Weirdest Food Served?!
Answers: What weirdest food have you tried while visiting another country?
balut - duck egg with a nearly developed embryo inside thats boiled alive & eaten in the shell
I had it 2yrs ago during my spring break vacation in the Philippines
guinea pig in ecuador,
stir fried mealworms in thailand
The weirdest food I've eaten...
Here are some unusual things I've had to digest - most of them are from Asia, but Europe and the Americas have some candidates as well. Warning - reading some of this may cause a loss of appetite!
Sea-slug stew and birds nest soup (Malaysia)
This tasted rather good until I found out what it was. If you go snorkelling in tropical waters, you will often see worm-like black creatures in the sand underwater. They are usually a foot or so long and a couple of inches in diameter. They are also called sea-cucumbers. The stew is made with lots of Chinese herbs, and is reputed to cure various ills. The sea-slugs themselves have a slightly gooey consistency, not unlike stewed cartilage. Definitely edible as long as you don?t know what it actually is!
There are a lot of other weird dishes that I?ve tried in Malaysia ? birds nest soup is one of the more remarkable ones. The best birds nests are harvested from the caves in Sarawak, East Malaysia. Swallows inhabiting these caves build their nests using their saliva as a binder of twigs. Sometimes there is blood in the saliva. It is believed that the saliva with blood makes the best quality birds nest soup. The nests are built high up on the walls or ceilings of the caves, and harvesting them is a very dangerous occupation. As such, birds nest soup is one of the most expensive dishes you will find on the menu.
?Hirnsuppe?, ?Schlachtplatte? and ?Hackepeter?(Germany)
?Hirnsuppe? is made from calfs brains. This tastes rather good, and I ate it happily until I found out what it was. Actually the brains are quite recognisable in the soup, but I must have thought it was something else.
?Schlachtplatte? ? literally translated means ?Slaughter dish? ? contains every imaginable part of the pig. You will find the tripe (intestines), kidneys, knuckles, etc. Even the blood is not wasted, being turned into ?Blutwurst? (blood sausage). The best Schlachtplatte is served up at the farm immediately after a pig has been slaughtered. I am not too fond of this dish myself, but the contents are probably not much different from what you get at any burger joint these days, only that the individual bits and pieces are immediately recognisable, rather than all ground up.
?Hackepeter? ? raw ground pork served with pepper on a piece of bread. Goes down quite well with a glass of beer, I must say.
Roast guinea pig (Peru)
This is called ?cuy? and you can get it easily in Peru and Ecuador. I must say, I was not too impressed with this dish. We tried it both fried and roasted. The whole animal including the head and paws is cooked in one piece and presented on a plate with potatoes and vegetables. The taste itself was OK, but there was really hardly any meat on the guinea pig. It is the size of a largish rat, but quite skinny. The other Peruvian speciality, Ceviche (raw seafood marinated in lime and served with Peruvian corn) is a much better bet, although you have to be careful that the preparation is hygienic.
Snake soup (Hong Kong)
Snake is a popular food in Hong Kong, especially during the winter. You can drink warm snakes blood (I was not up to this) or you can have a piping hot snake soup with Chinese wine or brandy. This looked pretty innocent, so I tried it. The soup actually warms you up nicely in cold weather, although I think that has more to do with the brandy than the snake meat. If I had been told that it was chicken, I would have believed it ? it tasted like chicken.
There are some dishes that you can get in Hong Kong/China that I have not tried, because I can?t bring myself to eat such things. Amongst them are eating the brain of a live monkey (this is illegal, but if you know where to go, you can get it). I was going to describe the process in detail, but I think it would be very upsetting to read this, so I won?t. Suffice to say that the monkey suffers intensely before it dies, while people are picking its brains. Other dishes that you can get in Hong Kong/China are Tiger?s penis, bear paw, and fish that is fried so fast that the gills are still pumping and the mouth opening and closing while the rest of the fish is being sliced up in front of you.
Goose liver pate (France)
I include this not because it is an unusual item, but to pre-empt any impressions that Asians have a monopoly on food that is cruel to animals, that could be formed by reading the above paragraph. Goose liver pate is made by force feeding geese to such an extent that the liver is unable to cope. As a result, the liver grows larger and larger, until the goose is hardly able to move. This gives the liver the characteristics necessary to make a good pate. The suffering of the animal begins with the first force feeding and continues over several months until the liver is sufficiently deformed. I have tried goose liver pate before, and it does taste very good, but I would never order it in a restaurant.
Kobe beef (Japan)
To end this piece, here?s a situation where the animal is exceptionally well treated in order to produce the result. I have eaten this once (at about US$100 for an 8 oz. Steak). The reason that it?s so expensive is that the cows are fed only the best grain. They are given beer to drink, and they are massaged every day. As a result, the beef has thin marbles of fat distributed throughout the meat, rather than all lumped together at the surface. This makes it perfect for grilling or cooking on the hotplate. My honest opinion? A normal US ribeye steak tastes just as good, at one-tenth the price.
Holy crap pepe, ya think you went a little overboard?
i don't know
Sauteed Crickets. Doesn't taste that bad.
When we in Jamaica we had akee on our "pizza".
I was surprised (later on) to find out that akee is actually a FRUIT.
It was REALLY tasty!
i've tried a lot... some on the top of the list...
Japan- raw pork (marinated but surprising good), and raw shrimp (ugh)
Taiwan- stinky tofu (besides the smell, it wasn't too bad), pigs blood (I cant stand), and chicken testicles (um.. crunchy?)
Fermented shark in Iceland.
Seriously, nobody eats it anymore (it's an old-fashioned dish), but they still serve it for the tourists and traditionalists.
Nasty stuff, very strong tasting.