In a little village in the Peruvian Amazon I had chicha once. Women make chicha by chewing cassava root and spitting the juice into a bowl. You can drink it freshly made, or fermented into a beer.
I had it fresh.
Grasshoppers, baby bees in honey, freeze-dried caterpillars, chocolate-covered ants. But I guess the weirdest was vegetarian haggis. It’s made with oatmeal, and somehow they make it taste just as repulsive as the real thing.
Back in the eighties I went to Germany with a friend to visit his family. I’d never been overseas so it was very interesting seeing all the differences from the States. I don’t speak any thing other than English so it was an experience. I love trying new things so when his Uncle got excited over his favorite restaurant meal I said I’d like to try it! It ended up being a lamb head cut in two vertically with all the body parts put back in their original places ,eye,tongue,brain etc. I ate it all, not gonna back out now!
Never want to try it again.
Aah, yes, locally this is known as a “smiley” (because the roasting pulls the lips back off the teeth, I guess)
I’ve eaten raw horsemeat and raw chicken sushi, both in Japan. But the oddest thing I’ve ever eaten was sea cucumber. Imagine eating pure gristle.
I’ve also had alligator. It was blackened Cajun style. I, too, thought it tasted like chicken only it had the texture of steak. Weird.
Why are people saying squid? Is it that weird? It’s certainly more common than crab.
Things you guys might consider weird: shark’s fin soup and bird’s nest. I try to avoid shark’s fin now. It’s just like gelatin anyway.
Things I consider weird: mule (or is it donkey? Chinese isn’t very specific) and snake. Oh and chicken feet. I don’t like chicken feet.
I have to say something about thousand year/century egg: most shows present it as a weird food and dare people to eat it. That’s because they’re eating it wrong. You’re not supposed to bite half of it and chew, like a hard-boiled egg. That’s like thinking soya sauce is a soup. You’re supposed to cut it into small pieces and nibble it. Also, the “white” (now black) is the best part. The yolk is a bit too strong.
Speaking of eggs, you might also consider salted duck egg weird. They’re just… salty. Here, the yolk is the best part. It’s like hmm, a firm, salty piece of butter.
I’ve had many of the “weird” foods mentioned; I hardly ever pass up an experience.
Except. Maybe 25 years ago some goofy friends had a baby and I was invited to come over and share in the placenta. No thanks.
Probably conch. Sweetbreads sound strange but they’re so danged good it’s hard to call them weird.
I was just telling someone about my experience at a salad bar. I had a little plate of lettuce and put a few items on top - beets, olives, cucumbers, and on the side, a scoop of pasta salad. Pasta salad was remarkably chewy. In fact, downright gristle-ly. Squid tentacles cut into rings, looking like big white pasta circles! It was the awful, gross texture! Never came across squid salad again. Ewww.
You’ll like it better fried as calamari.
I hate to be the turd in the punchbowl, but if you’ve eaten a hot dog - especially a store brand/non-kosher - you’ve consummed some pretty nasty animal bits. :eek:
I have eaten road-kill rattlesnake (it was still alive when I found it, recently hit by a car, clearly dying). I cooked it on a stick over a camp fire and didn’t enjoy it much. I have eaten muskrat, which tasted similar to squirrel and rabbit.
Mangetout needs to visit this thread. That guy will eat anything.
I ate the bones. I ATE THE BONES!!!
Seriously, the first time I ate chicken when I was a kid, it was at a barbeque. I had no idea that I wasn’t supposed to eat the bones. The chicken tasted so good that I wanted more, and I thought that they wouldn’t give me more until I finished what was already on my plate.
What does squirrel taste like? I’ve hunted and eaten lots of rabbits but the squirrels I started to clean were covered with fleas so I choose against it. I know Mrs. Kay and Phil on DD love squirrel brains but I’m pretty sure I’ll never go to that extreme.
It really does depend on the hot dog. I don’t mind “lips and assholes” in my dog (it’s all ground up anyway, and no sense in throwing away perfectly edible meat), but if you buy something like, say, Vienna Beef hot dogs (which are not kosher), they’re made 100% from whole beef muscle meat (I believe brisket) and beef fat.
Tastes are so hard to describe. The closest thing to squirrel that I have tasted is cottontail rabbit. In all three cases, squirrel, rabbit and muskrat, I had it in stew.
I haven’t read the whole thread, but the things I’ve seen mentioned so far are normal foods – or treats, if I only occasionally have access to them. Alligator? Yummy; fried, or in sausages. Escargots? I make them at home. (And the SO thinks they’re better than what we get in restaurants. We eat calamari so often, we’re starting to pass it over. And squid and sea cucumber is good in seafood fun chow. Octopus sushi, of course; and uni (sea urchin). My coworker thinks it’s gross that I eat raw oysters, and that I eat the prawn heads when I have Vietnamese or Chinese food that has whole prawns in the dish; but those things are not unusual or weird at all.
So I guess I haven’t eaten anything ‘weird’. We watch Bizarre Foods], and most of the stuff Andrew Zimmern stuffs in his gob looks really tasty. Do SPAM salad sandwiches count? Most people have to be coaxed into trying them, because they’re made with SPAM. But really, there’s virtually no difference between a SPAM salad sandwich and a ham salad sandwich.
I’ve always wanted to have CalMeacham secret dish. I used to not eat it because it’s like pure cholesterol. Now I won’t eat it for the same reason he mentions at the end of his spoiler.
I certainly saw plenty of duck tongues and duck heads as snacks in China (not to mention duck feet, duck blood soup, etc.); I guess the throat is not a big stretch. I presume you mean the esophagus or trachea and not just the neck?
On photo safari in Tanzania, 1987. At Seronera Lodge we were served zebra steaks - or at least that’s what we were told it was. It was a long time ago now, but I recall it being pretty much like beef, except maybe slightly sweet.
My mom wouldn’t touch hers.