Most Unusual Food You've Ever Eaten

[Dani]

http://www.outernetweb.com/recipes/grandma...s/stktartr.html

"Hence, they would place a piece of tough raw meat beneath their saddles. The constant pounding, heat and horse sweat served to marinate and tenderize the meat, which was then eaten uncooked."

Oh and that Swedish fish, probably you mean lime fish. It can kill you if you don't prepare it properly. ;)

My odd food experiences are slim, because I can't consider any seafood particularly weird because of my heritage. One part atlantic fishermen, who eat pretty much anything from the sea, other part nordic maniacs who eat raw herrings marinaded in various sauces.

Still, maybe some of these could qualify..

- Blood pancakes, salt instead of sugar, blood instead of milk.
- Grilled snails, small ones that you dug out of their shells with a needle.
- Local chicken hotdogs...they have the texture of styrofoam, and the taste as well I'd imagine.
- Pig ears
- and yeah, that Tatar steak (delicious) and lime fish (horrible)

ps. Horse is great, as steak, in stew, salami, paté, you name it. :)

[Premezilla]

People, if you live in Hawaii, then you can probably get anything from anywhere. Probably the food that I was most surprised about was Reindeer sausage. Actual meat from a reindeer. It was pretty good! also~

tripe stew
natto-beans (they taste horrible, and smell even worse)
pickled pig's feet
dog food (completely by accident! My friend put some on my plate while I wasn't looking....THE HORROR!!!!)
and that's about it...

p.s. I wouldn't really consider "sushi" a weird food...but if we're along those lines then I also ate tempura, batter-fried shrimp

[Brimstone]

Lemme see...
cow/chicken liver (not that exotic, at least not in the South)
venison (see above...altho there's something to be said for a meal you hunt, kill, clean, and cook yourself)
fried calamari (ech...all the charm of a deep-fried condom)
souse meat (sort of a pig's head meat pudding...some brains, some cheeks, God only knows what else...definitely don't recommend it)

My g/f has me beat, tho...
chitlins, alligator, and (never woulda thought of this one) squirrel brains & scrambled eggs.

woof. no brainz fer me, thanks. :D

[WarBlade]

Oh and that Swedish fish, probably you mean lime fish.

Probably not. :P I did a search on Lime Fish and found nothing resembling surströmming. I also did a search against "surströmming" and grabbed the first fully English hit I could see: surströmming

[Griselda]

I'm going to go a bit OT and suggest a non-animal based item.

One of my favorites is just-picked sauteed chanterelle mushrooms.

I love chanterelles, and it just so happens that Oregon is where they grow. They don't grow well in "captivity", and don't dry well, so they're not very common.

Unfortunately, even in Oregon they can be hard to find. I supported myself for one season picking them, so I got some experience with quality mushrooms. Generally, the pickers sell to the buyers, and the buyers send the best mushrooms to Japan, where they are apparently very popular. The middle of the road ones go to restaurants and supermarkets, and the rest get dried. Unfortunately, there's no comparison between the best mushrooms and the rest of them. It's a whole different experience.

Now that I live in town and don't pick my own, I'm not able to find quality chanterelles, and I must admit I've forgotten how to cook them. I'd have to drive a good 40 miles out of town to find a mushroom patch that isn't picked clean, so I haven't had many chanterelles lately. Maybe someday I'll get to go to Japan and have some "real" chanterelles that grew right here in Oregon! :lol:

There is a decent market for those who are willing to sidestep the mushroom buyers and sell quality mushrooms to local businesses, but there's still probably more pickers than there are mushrooms to go around. I can't even imagine what it must be like a bit south in matsutake country!

I think I'd like to try a truffle if I even have the opportunity.

There's also not much that can beat a freshly picked huckleberry or salmonberry. :)

-Griselda

[Deadlyman]

Are you those are not the poison mushrooms that you are eating or picking???:ph34r:

Seriously, they sound like yummy mushrooms. I dont think I have tried them. But since I live in California, you Oregonians would probably not like me going up to your state for the mushrooms. ;)

[Griselda]

I think that the Oregonians who complain the loudest are the ones trying to pretend they're not Californians themselves. :P I'm neither a native Californian nor Oregonian, so I try to stay out of it.

Chanterelles are one of the easiest kinds of mushrooms to identify, which is helpful for us n00bs. Another local non-poisonous favorite is the morel mushroom, but I've never developed a taste for it (or maybe just never had any that were prepared well).

-Griselda

[Caesar]

My roomate has been raving about morels. I have yet to try them, but he insists they're easily the best mushroom in the history of mushrooms. Apparently they're in season in May and there is a superb french chef here in Columbus that uses them in almost all of his dishes come morel season. I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully I won't be disappointed. :)

[tufchic]

once i had to eat coffee gravy which is my "grandfather's" concoction of bacon grease and coffee. yuck!

[AtomicKitKat]

Hmm, sounds like my diet's not that unusual after all. Now if we were to go into INORGANIC(or at least non-animal/non-plant) substances eaten... :P

The ultimate delicacy would have to be fugu(puffer-fish) liver. It's located VERY near the poison-sac, and if improperly prepared, it will kill you. If memory serves, fugu chefs have to undergo at least half a decade of training, and there's probably no more than a couple hundred in the world right now. Probably a lot less. Too bad this all adds up to it being a very expensive game of Russian roulette...

[Dani]

Probably not. :P I did a search on Lime Fish and found nothing resembling surströmming. I also did a search against "surströmming" and grabbed the first fully English hit I could see: surströmming

You're correct. Silly me for not doing a search in a scand language. Surströmming is the delicacy for those who think lime fish is too tame. *ugh*
Advice from the article. "Can is best opened by placing it on a tree stump and shooting it with a shotgun". :blink:

[Iolair]

Yes. Or in my case every once in a while through my involvement with The Danish Society (inc.) Auckland.

Warblade, just because I'm a curious Dane. Do you have family here or relatives? I can only be happy when I hear about your involvement with The Danish Society :)

Smørrebrød and snaps..yummie. Have you ever tried a danish 'julefrokost'? Nasty tradition..eating till you blow and then some *grin*

[WarBlade]

Yes, I have more family in Denmark than I do in New Zealand. I'm from Ålborg originally and my father's family have been in and around Syvesten up near Sæby for generations. I have family stretching the full length of Denmark now.

Fortunately for me there's a thriving little Danish community here in Auckland, although many of the members came here in the wake of WWII so some of the spoken Danish and customs are a sort of throwback to Denmark of the 1950's at times.

[Iolair]

Ohhhh, I come from Støvring, 20 km south of Ålborg.
How small the world can be sometimes :)

When did you live in Ålborg, if you don't mind me asking?
The city has changed quite a lot during the last couple of years..for the better.

[Sheep]

Sheeps eyeball.

So that's where it went! :blink:

[Albion Child]

Emu, Crow, Groundhog, Rattlesnake, calamari (wierd stuff...consistency of snot)

[Copadope]

I ate a slug once. Actually it was only half a slug because I had to split it with my friend who helped me find it. We were at SURE camp (Survival Using Resources of the Environment) and we actually wanted to cook a grasshopper, but we just couldn't catch one. It was a big disappointment for us since slugs are neither as crunchy or tasty as grasshoppers. And it was a pretty small slug...

Ah, well. There was other strange stuff in the stew that we got to eat as well. Did you know that you can eat the leaves of a grape vine, but the stems are poisonous? At least that's what they told us...

--Copadope

[pakman]

Alligator at the Taste of Chicago, best damn alligator you will ever have :P

I don't recall having eaten anything in that list that you would consider srtrange, but I eat ethnic Italian, Polish, and Irish food. Some of which you might consider strange, but it's normal to me :D

[BlackLightning]

Just browsing over the forum, and it hadn't been replied to in a while, so i thought i'd give some insight.

I've visited several different cultures, and I've eaten a bunch of weird things, including:

-Chapulines in Mexico (Fried grasshoppers in chilli sauce)
-Monkfish
-Chicken hearts
-Chicken feet
-A Dolphin sandwhich
-Red Ant chilli sauce
-Huitlacoche tacos (Huitlacoche is a black fungus which grows on corn)
- Moose meat
-Falooda (an Indian milkshake with rose syrup and frog's eggs)

Yeah, that's all i can remember. Oh yeah my mom's from India, and she said that she ate peacock meat. Oh well, the things that people consume.

[Walkiry]

Nothing of what I've eaten is considered "Unusual" by the cultures that eat it ;) But I'll humour you:

- Roasted ants. Big red ants, roasted and salted like peanut. Niiiiice.
- Snake. No big deal, snake-on-a-stick over a campfire, tasty.
- Crocodrile: Tail, roasted. REALLY nice.
- Capibara: The larges rodent on earth, can be up to 60 kg. Really nice, albeit slightly dry. Goes well with mint sauce (or so they say, I prefer not to mint anything :D)
- Spider: Monkey Spider, on a campfire again (not the same one). Tastes like good seafood, very nice.
- Skata: Icelandic speciality, eaten on the 23rd of December. Grab a Skate fish, open it up, empty its contents (bowels, blood and all) in a barrel together with the meat in pieces, let it rot for a few weeks or until you can stand the smell. Eat with boiled potatoes and burnt fat. Truly horrible.
- Hákarl: Icelandic rotten shark, have shots of black death with it to survive it.
- Moss Liquor: Another Icelandic speciality. What can I say.
- Puffin: Yet another Icelandic speciality. This colourful funny bird tastes like chicken fried in vaseline. Not for the faint-hearted (literally!).
- Sheep's head: I don't consider this too exotic, we eat it in Spain too :)
- Snails: Those are common to be eaten in Spain. With spicy tomato sauce or in Paella with rabbit. They are lovely.
- Bait-in-a-plate: BWAHAHAHAHA Thanks Occi :)
- Skyr: This is another Icelandic speciality but it's really nice. I've included it so that you don't think all food in Iceland is horrible ;) It's a milk derivate similar to youghurt, except almost 0% fat and really tasty!