Chitlins! 
" Chitlins, also called chitterlings, are the large intestines of swine (hogs) but can also come from calf or veal. While it’s hard to describe exactly how chitlins taste, we can say one thing for sure: Some people love them and for others, it’s nauseating."
You can count me in the latter group. 
A friend (originally from the southernly parts of the US) had the great pleasure of visiting Japan many years ago. He made a huge distinction between various forms of chitlins and Japanese grilled offal dishes using intestines. The places he went made a huge effort in processing (cleaning including apparently using flour as a cleaner/abrasive, soaking, and cleaning again) and careful cooking as opposed to the US version he was familiar with. Apparently there’s also very distinct differences between the large and small intestine as well.
The Japanese technique was something that he’d actively order again, given the chance. The US version? Not if he could avoid it.
I read the Wikipedia article where they ever so politely describe the smell and taste. Something about, …“distinctly of colon…”
I was watching some YouTube series where a guy makes early American dishes – like, 1620 - 1880 or thereabouts – and he uses period equipment and techniques (and he also wears period dress, because go big or go home). One of his dishes “inspired” me to make my own. It was a concoction of potatoes, regular onions, and these foraged onion-adjacent plants that I think are called ramps (or mountain onions or munions depending on regional dialect).
No sooner did the fork hit my mouth than I was violently trying to get it out of there ASAP and spit out any molecule of that awful dish.
It would probably be a thousand times better with seasoning and cooked in a period oven (like a cob oven or what have you, that would impart the smoky flavor).
I’m a bit ashamed to confess I haven’t ever had ramps, though they’re found locally in the spring. Chicago is named for them, or a similar plantfood.
You probably wouldn’t like my ‘pennies à la zinc’ soufflé, then.
“Metallic taste” to me usually means of iron. You’ll find that taste in liver and I’ve had cuts of round and sirloin that sometimes are metallicky. I’ve never experienced a metallic taste in beef tongue, though.
Well, not sure why I’m bothering to explain a joke as dumb as the one I made, but when people taste blood in their mouth, say when they bite their tongue or whatever, they often describe it as ‘tasting like pennies’ despite the fact that they are tasting iron-rich blood. So that’s what I had in mind.
A simple ham sandwich. The catch…it was made by a 95-year-old neighbor who had kept the ham roast, along with the mayonnaise, out on the counter for days in the middle of a 100 degree summer. She made it for me special, with the choicest wiggly gristly fatty chunks and extra mayo, and sat down in front of me to watch me eat the entire thing at her kitchen table.
YouTube already knows I like videos about food and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It sees me in this thread and says, “oh, ya like Zimmern, too, huh? Here ya go”. Though nothing so weird or disgusting as Surströmming (maybe that’s more Swedish than Finnish). Just fish head soup, fish bread and liver dumplings, which I would all happily eat (though I might not go back for seconds on the liver dumplings).
Hah. Liver dumplings is one of my mother-in-laws staple dishes. She grew up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and is of German heritage (whence liver dumplings originate as leberknödel. Or maybe not ultimately originate – I don’t know – but that’s clearly where she got it from. It was also fairly popular in Hungary as májgaluska, so I assume it’s a general Central European dish at the very least. Good stuff, but I really love liver.)
Liver dumplings sound like they would be good as long as they’re prepared correctly. If they’re fried similar to Chinese style dumplings, I’d probably enjoy them. Boiled not so much.
Yeah, I’ve only had them served in a broth/soup. I mean, liver dumpling soup! I somehow thought that was more well known than it apparently is. If you like liver, I think you’d like it. It’s delicious.
It’s not dumplings in the Chinese sense. It’s more like a liver and bread crumb meatball. More like dumplings made of liver rather than liver inside dumplings. So don’t think pot sticker or pierogi or gyoza. It’s not that.
I’m not following what was so objectionable about this. Ramps are supposed to taste milder than onions, so what was the problem with the dish?
They weren’t ramps, based on the link above. But definitely something in the onion-garlic section of town. Very thin, dark green stalks that grow quickly, if you pull them out you’ll have a delicious smelling onion- like bulb at the bottom.
Locals call them “munions,” and they’re considered by most a weed. Might even be invasive.
But enough about that. It wasn’t that it had an offensive flavor. It had NO flavor, and the potatoes were undercooked and put off an odd texture juxtaposed with the odd textures of the other ingredients. It was just an appalling mess. Imagine undercooked oatmeal in too much water, with some grapes thrown in. Nothing really offensive on its own, but together…
Was it Townsends? I like that channel.
I’m a little too far west for ramps, but I’ve heard that while they taste relatively mild, the odor lingers in your breath and sweat for far longer than most newbies expect. Before I decided not to travel for the eclipse, I did BOLO for ramp dinners in the areas I considered going, because they were also areas where they are native.
p.s. Are you sure you picked actual ramps? There are some ramp look-a-likes that, while they are not poisonous, don’t taste good, and south of about the 40th parallel, there’s the ubiquitous yard onion which doesn’t taste very good either.
p.p.s. Yard onions look like grass, above ground anyway. Ramps look more like bok choy.
I remembered another one last night: Many years ago I was hiking on a trail that passes through an old olive orchard. I noticed a tree that was still producing olives. At the time, I was not aware that olives need to be cured before they’re edible, so I picked a ripe olive off the tree and popped it in my mouth. I instantly regretted it. It was the most bitter thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.
It wasn’t as bad as surströmming, though.