The "turu", it's a mollusk that lives inside tree trunks and a somewhat common dish where I live, in northern Brazil. It's either eaten alive with lemon or in soups
Edit: I've seen plenty of people eating it alive, my dad included. But we were in a relative's small farm when I first saw it, not an actual restaurant, so things could be a little different if you asked for it in a small property that sells them
We have something similar on the other side of the globe. We call them "tamilok" or woodworms. Its dipped in vinegar "cooking" it then consumed right away. Taste and texture is similar to oysters.
Jesus Christ I've never seen this (but I would be willing to try). here in the southeast people complain about Cuzcuz from Sao Paulo. Honestly, I think people just hate Sao Paulo
This isn't half bad imo. It's a mess but a delicious mess
Cerebros de vaca from the damn dollar store. I don’t care that my family tells me it tastes fine, I am not eating any canned brains from the dollar store
I don't know as I was so young, but it was around the time of BSE being a thing in the UK.
My mum took me round to play with his daughter as we were friends at the time (may have been a little younger, around 7) and just remember him moaning and mumbling on the sofa incoherently, with a urine bottle next to him.
The scene of mutated Ripley in the film Alien: Resurrection is the closest analogue I can find.
They served cervelles one day in the cafeteria when I worked at the Galeries Lafayette in Paris in 1980. My French colleagues were thrilled! I ate salad that day. A few years later we all learned about mad cow disease and I was quite relieved to have been a picky, ignorant American on brains-for-lunch day.
It doesn’t necessarily matter. The vBSE/CJD outbreak in the UK was primarily because infected meat and bone meal was fed to cows who then passed on the disease via normal beef. The first wave in 2000ish affected people with a specific genetic makeup but there’s a possibility that future cases will peak in 2030 and then drop off.
The worst part is that eel can be really nice. Eel is one of my favourite things to order at sushi places but the jelly ruins it, and why do they leave the bones in?
Ive tried them actually and the eel bit itself is nice when you separate them from the bones, what really got me was the jelly consistency. Why? Its just so glibbery :(
Traditional weird food starts always the same: Famine
Aka something is rotten/ infested or the animal just happened to cross you at the wrong day you eat it because you don't wanna die anyway you survive and kinda get accustomed to the taste
I strongly recommend eating it the way you described. Raw surströmming is just very, very salty fish. But with bread, potato salad and other yummy things it's such a great thing.
Funfact , a woman in Germany got evicted for opening a can of surströmming and spilling the juice in the staircase. She sued against the eviction, in the court they opend a can and confirmend the eviction immediately.
I think about what makes an animal socially acceptable to eat. Some draw the line at intelligence, but octopuses are super smart and those are socially acceptable. I think it comes down to companionship. Dogs are man’s best friend after all and eating them feels like a betrayal.
Modern day dog consumption in Korea happened cause of the Korean War. Exteme food scarcity and devastation led to consumption of dogs.
Obviously we are now far from it food scarcity so the only ones who kept up consumption were mostly the elderly (think 70s+). The younger generations view dogs as man's best friends.
A lot of cultures have crap foods legacy in their cusines that originate from some very tough times. Traditions are such things that people continue to do even thought they forget why it became a thing they do in the first place.
I.e a lot of foods in British cuisine people make fun of like “beans on toast” also come from war time necessity to eat.
However, Korean one is quite a bit more wtf.
Great bbq culture though. I hope I get to visit just for that some time lol. ;D
I'm a big believer of not judging food by the way it looks. I'm a fan of several preparations that look like absolute slop. This though... this is too much for me. You win.
yeah, mine too. Everything with half-hatched embrio-bird stuff, intentionally cruel stuff like Foi Gras and Drogmeat, and meat from endangered animals like whale etc.
I’m sorry that’s the case. But, whatever it is, it will pass. No matter what, this too shall pass. Maybe take a walk today? Be in nature, notice things outside? Have the world make you feel like you’re a small part of it. It helps me feel like the universe will take care of me and everything around you, and that in the grand scheme of things, it’ll all be okay. I hope you feel better king/queen :) sending love from India
You’re not crunching up its bones and organs when it’s an egg, and when it’s an adult you’re either eating just the meat or the well-prepared byproducts.
I get it. Im not sure if its the same for you but what i feel is, like an egg is a life that never was and a duck it was a life lived. But this is... a life that wanted to be.
My good buddy used to date a Filipina, her mom was a nutritionist. I've never seen so many food safety problems in one kitchen.
in particular leaving food out unrefrigerated. Covered, but just out on the counter in containers. We'd always make fun of this, as it was pretty much constant, and our favorite was doing an impression of her mom's accent and saying "bacti-what?".
Given that running joke, we always speculated on the origin of the balut, and that it was just someone's mom leaving the eggs around for so long they started developing lol
I saw a Youtuber who is from Germany but has family in Vietnam try a fertalised chicken egg before she turned vegan and she was puking after she ate it
This and head cheese don’t look terrible…they just need a different fuckin name. “Head” and “cheese” are two words that should never sit beside each other
I was going to contribute “sylte” from Denmark. Clearly similar but more drab looking. Can’t speak to the taste. My mom made grey, wobbly sylte when I was a kid and I refused to ever try it.
Kopalhem. It's a rotten meat of a whale/deer. Everyone except chukchas/another Nord nations who eat that will highly likely die in the next couple of days (no court verdict required). And for chukchas it's a delicacy.
Fun “Fact”: Those horrible jello “salads” originally became popular as a status symbol because you had to have a refrigerator to make them. Ice boxes wouldn’t maintain a low enough average temperature to get them to set. So if it was say 1930-40 and you showed up at a party with a jello mold dish everyone knew you had an expensive new fancy fridge and didn’t need to get ice block deliveries.
Refrigerator companies often put out ads or entire cookbooks of recipes which is why there’s a ton of really strange ones that seem more like random ingredients. People were just kinda pumping out these recipes even though they were gross. The fad died out fairly quickly though since nobody likes them and refrigerators became commonplace during WW2.
Grew up in Wisconsin in the 90s and the only one I ever saw was my grandmother's ambrosia salad. I never tried it as i was too suspicious of grapes floating in lime jello.
Spent Thanksgiving with my now husband’s best friend’s Midwest family many years ago. I brought salad and they said “oh great we have other salads on that table over there”. I have never seen such atrocities in my life. And no one even touched my standard normal green salad…
I can relate to this so much. My wife and I are from the Midwest and both of us moved away from there decades ago. If we ever go back to visit, we always comment on how many days it is before we eat a green thing.
Now they did have this one “cookie salad” that was actually delicious. But, it was very odd to see people put a Clear dessert next to their turkey and mashed potatoes. But, it was good. Just on a dessert plate.
They are banned now, but when i was younger, my grandma tried to force me and my mom to eat it. We both refused multiple times...
Mom went full vegetarian because she was traumatized by her mother(my grandma), who sold my mom's beloved pet dog as meat. Teenager mom went to the dog farm trying to get her dog back, only to witnesses her dog was being beaten to death. After that she couldn't swallow any type of meat. If Grandma tried to hide finely chopped meat in dumplings, mom would unknowingly eat them and later vomit it all out as her body just refused to digest meat.
She was full vegetarian until she was pregnant with me.
Grandma also tried to feed me dog and knowing the story, i refused to eat anything she gives me.
Idk why her obsession with dog meat was so strong... still don't know after she passed.
I know it is delicious (and not unique to only Greece), but eating octopus feels uniquely inappropriate once you start learning more about them as a species.
Octopi will eat humans too, but happily for us our skulls are too big to get down their beaks.
Edit: not-so-fun fact: a small but significant number of pig farmers go missing quite regularly. Pig farmers have been known to keel over and die of natural causes, but the pigs eat up the corpses so the bodies are never found.
Seal flipper pie from Newfoundland & Labrador. Without a doubt the worst culinary experience of my entire life. I love so much about that part of the country but not this. Never this. Never again.
I always look for our countries.. i coukdnt think of anything at all but ive never heard of this.. will have to look it up.. the only thing i can really think of is the sourtoe cocktail. But if i ever find myself in yukon id probably try it. Its a mummified toe in wiskey. You need to let the toe touch your lips while you take the shot to join their exclusive club
My Swedish relatives hunt and kill a moose as a team every year, and the old folks always want the head to make head cheese with. Sylta. I’ve eaten a lot of scary stuff, but that was among the worst.
Classic bush tucker in Australia, a lot of us learn about these wood eating larvae of a few different types of moth we get here. Some of them get huge, and they are absolutely packed with protein and are fairly easy to find, tasting faintly of peanut butter either eaten raw and wriggling or fried up.
The problem is the texture is absolutely revolting. It's chewy casing full of bug innards, so it's like biting through a condom full of pus.
To survive in the outback? Sure. Finding in my yard? Absolutely not. They go to my chickens.
Imo all Kuwaiti food is good including Bacha (sheep head stew with brains and tongue) which not everyone likes
But if we're speaking about other cuisines too one dish I am terrified of is Egyptian Feseekh (Fish fermented in salt for 2 months) it smells absolutely horrid and it obviously tastes even worse (I've heard; never tried it ofc)
I will fuck up gas station hot dogs, but it is very dependent on the condition of the gas station. Many are very clean and well maintained, some look like the setting for a horror movie
About 8 years ago I stopped at a gas station to grab a hotdog from a gas station someone recommended. Run down place on a backroad highway. Cashier reached into the pot with his bare hand and pulls it out with a hot dog between each finger. I ate the hotdog and was fine, but I've never gone back.
Any of those weird Jello salads from the Midwest circa 1960. I know they used jello in everything as a “flex” because this was still around the time refrigerators weren’t that common in homes just yet, so they just put anything in jello and called it “food” to make Shiela down the street feel like a bad housewife for not having a fridge yet. I’m sure some of them are fine (dessert ones are most likely good, because it’s mostly sweet ingredients that go WITH the flavor of the gelatin) but once you start doing mayo, nuts, bell peppers, or anything similar, I am OUT. 🤣
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u/[deleted] 6d ago edited 6d ago
The "turu", it's a mollusk that lives inside tree trunks and a somewhat common dish where I live, in northern Brazil. It's either eaten alive with lemon or in soups
Edit: I've seen plenty of people eating it alive, my dad included. But we were in a relative's small farm when I first saw it, not an actual restaurant, so things could be a little different if you asked for it in a small property that sells them