My mother’s family lives in Minnesota, where lutefisk is plentiful. I’m not stupid, so I’ve never tried it. Seen it and smelled it, though, and it gets my all-time worst food vote, even without tasting it.
Venison is edible in only two forms: stewed and pit roasted. Goat is only edible pit roasted, and barely even then. That’s one tough, stringy animal.
Liver is edible if you get the right stuff. Once I ate bear liver, and it was actually pretty good.
Most organ meats are obscenely gross. I’ll never forget the program I caught on Showtime that showed snippets from British television: a party where people were eating a pate containing (I am not making this up) HUMAN PLACENTA. Yeurgh.
My vote for grossest food I’ve tasted goes to my dad’s fried squash. He ate it with both hands; I numbed my tongue with ice so I could swallow it without tasting it.
By the way, anyone else here ever eaten something you killed yourself? It’s becoming so rare in this day and age…I think you have a special relationship with your food if you “earned” it. City folk don’t get that…
I remember that column well…although, mere reading about placenta-eating and actually SEEING a human placenta being whacked to flinders and consumed are very different things.
Ok, here’s my vote. Boiled peanuts, they have the smell of old socks, the texture of beans, and the flavor is I think ass mixed with oregano. Oh yeah, Veggi-Burger, someone make this crime against God and nature end! Vegemite, now there’s a nasty little concoction. V-8 I don’t care if it is just veggies, it tastes like it’s been pickled in turkish groin sweat! Mushrooms are fungus dick! Any alcohol, especially that alcohol with the metal shards in it so that it cuts the throat on the way down. Who drinks this crap?
Oh please, that’s nothing. Filipinos make pigs blood stew (or sauce, depending) to put on rice. I’ve had it at every party i’ve been too. It’s quite good and i actually anticipate having it when i go to parties thrown by Filipinos (our neighbors across the street make a very good version). We Filipinos call it “dinuguan” (dee-noo-gwan). We too trick friends who haven’t had it into eating it by calling it “chocolate meat” (I swear it looks like melted chocolate), then we tell them what it is for a good laugh (usually they say “Ewww! But I like it!”)
The worst crap I’ve ever been served was in jolly old England-I had fish and chips from a shop in London. The chips wern’t too bad 9though greasy), but the fish was horrible- alocal told me that cod was in short supply, so the shops were using “dogfish”-which is a small shark-horrible! (I gave it away to a local alley cat).
There are two things that I will never, ever, try again, no matter how thirsty or hungry I may be. The first is Sauerkraut juice, I once had some as part of a hippie diet that was being foisted on me and man, that stuff was nasty. The other I tried at a Japanese restaurant and I was told that it was some sort of fermented shrimp, yuk. High up on the list of other things never to go near are raw oysters, there is just no way that they aren’t cold, salty snot, slowly sliding down the back of your throat in one, long, slimy goober.
I hereby offer my humble apology to corn-dog fans. :o
I finally did go to Hot Dog on a Stick and ordered a regular corn dog–slathered with mustard, of course, as is my wont with conventional hot dogs. It was “hot, fresh, and juicy” as was claimed in West, a supplement that used to come with the Sunday Los Angeles Times. I should not have based my appraisal on the sickly one I got at Hamburger Handout 40 years ago. I’m sorry.
Sure it’s food…just think of it as post-consumer recycled fibre…
In defence of the “great chieftain o’ the pudden race,” haggis is delicious. Nowadays, the ingredients are generally just oatmeal, liver and spices. And as for it being contained in a sheep stomach, what the hell do you think your sausages are in? I’d rather have something wrapped in a sheep stomach (which, after all, would just contain grass) than pig’s intestines (farther down the digestive process, if you take my drift).
No, haggis is great…what disgusts me are the ‘bashed neeps’ (mashed turnips) traditionally served alongside. Also parsnips. And lutefisk, which I have seen and smelled, but not tasted.
Just to show I’m not a picky eater I actually like menudo. Not every day mind you but I can handle it. In my family it’s known as cow guts and popcorn, which is a pretty accurate description. I had some in El Paso last year and the chili powder was so virulent that the red color actually seeped through the styrofoam cups.
The worst thing I’ve ever had was balut in the Phillipines. Fertile eggs that have been buried way too long. You have to be really drunk and even then. Augh! It’s been fifteen years and I’m going to have to spray my mouth with oven cleaner from just thinking about it. I remember T-shirts with the logo “balut, the egg with legs.”
“Mmmm, hot dogs. You can really taste the hog anus.”
H. Simpson
The grossest thing I have ever had placed in front of me is squid in its own ink, at my wife’s cousin’s house in Terrassa, Spain. I just said that it didn’t look too appealing and thought I would have some bread.
Squid is not too bad if you just forget what it is and imagine it’s a fishstick or something. Octopus is gross, and so are snails. Tried 'em both, they are nasty. I have eaten fried oysters. They’re not that great. The raw ones are horrible, too… Oh, well, if you want a recommendation for a good place to eat bugs, try Frankie and Johnny’s in New Orleans for a good solid crawfish feed.
My cousin some years ago went to the Cannes Film Festival in the South of France and the best story he brought back was when he attended a luncheon in a very elegant restaurant. There were a lot of film people there and a “big star” whose name I will not mention. The Big Star had been out partying until the cows came home the night before. His seafood salad was placed in front of him, and he looked at it, stood up, and pitched forward right into the centerpiece in a dead faint, cutting his forehead . Then when they pulled him upright he puked up his guts right then and there. Seems there was a baby octopus in his salad put there for garnish, and it was still alive and hopped out and started crawling across the tablecloth. I’ve always wondered how true this story was, but it never failed to gross out everyone who heard it.
Okra
Collard Greens
Turkey Burgers
Winn Dixie bulk store brand hot dogs.
Liver
Kidneys
Gizzards – (I cannot imagine anyone who was so desperate as to actually first try to eat those damn tough things.)
Raw clams or oysters
Those great mysterious red sausages in a great bottle cut into great chunks floating in red brine at nearly every 7-11 or similar store.
Blood and tongue sausage.
Headcheese
TRIPE! (eeech!)
I only just found this thread, or I woulda called you on the corn dog thing MUCH sooner. Hot Dog on a Stick corndogs, fresh out of the grease, with LOTS of yellow mustard… AHHHH! Heaven!
As for the grey meat burrito… are you sure you weren’t eating a sesos burrito (beef brains)? Had a roommate who used to eat that goop… GAH!
As for my own WAY-too-icky-to-eat list:
whole or sliced tomatoes (It’s a personal thing, ok? Tomato sauce/ketchup is ok.)
okra (WTF is all that slime about?!)
V-8 juice/tomato juice
liver (altho I love liverwurst on a cracker with sweet relish, how weird is that?)
LUTEFISK! (those Scandinavians are fucking NUTS)
StoryTyler I am too in shape! :::muttering::: Round is a shape.
Sweet potatoes. I don’t care how they’re prepared, they are vile.
Circus peanuts.
Black licorice.
Candy corn
Every kind of bean except pinto, refried and baked. Kidney beans are my current least-favorite. You bite into one and the insides mush out, leaving the skin of the bean; I bet the same thing would happen if I tried to chew a cockroach. Blecch.
It is much easier to see ourselves as better than or even worse than, rather than accepting that we simply are. - John “The Penguin” Bingham