NatGeo: What's the strangest food you ever ate?

[Robin Garr]

Goat testes!? Sheep eyeballs!? "That's enough brunch for now, lads." So what's the strangest food you ever ate?

What’s the Strangest Food You’ve Eaten?
From goat testes to sheep eyeballs, you won't believe what these National Geographic explorers have snacked on in the field. Explorers interviewed include Lee Berger, Chris Thornton, John Francis, David Freidel, Fred Hiebert, Amy Dickman, Enric Sala, Boyd Matson, Bradley Russell, and Aziz Abu Sarah.

Click for the full story and video:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explo ... gn=Content

[Robin Garr]

For me, I'm thinking either the fresh Portuguese blood sausage while getting lively on Douro red wine with a bunch of Portuguese folks in Sintrá, or maybe the tiny fingernail-size fried sea horses in a Sichuanese joint in Washington's Chinatown.

[Robin Garr]

The chicken feet at Jade Palace's Dim Sum are probably a contendah, too, although it gets better when you realize that they are really just a vehicle for spicy coating and hot sauce.

For me it was a whole Marinated Goose Liver that was served in the center of a salad I had in the Basque region of France. It was at a private home and I certainly didn't ask what it was until I had eaten it, it really was pretty good. Of course I've also eaten dog without knowing it at a Korean restaurant in Europe one time, again without knowing it first.

Bull penis, chicken ovaries at a yakitori place in New York.

Roasted grasshoppers in Oaxaca.

Mole rat soup. Dried shredded mudpuppy salamander in sauce, both in Rwanda (not the same meal). All that stuff was perfectly fine.

Fried clams with bellies on a childhood trip to Connecticut remains the most personally upsetting. I cant take chitlins or pork bung -- had a pork bung dish at Peking City Bistro that was a bit too fragrant for me.

I think it was a Bourdain or Zimmern show where they were drinking water buffalo bile. That seemed like the worst possible food to me.

[Robin Garr]

... they were drinking water buffalo bile. That seemed like the worst possible food to me.

Yeah, I'm having a little trouble wrapping my mind around that, Iggy.

duck fries.jpg

Duck Testicles - they are on the skewer

duck fries.jpg

Duck Testicles - they are on the skewer

Somehow I find the thought of the testicles being on the skewer worse than the thought of just eating them (which I've done)!

BTW, some things like sea anemonie (sp?) (at Empress of China!) and poisonous snake soup (in Singapore) are wonderful.

On a trip to Korea, I ate freshly chopped live squid. It was all still writhing on the plate.


The best part was grabbing a writhing tentacle with my chop sticks and having it adhere to the plate with it's suction cups. You have to keep pulling the stretching tentacle longer and longer until it finally snaps loose. It was doused with toasted sesame oil (I think), so that's a bit of a tricky maneuver.


As you might imagine, it was chewy and still writhing on the way down.


More soju please!

Growing up in North Dakota it isn't strange to me, but I suppose many would think that eating Lutefisk is strange. Lutefisk is made from dry whitefish (usually cod) preserved in lye. Lutefisk literally means "Lye fish."

Garrison Kellor descirbes it thus: "Lutefisk is cod that has been dried in a lye solution. It looks like the desiccated cadavers of squirrels run over by trucks, but after it is soaked and reconstituted and the lye is washed out and it's cooked, it looks more fish-related, though with lutefisk, the window of success is small. It can be tasty, but the statistics aren't on your side. It is the hereditary delicacy of Swedes and Norwegians who serve it around the holidays, in memory of their ancestors, who ate it because they were poor. Most lutefisk is not edible by normal people. It is reminiscent of the afterbirth of a dog or the world's largest chunk of phlegm."

Once I had some Ham & MotherF***ers, although I'm not sure that qualifies as food. After that first taste, I'd rather eat the stale cigarettes that came with them.

[Robin Garr]

Once I had some Ham & MotherF***ers, although I'm not sure that qualifies as food. After that first taste, I'd rather eat the stale cigarettes that came with them.

Just guessing, is that something like the Baby Boom's version of MREs? Or the Greatest Generation's C-rats? I missed out on those delicacies in the Air Farce.

Just guessing, is that something like the Baby Boom's version of MREs? Or the Greatest Generation's C-rats? I missed out on those delicacies in the Air Farce.

Good guess for a "bus driver".
We called 'em C rats although I think they were officially were called something else by the time I got to enjoy them. MREs came much later. The Ham & M-Fers were a particularly nasty variety of the C rats which rightly deserved their name. Plus, it was bad luck to call them anything else.

Sea slug. It was for Chinese New Year at the Chinese restaurant in PlainView. (The name escapes me now.) the slug itself was about the size of a small foot and the texture of large hunk of beef fat.

Raw sliced Sea Cucumber at a sushi extravaganza in NYC. Horrid, snotty pieces of goo.
Boiled land slugs at a Beijing street market- meh.
Fried Scorpion at same market- lots of crunch, not much flavor, bragging rights.
Sichuan Duck Tongues in NYC. Not much meat, big piece of cartilage in center, bragging rights.
Lamb Tripe Ragout at a food festival a couple months ago. Wouldn't have tried it if I knew what it was- ate the entire plate and wanted more. Also lamb tongue the next day- oh so intensely lamby and not in a good way.
Now I want to try Sea Horse, damn you Robin!