Ever since moving out of home, I’ve lived in fairly diverse areas for the most part. But having just relocated, there’s a new restaurant nearby that has something that I just can’t wait to try.
It’s advertised as a “bionic burger”, and while it’s not pictured above the meat inside is the bit that has caught my attention. It’s basically a camel burger, which sounds pretty good for a burger: camel is high in protein and it’s a very rich meat, rather than something super lean like kangaroo. The richness means there should be more leniency for error in cooking before the patty turns into a rubber nightmare.
A bit of fat is always good for a burger patty, and I don’t have a problem eating more of the gamier meats. (I remember as a kid, my mother went to an event at a nearby Indigenous community and came back with a platter of kebabs and sausages for the family: rabbit, crocodile and kangaroo. It took ages before I had kangaroo rare, but I remember loving crocodile as a kid.)
But as far as strange foods go, different meats doesn’t really qualify as weird in the slightest. It’s not like it’s pigs blood, sheep’s brains, or the more unusual, smellier innards available.
So I’ve been thinking: what’s the strangest food you’ve ever eaten, and would you recommend it to others? And what strange foods do you enjoy that you think are a bit underrated?
Comments
38 responses to “What’s The Strangest Thing You’ve Ever Eaten?”
I had chocolate with a durian cream/gooey centre and gagged a lot in the sink.
The most awesome was probably when I got the local Hungry Jacks staff to make an angry whopper but replace the bun with two krispy kreme donuts I provided.
Durian’s awesome. Tastes a bit like you’re eating strawberries in an open sewer 🙂
possum, dugong, turtle and probably the worst would be monkey brains
Are you Indiana Jones?
haha nah dont wear akubras, have just travelled alot
Hmm tough question since i will literally eat anything that is considered food at least once, done the usual brains, liver, kidney, bugs, worms….. probably a century egg would be the weirdest but at the same time… goanna, snake, pigeon…. as much as people will have a cry i’d love to try dog.
Steamed dog is pretty good. You can definitely taste the ‘dog’ though, which could be distressing for someone who is used to the doggy smell coming from pets.
I also once had steamed dog’s blood in a kind of dog’s intestine canneloni. It was a bit revolting to be honest.
I haven’t tried barbecued dog yet. I saw some hanging up beside barbecued cats (which I’d also like to try) when we last visited my in-laws.
Thats how i describe eating turtle to people, you can taste the “turtleness”, its almost the smell of the oils it excretes is the most taste you get but damn if it aint delicious.
according to my parents, a moth.
by choice? i dunno. there’s probably some strange shit in pies, but i dont think thats what youre asking…
real answer is probably deep-fried crickets at some food festival a few years ago.
Crickets are delicious. And cost basically nothing when you’re travelling through Asia
I’ve tried enough stuff that I’ve lost all concept of what would be considered ‘strange’ to eat.
What was the thing you ate that most made you want to gag or vomit?
I have a taste / texture aversion to cooked fish stemming from a very bad experience as a small child (fished up a fish and was forced to clobber it to death then we cooked and ate it and it tasted horrible) and it’s taken me a long time to get over that. Even now I struggle a bit.
Aside from that, I can’t do durian. I’m not sure if it’s a lack of taste receptors or too many of them but I’m one of the people for whom it tastes like sugary puke mixed with raw sewage.
Not quite on topic, but I did once bite into a Big Mac only to find I was chewing on a used band-aid. To this day I can still taste it…
The band aid? Or the Big Mac?
I had a steak once, which in itself wasn’t strange, but for the fact it was cooked in coffee. Strange combination! But it worked :).
Bat curry (Civet de chauve souris). It’s a “traditional” dish in my cultural (Seychellois) heritage so I figured I had to try. It was not worth trying.
Yeah I can imagine, but it’s considered a delicacy apparently!?
That’s what they say. :S
However considering that all my relatives who were at the restaurant – 4 living generations of Seychellois – weren’t fans of it either… I don’t know.
When I was at a conference in Beijin, the attendees and I had Peking Duck.
Don’t get me wrong, it was (and still is) a wonderful and tasty dish and am honoured to have had the chance to partake in it.
I list it here as, honestly, besides the bill and the bones there wasn’t a part of the duck we didn’t eat.
I lived in South Korea for a few years during the 2000’s and I ate some fairly weird stuff. The weirdest would have to be tiny live baby octopus, it was considered quite the delicacy. They came out on a platter and you put you chopsticks on them, they stuck on, you dipped in sauce and ate them…very weird.
Most horrible thing I ate there was stingray wings….it tasted like ammonia..
The strangest thing I had in Korea was raw snot fish. A long, grey monstrosity that streamed mucous from every pore of its body. That and sea poo. Crustaceans of some sort that look like freshly caught penises.
I remember the octopus too. The trick is in the sauce, as it makes the tentacles contract long enough to swallow them.
I’m “game” to give anything a go.
Durian Fruit, Fried Grasshoppers and wood larvae in Thailand.
Moose and Reindeer in Northern Europe
Camel, Bison, Crocodile, Wallaby, Kangaroo, Ostrich in Australia.
Had the chance to try Bear and Whale in Northern Europe. Turned it down due to the cost and regretted it ever since.
I’ve eaten a coconut crab when we were in Guam:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_crab
They also served bats but we didn’t order them.
I thought I knew what a coconut crab was, and after clicking on the link I was right. Those things scare the shit out of me
I tried the civet poop coffee. It made for some pretty decent coffee, but perhaps not to the extent that it really justified the convoluted origin.
Can’t say I’ve tried anything truly strange, but a friend of mine once told me the story of when she ate a cow’s placenta. I can’t remember where though.
I’ve never tried camel but alpaca burgers are awesome. It’s not the strangest meat one could try but it’s damn good!
Wow, I feel like I have lived such a sheltered life reading the responses here.
I suppose I haven’t traveled much in Asia though (outside of Singapore) which is where most of the people are saying they ate “strange” things.
Really the strangest food I have eaten would be squid-ink pasta or blood sausage.
I have had quail and kangaroo before as well. None of these things are really “strange though”.
Mealworms, crickets, frogs, snails, jellyfish, chicken feet.. I drew the line at eating chicken embryo though. To be fair, most of the foods listed above (and by me) are only “weird” to a western palette
I ate a taco of cow eyeball in Mexico City a few months back. People seem to find that weirder than all the insects and snake parts and weird sea creatures I’ve eaten for some reason. It was rubbery and flavourless but it came with this unreal avocado and habanero salsa. A little earlier that day I ate a couple of scorpions with worm salt and a squeeze of lime. Crunchy. That’s about the nicest thing I can say about them.
A friend tried to order a dish called ‘Advanced Goat farming’ in Vietnam and the waitress refused to take the order. Turns out it’s just a bowl of Goat blood. He was pretty glad the Waitress refused.
Hahahaha that is unreal. I remember seeing “goat breuams” on a menu at a bbq place in Nha Trang. I ordered it just to see what it was but they were fresh out.
Fertilised chicken eggs (complete with foetus), and it wasn’t bad: just tasted like a super salty egg so I went back for a second.
My local friend didn’t eat the one she was served though because it had “too much neck”.
Bush oysters i.e. bulls balls
I’m far from the diet diversity among Kotaku readers for sure looking at all these strange foods, but figured I may as well chime in. Two things come to mind for me.
Haggis – my brother-in-law is of Scottish origin, when he came out to Australia to get married, he brought with him some traditional Haggis to share with the family. At the table of 20, I was the only one game enough to give it a try. Was like really rich mince and delicious with mash, went back for thirds.
Extreme Chilli – while its getting more common these days that people have Bhut Jolokia/Ghost Chilli or Trinidad Scorpion sauces and seasonings, I’ll often chop up the whole fruit and have it with my dinner.
Chinese heritage, was brought up eating century eggs, chicken feet, all sorts of offal. A lot of my friends consider a lot of those yum cha dishes to be off-limits and gross, which just means there’s more for me.
At a family birthday dinner recently there was a plate of duck tongues. That was new to me. They were pretty inoffensive, had the texture of well-cooked calamari but with a little bone in them. Have also had sea cucumber which I won’t be going back for any time soon, as the texture doesn’t sit well with me.
I like to think I’m game to try everything once, with the caveat that it’s gotta be dead (hate the idea of something trying to escape my mouth) and there’s not a significant chance of it making me ill or killing me.
I often see people mentioning cattle organs and offal but rarely hear about something that is a traditional food where I come from: cow tongue. Once you peel the thick, rubbery exterior, you are left with one of the tenderest, sweetest meats of the animal. Cooked in a white wine sauce, it is one of the tastiest things I’ve ever eaten.