and olives sounds like the way they eat brain in Italy, but brain tacos, as in TACOS, are from Mexico. They are beef brain and can be found in many a taco stand or restaurant. As a mexican, I am confuzzled, to say the least @_@
It amazes me that people can eat bugs…
I can’t even touch the things. The thought of actually eating one kind of makes me gag a lil bit…
Nice list. Where i come from we have a saying “one mans food is another mans poison”. So each to his own
100th comment..
Hurray. But the 8th no. “red ant chutney” is not made in India,i must tell you.The word “chutney” may sound indian but this recipe is not indian.
I never had stir fry heart but as an Alaskan Native I have had heart gravy which has lightly pan fried moose/caribou or a mixture hearts. I’ve also eaten dried seal and whale blubber. Anyone for fish head soup? Ya never know just what you’ll find cookin’ in an ol’ Yupik’s kitchen. Then I got married to a Philipino/Puerto Rican whose Grandmother liked to give me off “candies”. Not always CANDY!! It’s crazy!
Actually red ant chutney is an Indian dish, it is made by tribal peoples in Chattisgarh. Rat meat and snake is also considered delicacies in certain parts of India.
I haven’t had any of these except the heart… the taste is not too bad, but it is rather chewy. As for the 1000 year egg, I don’t think it’s actually 1000 years old… That would probably kill you if it even managed to survive.
Most of this list was mildish, with a few standouts. I’ve always believed that since we drink cow’s milk and eat chicken eggs, it’s all just a matter of cultural conditioning. Think about it: excretions from animal mammaries… unfertilized bird-babies. That’s pretty gross if you didn’t grow up on it. And have you ever eaten an egg with a red spot in it? That’s a fetus, dude.
And speaking of milk. I’ve drank unpastuerized goat’s milk, straight from the farm-goat with only a stop in the fridge for cooling, and it was great on a hot summer afternoon. Stuffed kid? I’m just glad they’re using a young goat so it will be tender, and am only worried whether or not the spices will overpower the meat. If you’ve eaten a real gyro, you’ve eaten goat. Not a bad meat animal at all.
Anyway, I’ve eaten a lot of strange foods, some on this list and many stranger still. My watchword is, if a given culture of people has eaten it for two generations without massive deaths, I’ll try it, as long as it isn’t blatantly cruel — no live monkey brains for this boy.
But I’ve eaten the brains of several animals… I simply don’t like the taste and texture much to bother fooling with them.
But I love me some fried squirrel (first cousin to the rat, which I haven’t tried but would like to as long as it is farm-raised and disease-free).
As for insects, cicadas don’t agree with me — somehow I associate them with guacamole, which I also detest. My favorite insect dish is good old big American black ants (think picnic ants). Raw and recently alive. Decapitated between thumb and forefinger so that the mandibles do not lock onto the esophagus when swallowed. Over 90% protein, and a well-known survival food. The taste? Like a mild lemon due to a high level of formic acid.
Heart is an intersting thing. Large hearts (beef) I don’t like because it is too lean and comes too close to liver in taste (another common food that should be considered gross which I don’t eat solely because I don’t like it, no other reason). However, my brother and I fought over the heart (and the gizzard!) of every chicken my mother every cooked while growing up. To this day, every time at the grocery store I look over the packages of “gizzards and hearts, mostly gizzards” and if I see one that is at least 30% hearts, I buy it on the spot. That happens about every two dozen trips to the store. I would pay much more money per pound to buy only hearts.
Rectum sausage I don’t know about and have never tried it. Sure, washed small intestine as a sausage case is at least as gross and I have even bought the intestines myself and made homemade sausage in the kitchen, but I simply don’t see the point in going all the way to where feces meets air.
By the way: if you’ve ever eaten Jello in the 20th century, you have eaten horse’s hooves. Man’s ingenuity knows no bounds.
Snails I like, but overcooked and go easy on the garlic while loading up on the butter, please.
And oysters are a genuinely ghastly food when you really think about them. Raw only please, and I most certainly will suck the juices.
Boiled crawfish are a poor man’s lobster (both fairly disgusting creatures when viewed outside a cultural norm), but if you suck the heads — as you should — you are ingesting guts and secretions.
Honey is a food that has never been known to spoil… no such thing as a true expiration date. But it is essentially puke. And puke from an insect, at that. If we called it Bee Puke and you had never heard of it before, would you try it?
See? It’s all cultural conditioning. Remember that this Thanksgiving as you ask someone to pass the giblet gravy.
grubthrower (104) Sounds like you’d eat most anything. You can have what I discard. Ick.
heart’s not that bad, its like liver and steak put together, but a little rubbery
No mention of Ortolan?
“Ortolan! The Recipe!
Preparing and cooking ortolan is very simple. The following is an brief excerpt made by a kind reader from a review of a book called In The Devil’s Garden – A Sinful History Of Forbidden Food, the full review is worth reading and I’ll probably buy the book for myself.
The birds must be taken alive; once captured they are either blinded or kept in a lightless box for a month to gorge on millet, grapes, and figs, a technique apparently taken from the decadent cooks of Imperial Rome who called the birds beccafico, or “fig-pecker”. When they’ve reached four times their normal size, they’re drowned in a snifter of Armagnac.
Cooking l’ortolan is simplicity itself. Simply pop them in a high oven for six to eight minutes and serve. The secret is entirely in the eating. First you cover your head with a traditional embroidered cloth. Then place the entire four-ounce bird into your mouth. Only its head should dangle out from between your lips. Bite off the head and discard. L’ortolan should be served immediately; it is meant to be so hot that you must rest it on your tongue while inhaling rapidly through your mouth. This cools the bird, but its real purpose is to force you to allow its ambrosial fat to cascade freely down your throat.
When cool, begin to chew. It should take about 15 minutes to work your way through the breast and wings, the delicately crackling bones, and on to the inner organs. Devotees claim they can taste the bird’s entire life as they chew in the darkness: the wheat of Morocco, the salt air of the Mediterranean, the lavender of Provence. The pea-sized lungs and heart, saturated with Armagnac from its drowning, are said to burst in a liqueur-scented flower on the diner’s tongue. Enjoy with a good Bordeaux.”
http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/ortolan_recipe.html
heart is really good, especially venison heart. but the rest…wow! what about sweatbreads (kidneys) and liver…
Ok, SERIOUSLY….where does one buy Fist SPERM? I mean how is a sperm in a fish big enough to cut up? What kind of fish is this a whale? I’m really curious. any insight?
Okay… This was an ewww list (or a ewe list, if you’re looking at the #2 recipe… bad pun!
)
Hi,
Just wanted to say, that in Denmark, pig’s hearts is actually an old recipe that is still eaten lots of places. My favourite dish!!!! It really tastes very good. More if you stuff it with vegetables!
oh the stuffed kid and dormice made me cry no don’t eat the poor lil fluffy animals
why does every one always complain about: a. the stuffed doormouse, as, frankly, unless youre a vegeterian you really have no right to complain if somone puts a picture of a dead animal on a webstite ads you probably eat electrocuted lambs, gassed does, and piglets itestines??
b.the eating of insects? why is an insect different to any other animal??
c.it’s not that discusting. stop exaddurating the effect this list has on you.
d.why is us in the western world permanently whine about other cultures food when we eat rotten milk shot through with mould (chesse) and many other things?? to quote my predessesor, its all just cultral condishinging.
A very good blog for strange food is http://www.weirdmeat.com the writerlives in China and goes out of his way to find strange foods. Well worth reading
105. Vera Lynn: Have you heard from you-know-who? Where is he? Is there anything we can do?
We used to have heart every time we butchered a cow on our farm in California. It was a special treat. We called it doughnut steak, and it was delicious. You slice it up and broil or grill with a good seasoning, the texture is unique but not unpleasant. We also regularly ate goat, but not whole over a spit, that would be too much work. Usually in a roast, and it can also be quite tasty. Just goes to show, weird is in the eye of the beholder. I still think liver is gross, though…
In case you are curious, white family with no cultural background that would yield recipes for foods like that. I don’t know why my parents cooked such open minded food, but I feel the better for it. On a side note, we were friends with a family from Togo, and when we butchered the goats, they would come over and collect the intestines for a dish they made. I always thought that was weird: goat intestines. Then again, who were we to talk?
Actually brains ,hearts, kidneys and tongues are very delicious.Pork tripe soup is the best cure for hangover-honest!
People do not think twice when they eat liver-why should it be different for other internal animal organs?!
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Yum! I love the tripe soup, but we call it menudo. OMG very good stuff. Same goes for the sweet bread. Our family dosen’t do anything fancy with it though. We usually just throw it on the grill till it is done with the rest of the meat. I don’t really like brains though, too slimey. Barbacoa is another story though, that stuff is good. Although I could’t bring myself to eat guinea pig when I visited Ecuador. Those guys are just too cute. I can’t eat something that can be considered a domestic pet.
segue I have. I talk to him very day. Where did you read my post? I know it was pulled. But you saw it? I don’t know if there’s anything we can do. He is very sad and very alone. This is an old list, but I hope you read this.
One of the ads at the top of this page at the moment reads:
“Colon Cleansing Recipe
Colon cleansing kit. Gently removes toxins in your body. View photos. [or not!]”
Vera Lynn: I read your original post, too, and have followed various questions to you, and your answers. I’m worried. I had not replied so far because I couldn’t think that there was anything I could do in the circumstances.
astraya (119) I don’t think there’s much anyone can do. And I know you are very far away. Im just thankful he has a support system if he needs us. He is not ill or anything like that. He did not want me to do this but I know he has lots of friends here, as do we all.