# Why Are Asians More Adventurous In Their Culinary Habits? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 6, 2006, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247 "2006-11-06T03:20:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/21 "2006-11-06T11:02:50Z")
People eat all sorts of weird ass shit here in Bulgaria, which I’m pretty sure is in Europe…the first time I saw chicken heart on a menu I thought it was a typo. (Nope!) Stomach soup is very popular, too. Sadly (haha!), I am a vegetarian, so I can avoid these delicacies without giving offence. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/22 "2006-11-06T11:09:45Z")
[QUOTE=Dominic Mulligan] ??? Seriously? Is that a weird food in America? [/QUOTE] Countdown to Americans mentioning steak & kidney pie…5…4…3… I’d suggest that the separation of preparation & consumption has caused western (at least American & British) societies to lose some of the concept that you’re eating parts of animals. Burgers & nuggets, chicken breasts, sasuages, none resemble the creature(s) they’re made from. Eating recognisable anatomy has become alien, hence the squeamishness about ‘exotic’ cuisine (and about historic foodstuffs from our own culture, as noted already). ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/23 "2006-11-06T11:22:12Z")
[QUOTE=scr4] It’s ridiculous to suggest that Asians eat all parts of the animal while Americans only eat choice cuts and throw away the rest. What do you think chicken nuggets and sausages are made of? [/QUOTE] But nuggets and sausages are never advertised as being made of the bits we in the West would probably call yucky. Is it something to do with the availability of processed foods in the West, we can have the tastiest bit of an animal all packaged up for us so we don’t worry about the rest? ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/24 "2006-11-06T12:26:25Z")
[QUOTE=Kyla] Sadly (haha!), I am a vegetarian, so I can avoid these delicacies without giving offence. [/QUOTE] [Big Fat Greek Wedding] We’ll have lamb. [/BFGW] ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/25 "2006-11-06T12:29:52Z")
[QUOTE=Shoshana] I’m not suggesting that US folks don’t eat less-familiar bits of animals, but that many don’t have to and apparently don’t want to. KFC does not offer chicken gizzards or duck’s feet in the US, though we eat other parts of chickens and ducks. My local comfort-food restaurant does not offer ox-tail soup, tripe, brains, jellied calves’ foot, or head cheese, though I probably could find those at least some of those to prepare at home if I went to a butcher or to a larger city. [/QUOTE] ISTR Pioneer Chicken in California offering fried chicken livers on its menu, at least in the 1980s. They’re closed now. Robin ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/26 "2006-11-06T12:41:11Z")
[QUOTE=Shalmanese] Asians eat more within their cuisine but they seem to be the worst with dealing with other cuisines. Chinese tour groups are the only ones I’ve ever seen which have “guarenteed visiting 100% Chinese restaurants while overseas” [/QUOTE] I’d agree with this. Most of my Vietnamese friends and colleagues eat Vietnamese food 98% of the time, with 1% being Chinese, and another 1% being the occasional trip to McDonald’s. They tend to find such things as lamb and cheese (even milk sometimes) to be repulsive. Even within their own cuisine, most Vietnamese and Chinese I know are not particularly adventurous. There is an old-fashioned macho element to their culture that means that things like dog meat or snake’s blood are generally only eaten by (usually working class) men of above a certain age. I tried snake’s blood in Vietnam just for the experience, and my Vietnamese friend told me it was his first time too, and I had to talk him into it. Most are repulsed by the idea of eating dog. Only a small number of them will eat fish eyes. There’s also not a lot of offal eaten apart from tripe - well, less than there was in my white family (my dad loves tripe, liver, kidneys, you name it). ---
**Author:** ![chaoticbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@chaoticbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaoticbear)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/27 "2006-11-06T14:00:43Z")
Come on down to the South™, where you can find fried chicken livers and gizzards at the Wal-Mart deli! (Also, KFC has livers for sure, and I was pretty confident that they have gizzards too.) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/28 "2006-11-06T17:28:57Z")
[QUOTE=MsRobyn] ISTR Pioneer Chicken in California offering fried chicken livers on its menu, at least in the 1980s. They’re closed now. Robin [/QUOTE] Brown’s Chicken, a popular Chicago chain (probably the third largest here, behind KFC and Popeye’s), has both deep-fried chicken livers and gizzards on its menu. IIRC, so does Harold’s Chicken Shack, another popular chain here, and quite a few of the soul food places. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/29 "2006-11-06T17:34:52Z")
[QUOTE=Dominic Mulligan] ??? Seriously? Is that a weird food in America? [/QUOTE] That’s my reaction, too, but I have heard a few people remark as that being weird, because of the whole tail thing. I don’t get it either, as ox-tail is pretty much the same as bony stew meat, and goes for quite a premium here at the local supermarket. I never make ox-tail soup because it’s just too expensive compared with making the same soup/stew with short ribs or chuck. But oxtail is friggin delicious. It’s like beef concentrate! ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/30 "2006-11-06T17:49:50Z")
The “exotic” parts aren’t thrown away here in america, they just go into the industrial part of the food chain to be processed into something unrecognizable, or eventually end up in dog food. Oxtail is just stew meat, for making stock. Any American who’s eaten prepared frozen/canned food that contain beef in gravy or sauce has eaten oxtail, they just didn’t know it. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/31 "2006-11-06T18:21:15Z")
Anyone for haggis? [QUOTE=Shalmanese] Asians eat more within their cuisine but they seem to be the worst with dealing with other cuisines. Chinese tour groups are the only ones I’ve ever seen which have “guarenteed visiting 100% Chinese restaurants while overseas” [/QUOTE] Anecdote: I was traveling in Florence, considered by some to have originally inspired the fine cooking of French cuisine. I returned to talk to a Chinese colleague, telling her about my trip. She told me her sister had gone there and said “the food was yuck.” :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/32 "2006-11-06T19:03:55Z")
Tony Bourdain often searches out “weird” food in his travels. Often in what we consider “exotic” countries: Asia or South America. Then, he went to Iceland. > [@](#): > > Þorramatur (food of the þorri) is the Icelandic national food. Nowadays þorramatur is mostly eaten during the ancient Nordic month of þorri, in January and February, as a tribute to old culture. Þorramatur consists of many different types of food, such as sour ram testicles, rotten shark, burned sheep heads, sheep head jam, blood pudding and dried fish (often cod, haddock or seawolf), served with butter. > > Chef Anthony Bourdain, who has travelled extensively throughout the world sampling local cuisine for his Travel Channel show No Reservations, has described shark þorramatur as “the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing” he has ever eaten > **[Þorramatur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Eorramatur)** > > Þorramatur (.mw-parser-output .IPA-label-small{font-size:85%}.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-small{font-size:100%}Icelandic pronunciation: \[ˈθɔrːaˌmaːtʏr̥\]; transliterated as thorramatur; lit. 'food of Þorri') is a selection of Icelandic foods, mostly cooked meat and fish products, which are served with a dense rye bread called rúgbrauð, butter and the Icelandic spirit brennivín. Þorramatur is consumed... “Offal” is a new trend at upscale restaurants. (Probably not at Applebee’s, though.) [Offal on upscale menus.](http://www.slate.com/id/2099281/) In my neighborhood, we know the holidays are near when cow heads show up at the grocery store. Tamale time! ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/33 "2006-11-06T19:54:08Z")
You can walk into any grocery store here and buy a bucket of chitlins, you know. Also turkey necks and chicken gizzards and all kinds of livers. It’s just regional - up North it seems to be everything’s tongue. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/34 "2006-11-06T20:03:01Z")
Asians cook the same way Americans cook-with the ingredients readily available where they live. Transplanted Asians will try to cook food as they are used to. What do they eat if they can’t get their familiar ingredients? They improvise using available products. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/35 "2006-11-06T20:29:46Z")
[QUOTE=pulykamell] Heck, the Polish shop down the street and the Mexican grocery still have all that stuff. Tripe is awesome! Head cheese is still a daily staple around my folk’s house. And I even had some blood sausage today, and I can afford to eat pretty much anything I want. [/QUOTE] French cooking is famous for the use of _abats_–most of the animal parts that have been mentioned so far. Just about any internal organ can be the basis of a recipe, as well as at least one semi-external one–_animelles_, or testicles. Like most Americans I’ve had very little exposure to such meats, but given the opportunity I would be curious enough to try some of them. I wouldn’t trust my own culinary skills, though, to do them justice; I’d probably have to try them in a proper French restaurant. ---
**Author:** ![ntcrawler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/34f0e0/32.png) [@ntcrawler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ntcrawler)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/36 "2006-11-06T20:51:10Z")
Don’t forget Chinese thousand year eggs. What posses people to want to coat eggs in ash and lye, and then bury them in the ground for 100 days to see what happens and then taste the result? ---
**Author:** ![ntcrawler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/34f0e0/32.png) [@ntcrawler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ntcrawler)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/37 "2006-11-06T20:52:22Z")
I understand people from the south are into pica and have a taste for consuming flavored clay. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/38 "2006-11-06T21:08:39Z")
> [@](#): > > Don’t forget Chinese thousand year eggs. What posses people to want to coat eggs in ash and lye, and then bury them in the ground for 100 days to see what happens and then taste the result? At a guess, it started as a way of preserving foods for desparate times. Maybe you start by burying eggs for a week or two at a time: If you live in a moderately cool area, they’ll still be close to “fresh” for that period. Then, you forget to dig some up, and decide it’s best not to disturb them, but just to leave them where they are. But then a year later, your crops fail and your chicken dies. Suddenly, those eggs you burried last year are going to start looking awfully appealing… And I’ll second cheese as a disgusting food Westerners eat. Think about it: You start with milk, which will make most adult humans sick all by itself. Then you let it rot until it actually congeals into a solid. If you want to get fancy about it, you then let various molds grow in it. If you really think about it, is this any better than stinky tofu? ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/39 "2006-11-06T22:12:11Z")
[QUOTE=TheLoadedDog] I’d agree with this. Most of my Vietnamese friends and colleagues eat Vietnamese food 98% of the time, with 1% being Chinese, and another 1% being the occasional trip to McDonald’s. They tend to find such things as lamb and cheese (even milk sometimes) to be repulsive. [/QUOTE] [There’s a very good chance they’re lactose intolerant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#Lactose_intolerance_by_group). Enough East Asians are lactose intolerant that it’s not surprising that milk isn’t a traditional part of their cuisine. It’s normal to find something that isn’t a traditional part of the cuisine you eat to be repulsive. > [@Askance](#): > > I don’t think the East Asian diet is any more diverse than, say, West African, Southern European, or Australian Aboriginal. Perhaps the question should be more “why is Western Anglo culture so conservative and picky in what it considers to be edible?”. Because meat is cheap enough and we’re rich enough to kill an animal and only use the parts we like best. We have refrigeration, so no real need for traditional means of preserving foods, so we use the ones that we like and forget the rest. From the Slate article linked in this thread: > [@Slate article](#): > > American tastes, however, have been formed by a different history. Jack Ubaldi, founder of the legendary Florence Prime Meat Market in Greenwich Village and author of Meat Book (1987), traces the American aversion to eating the heads, tails, and organs of animals to the late 19th century, when the surplus of cattle raised in the western states caused meat prices to plummet. “[W]e became a nation of muscle-meat eaters and could afford to throw out the innards and other exotica,” he writes. (Immigrant communities in American cities continued to consume variety meats through the 20th century, but these items were relegated to the fringes—difficult to find outside of ethnic butcher shops and absent from all but the most adventurous restaurants.) > [@Kyla](#): > > Sadly (haha!), I am a vegetarian, so I can avoid these delicacies without giving offence. Yeah- when organ meats are on a restaurant menu or someone offers them to me, I’m glad I keep kosher and thus usually have an excuse to decline them. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247/40 "2006-11-07T01:48:30Z")
[QUOTE=Kyla] People eat all sorts of weird ass shit here in Bulgaria, which I’m pretty sure is in Europe…the first time I saw chicken heart on a menu I thought it was a typo. (Nope!) Stomach soup is very popular, too. [/QUOTE] Pity, chicken hearts prepared my favorite way are quite good - 1 pound chicken hearts, thawed and the veins removed as well as any excess fat. Plop them in salted water to ‘kosher’ them [remove the blood] You might want to play with them a bit in the water to make sure there arent any blood clots in the ventricles. Remove, pat dry with paper towels. Place in a little stoneware bean pot/soup crock [just big enough to hold them all] and add about a quarter of a small onion, chopped finely, about a tablespoon or so of ‘italian seasoning’ and about 3 tbsp decent red wine. Cover, and bake in about 350 degree oven for about 1 hour, stir once or twice. Koshering gets rid of almost all of the ‘organ’ taste [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-asians-more-adventurous-in-their-culinary-habits/379247.md?page=3)