Bloodworm fritters in soup.
Had this in a market in Haiphong, Vietnam. I was so hungry I ate a whole bowl of of soup without realising bloodworm were in there. The second bowl I ate more slowly - then I saw them - shudder.
one of my comfort foods seems to be a gross out to everybody i know …
take a pound of chicken hearts, split then vertically and play with them in cold salted water to get any blood clots out.
Place in mini bean pot with one small tennis ball sized onion chopped up, 3 or 4 cloves of garlic left whole, about a teaspoon of either italian herbs or herbs de province [with lavendar] and enough good red wine [i like a good barbarrone]to just barely come to the top. Put the top on, place in a very slow oven, about 250 degrees fahrenheit and let cook for about 6 hours.
Serve over spaetzle or flat egg noodles.
i keep having peopl etell me how wonderful it smells until they find out it is chicken [or sometimes duck, depending on what the store has] hearts.
If you cut a beef heart up into similar sized bites, and treat it the same it is also pretty good … tastes slightly different because of the different taste between beef and chicken fats.
Foods I’ve tried:
-Porcupine: Pretty bland for most parts, rotten taste in the rear area.
-Gator-on-a-stick: Nice taste, refreshingly greasy.
-Alpine chamois: Like any game.
-Cow’s udder: agreeable, unintrusive taste.
-Kangaroo: Nice texture, but no special taste.
-Ants and earthworms: Probably every child does this sometimes, so not really strange.
Strange foods I would like to try and am actively searching for:
-Turtle
-Snake
-Squirrel/ groundhog
-Civet cat.
Short of apes and animals that are actively endangered by hunting (like whales), I’d probably at least try anything strange that’s offered to me. I don’t eat rabbits for emotional reasons, but that’s not especially strange.
The strangest thing that I’ve ever tried was lion jerky, and it was like flyblown raw bacon. Really, really nasty. The most recent odd thing (to me at least) that I’ve tried were these tiny little whole crabs that were served as a garnish on a sushi plate that I ordered. Once I figured out I was ok to eat the whole thing at once I popped it in my mouth. I swear to god it tasted just like a potato chip. I could have snacked a whole bowl of the little suckers.
They seem to inhabit much of the earth.
Black shows land turtles; blue shows sea.
Due in part to my white trash East Texas relatives, I’ve had almost every type of game meat you can think of (and some that was almost roadkill-ish); deer, boar, armadillo, squirrel, rabbit, rattlesnake, goat, alligator, possum (one of the nastiest, greasiest things you’ll ever eat…imagine what a rat would taste like) frog legs, crawfish, turtle, pheasant, pigeon, dove, quail, partridge, and calves brains (surprisingly tasty when you scramble em’ up in eggs).
I’ve also tried elk, moose, caribou, pronghorn antelope and horse.
I’ve never sampled it, but I’m looking forward to trying human being. If you and I are ever in a plane crash in the Andes, be sure to bring along some Olive Oil, some Basil and a bit of coarse ground black pepper.
This sounds wonderful. I love chicken livers, and I’m sure that I can get chicken hearts. It’s the 6 hour cooking that rather daunts me. Have you had a go at frying or grilling (broiling?) the hearts to speed it up a bit?
Things I’ve eaten:
Duck tongues, snails, all kinds of shells & shellfish - some raw and some cooked, smoked horse, all kinds of liver. Ostrich steaks (VERY nice). Pork scratchings.
No brains or snakes (yet). Also: my supermarket occasionally has pig feet. Does anyone have any good recipes?
Weird things I’ve eaten:
Chicken feet - Disgusting. Nothing but skin and little bones. Served in a chili sauce at a dim sum place.
Gelatinized chicken blood - Okay. Tastes metallic, like you would expect from blood.
Blood sausage (morcilla) made from wild boar - Rather good. It was homemade by my roommate and her friend, and they felt they had overspiced it, but for American tastes it was perfect.
A big old pile of whole prawns - I like prawns, and this isn’t that unusual to some people.
Rabbit - I’ve told the story of my rabbit cooking adventure here before.
Goat - Pretty good, but it wasn’t professionally prepared. We butchered it with stone tools and ate it for an anthropology class.
A tequila worm - Frankly, much better than the tequila itself. Tasted nutty.
Pigeon - Served in a Moroccan pastilla (layered pastry). Spiced with cinnamon and quite yummy.
Weird thing I was offered but refused:
Pig’s brains - As you can see from the above list, I don’t often turn down food, but they just looked so much like BRAINS!
I tried cuy in Peru once. You know, cute little Guinea pig.
I work with all Philipinos, and I’m slowly (very slowly) softening on the idea of Balut. I mentioned to one guy that I saw it on Andrew Zimmern’s show, and he said it was great - he once ate six, and “went all night,” if you know what I mean. 
He was going to bring me some the very next day! I said, unequivocally, no, it’s too horrifying. No offense, but damn!
The philipino women seem to not like it so much, but I think I could try it after about 6 beers.
One of the women I work with said she will bring me sisig next time we work together…
Joe
Only if you really like heart flavored rubber bands …
They are smooth muscle, and need the long slow moist cooking to be other than intensely chewy.
See, with certain types of muscle, they need to either be cooked barely, or long and slow so either you are not tightening the proteins, or tightening them then breaking them back down [on the same principal that you can take a steak, rare it is tender, well done it is like rock, and slow cooked in liquid it falls apart as in a pot roast.]
rat, bats, moray eel.
A friend of mine was living in a small town in Mexico as a child and the authorities discovered two human skeletons on the screen of the outflow of the town’s water reservoir. So my friend always trumps my story of rat and bat stew with his cannibal soup tale.
I don’t recommend moray eel. I killed and ate one once. (I was hungry). The bone structure is daunting. It seems that the bones criss-cross.
Go for the Conger eel instead. I don’t know if the bone structure is different but you’re prolly more likely to live if it bites you. The basis for this thought is that while diving one time I was scared by a huge conger eel and went straight up to the Haleiwa breakwater and was talking about it to an elderly local Japanese lady who was fishing there. She said: “Oh, the gray eel, good for eat, no more teeth.”
I’ve had turtle, shark, eel, rattlesnake and all kinds of things like that.
I won’t eat cow brains. I’ve watched them cooked and eaten and gagged just from the smell. I also won’t eat guacamole. Between being green and looking slimy I just can’t do it. I do love avocado though.
I ate beetles and grasshoppers in Beijing. Beetles are a little sour. Grasshoppers tasted like really crunchy chicken.
Short of long pig, there’s not much out there that sheer curiousity wouldn’t drive me to at least sample, if not necessarily dig in like it’s goin’ outta style.
I like cooked, cooled and congealed blood. Sheep heart, liver and lungs is pretty good too.
And of course, I can make lots of things with a developing embryo.
There’s really nothing wrong with durian if you serve it chilled. It just tastes a little like banana and smells a lot like onions, so it’s hard for people to know what to make of it.
The one time I visited China, I ate everything that was put in front of me without asking anything about it. I did much the same in Korea except my hosts quickly learned that I couldn’t deal with Kim Chee. I suppose I’ve eaten some things that I normally wouldn’t have, had I known what it was but none of it killed me.
I absolutely love chicken livers, hominy, crawdad tails, rabbit, squirrel, goat, antelope, venison, bison, and elk. Especially elk. I like most fish but I think I’d refuse to eat puffer fish.
I would like to try a Rocky Mountain Oyster at some point, and maybe some rattlesnake.
Every year there’s the “Icelandic Rotten Food Festival”, so I’d say what’s served there would be the strangest things I’ve eaten.
I’ll try anything, once. 'Cause how are you otherwise supposed to know what great things you might miss out on?
I’m in South Korea at the moment and my hosts keep asking me if I want to go to a restaurant with them and eat dog. I have nothing against them eating dog but I just don’t think I can bring myself to eat it. Its a psychological block.
I have also had a few times a soup that contains beef and what appear to be large arteries.