"How can you eat that?"

[Raised_By_Wolves]

some of us have had perculiar jobs, or do enjoy inexplicable things, as well as foods.

in Taiwan i saw skewered things, lots and lots it boggles the mind. (Taiwan is famous for its foods amongst other things). i am not timid when it comes to eating but i draw the line at eating chicken @rseh0les (on skewers)!

what sort of weird things have you eaten? (no, i don't think horse steaks are gross)

[portreeslim]

Alpaca steak, porcupine, is haggis weird?

[Raised_By_Wolves]

nooo, hagis is not weird. alpaca steak is delicious and tender (had it in Peru, cuy is rather bony though maybe they have now succesfully bred a meatier version). i'm curious about porcupine... see them both dead and alive all the time but never on the table as food. how was it?

[valley_boy]

Lots of weird things.

Raw krill: tastes like slightly crunchy salt water, personally I don't understand what whales see in it.

Ice fish: the fish that lives in antarctica and has anti-freeze for blood, bit boring could have been any white fish.

Sea turtle: absolutely delicious, sort like a leaner more tender lamb, I can understand why they're endangered.*

* this was all legal. A friend of my brother had married into an aboriginal tribe near Darwin and they were allowed to take a small number of turtles each year. We happened to be visiting on the day they caught one.

[Raised_By_Wolves]

interesting eats, V_B. i probably never get to try wild sea turtle steaks (apparently they're still eaten in the Caribbean). horrific butchered turtles i saw at markets in China made me a bit uneasy.

[Liiisa]

I've eaten a grasshopper taco (nice sauce, too many legs) and lamb testicles (like disturbingly crunchy chicken nuggets, served with a white sauce that didn't help one forget what it was that one was eating). I've also eaten brains, which in some French restaurants are perfectly normal, but I thought I was being rather brave. They were disgusting, with the texture of undercooked scrambled eggs.

I have come to the conclusion that I am really only adventurous with vegetarian food.

[lizby1]

Ugh lamb brains.although I like most offal. I hate tripe, but sproglet loves it.

[treacle]

I suppose the strangest that I have eaten is bush rat - which would have been really good had the tribe that cooked it for us skinned the rat properly.

I love ox cheek stew and all sorts of bits of liver, kidneys and stuff and was probably given some strange stuff when I lived in Japan but I can't remember now.

[sare]

we had beef cheek bourgingnon last night. divine.

as for weird though....i had donkey hoof soup in China once.

[Raised_By_Wolves]

i did try eating (steamed?) pig's brains and thought it was far too rich (= massive cholesterol content), stopped after a few bites. didn't understand the joy of eating field mice and sparrows because of the many little bones yet i ate them, well now i know. seal steak was most delicious of some of the arctic things i ate in Spitsbergen.

now donkey hoof soup is weird. i suppose that was in rural China? haven't seen/eaten cheeks yet.

[ozziegiraffe]

Turtle (to me more like chicken than lamb, but chewier, and no bones); dugong (taste like beef; sea urchin.

[go2]

In Africa I was gifted (and drank) a Berber energy drink made from coca nuts, which the nomads take on their travel with them. Camel, too, is absolutely delicious. As is prickly pear.
But my all-time favourite drink is the fresh sap of the date palm. In the oases of Tunisia young boys come round selling it in the evenings - ahhhh, heaven!

I've also eaten frogs legs and snails. Which are even more weird, when you come to think about it.

Lambs testicles are nice and tender - but fried in breadcrumbs is better.

[sprite]

for a long time i was eating a delicious farmer's pate. so delicious i would just devour the whole container in one go.
imagine my surprise to learn that it was head cheese--creton in quebec. i have since used the same trick to get other people to eat it.

cod cheeks (yummy but rich), various unnamed sea creatures--raw (varying degrees of enjoyment, often the texture was just too unpleasant). i refused to eat dog because a)the dogs were usually beaten before death, and b) it was super spicy.

i like trying new things--this looks to be the year of chicken butt (possibly eaten by accident already), beef lung and spleen, and who knows what else.

[Deleted]

I eat rabbits on regular basis...

[Raised_By_Wolves]

we have here 2 different experiences eating lamb testicles, tender and crunchy (Liiisa and go2). monkfish's liver and cheeks are considered 'high-end' foods these days.

frog legs taste to me a lot like chicken. in Taiwan i had whole skinned frog and it's huge. have never seen whole frogs, and have never seen it so big.

Sprite, i encourage you to document your eating and drinking experiences in your new country (of residence). would be interesting to those, including me, who have never been there.

do you mean headcheese as in brawn? i love it in Germany. btw, a live octopus also gets beat up.

[sprite]

not sure what brawn is; pig brain mixed with fat and some spices?

we went to the night market and are sure lots of these things were available, but couldn't read the language. which was funny as the next day i read a tourist article about it, and it showed lots of english signage.
we figure it's better not to know. i can ask for 'less spicy' and so far that's working for me.

[princessofpenguins]

I think the most "offensive" thing I have eaten is whale. Mmmm, whale...

[Queen]

Scorpion.

Stinky Dofu

Durian

Some Tibetan dish made with rotting yaks milk - well I didn't eat that because I couldn't get past the smell.

In many parts of the world blue cheese would be seen as weird,

[riverhorse]

I saw whale meat at the markets in Bergen, Norway but didn't try any!! That's one thing I draw the line at.

I've eaten: alpaca, guinea pig, camel, buffalo. Probably the weirdest things I've ever eaten were barbecued witchety grubs (absolutely DELICIOUS - taste like peanut sate sauce) and live green ants in the rainforest of far north Queensland. The idea is to bite the sack of juice (which tastes like lime) off the back of the ant, before it bites you

[Raised_By_Wolves]

i quite enjoyed minke whale in the high arctic, but i liked seal a lot more (also in the high arctic <-- vid clip). i've no conscience...

Queen: i've all of the things you mentioned save for blue cheese! (i have an allergic reaction to blue cheese so i don't touch it). i think you mean tsampa by 'some Tibetan dish', no? yak's cheese is the strongest cheese i've ever ever ever eaten. makes tsampa look like a childish tantrum

@flusspferd: alpaca steaks i had in Peru still haunt me! cuy is too bony working on camel and buffalo!

(i've got pics of smoked minke whale in Bergen. brought a big chunk home even.)

[sophie]

Crocodile in Australia and Africa, hippo sausage (or so I was told) in west Africa when I worked there ...as well as kudu steak..and llama, cuy, alpaca in South America..I had problems with whole fried turtle in china, but not when it was in pieces.. Various 6 legged things in china ..can't remember them all now.

[Liiisa]

"Flusspferd"! Ha. (I know just enough German to be amused by that.)

[vinnyd]

Of what's been mentioned, if I haven't missed something (not all of which I would have thought of as weird if they hadn't been mentioned): grasshoppers (nice, kind of smokey, but picking the little legs from between your teet afterwards was unpleasant), sparrows, camel, snails, frogs and frog legs, pig brains, sheep brains, calves' brains (mmm, brains), buffalo, bison (not sure which was meant by buffalo above), durian, brawn, testicles. Pretty much all the offal you can think of, except lungs, that for some reason aren't sold here.

Not yet mentioned:

Lamb's spleen, camel milk, turtle eggs, chitlins (pig intestine), donkey salami, many blood sausages, a Big Mac.

go_2--

"a Berber energy drink made from coca nut"

You think drinks made from coconut are weird enough to rate a mention here? Or did you mean cola nut? Americans are quite fund of an energy drink made from cola nut.

sprite, no brain in brawn. Recipes vary, but and perhaps feet, cooked in seasoned water, cut from the bone, and then gelled in a loaf with the liquid. I've made it. And cretons ae not headcheese/brawn. More like rillettes. Fatty pork, not offal, ground and cooked with allspice and similar spices and mashed.

[Raised_By_Wolves]

is it just me or does croc has no taste? and it's a bit dry/lean.
where does offal go to if it's not for sale? pet food? something formed, pressed and unrecognisable (gyros, meat paste based foods etc)?

yesterday for lunch at work i ate my usual nice homemade sandwiches with raw radishes (complete with greens intact) on the side and my colleagues actually said 'how can you eat that?!' lol... they don't think the leaves are edible, and radishes are disgusting.

[vinnyd]

Somehow I edited out "pig's head" from my brawn recipe above. Pig's head and perhaps feet. But the cheeks and tongues etc, not the brains.

[Queen]

I don't think Durian is particularly weird... But it does get the response "how can you eat that?" from the uninitiated.

[sophie]

Yes, raised by wolves, croc is rather tasteless, so as a result of how it is cooked, it tasted like chicken if it is in a saucy dish.

[princessofpenguins]

The crocodile I´ve had was relatively tasteless. You need a good marinade and/or sauce...

[vinnyd]

I left out alligator.

[Raised_By_Wolves]

do tell. i imagine alligator tastes somewhat like croc. or...? and what kind(s) of sauce? (in case i come across croc meat again)

i like durian, IN SMALL DOSES.
why is brawn hated? it indeed does not contain brain bits. very good in Germany, okay in Belgium.

snake and its (raw) blood... i came close to ordering it in Vietnam. all those muscles must taste similar to croc?