When you start a taste bud discovery of what can become fascinating dishes for a modernized American palate, the world is a diversified place.
As strange as some of the dishes can be, many have profound ethnic backgrounds, some are the dishes of popular festivals, and royal dinners.
I meant no offense to readers who eat this food regularly this list is just for fun because after all, food is food.
What we may think as delicacy might be a disaster to our primate counterparts.
Why people eat this type of food?
As we all can understand that before the grocery store concept or domestication of animals, prehistoric humans had to either farm or hunt their favorite foods.
As the scarcity of the animals increased, the prehistoric dishes diversified and integrated into the culture.
Some cultures changed with time, while some cultures preferred to stay with their traditional “tasty cuisine.”
Here we will list down some weird foods that people actually eat, and you may know some of them from the show, bizarre foods with Andrew Zimmern.
Take this list lightly and enjoy eating for a foodie adventure, Bon appétit!
These are the top 10 gross foods around the world:
10. Cockroach Soup
Finding a cockroach even nearby your takeaway meal might make you furious, let alone finding in your food.
But, some people might find it tasty, as gross, it may seem Cockroach soup is probably the most disgusting food in the world to eat.
While you may feel disappointed to get a dead cockroach in your soup, some individuals consider it healthy and pay it to be included in the soup specifically.
Where you may find it?
Some countries like Madagascar, Southeast Asian countries and China
How does it taste?
It leaves a particular mild taste which I cannot describe in soup texture-wise you may feel like deep-fried burnt french fries that are too crispy if eaten immediately
9. Head cheese
It’s not simple to live as a peasant in the middle ages as you get leftover pieces of meat for dinner.
So what to do when the head of a goat, sheep, or pig is all you can have?
Make cheese with it! Head cheese is not a block of actual cheese.
It is a “food soup” produced of all the animal face parts that nobody wishes to consume and sometimes including feet.
Delicious isn’t it? A pickled version of Head cheese with vinegar is known as souse.
Where you may find it?
Everywhere, It’s middle-age peasant’s dish from Europe.
If local meat groceries can provide you the ingredients, you can make your own.
The only difference is that most people (almost none) eats them today.
How does it taste?
Varies in texture, depends on what part you got. Overall it has a strong cattle smell or taste.
8. Cod Milt or Cod sperm sacs
Cod Milt, or Cod sperm sacks, also known in Japanese as ‘shirako,’ may seem frightening and uncomfortable, but in Japan, this reproductive organ is a cherished delicacy.
The squeamish adventurers will find it difficult to get past the strange-looking shape of milt, which looks a little like the brains of pigs, but if they do, they will be greatly rewarded for their leap of faith.
Where you may find it?
Japan and East Asia.
How does it taste?
Cod milt has a buttery, custard-like texture and taste, with a subtle sweetness to it.
7. Rat meat
Rat meat is one of the gross foods that is a dietary foodstuff in others, while prohibited in some societies.
Taboos include concerns about a disease or spiritual prohibition, but in many locations, people have incorporated this disgusting food into local diets.
This one is interesting:
If you’re not satisfied with eating rats, why not try eating after rat leftovers?
In India, there is a rat temple of Karni Devi, and people from all over the world go to meet millions of living pet rats, believed to be adored ones’ reincarnations.
Worshippers believe that the rats in the property are the goddess to whom they devote the temple.
Before entering the temple, people have to take off their shoes and carry some milk or baked goods for sharing with rats.
It’s believed as a blessing from the goddess herself if a rat eats alongside with worshippers.
And don’t dare to harm any of these creatures because the temple has its punishment for harming them.
Ironically, the workers and all who lived around the temple survived the Black Plague, and to date, there are no recorded cases of humans contracting a disease from the temple rats.
Hindus believe that their rodent dwellers have protected their property against alien rats carrying the lethal fleas.
Must visit once.
Where you may find rat meat?
China, North Korea, and Southeast Asia
How does it taste?
People who have tried it say it tastes like chicken
6. Pacific Geoduck
Geoducks are weird creatures at the bottom of deep ocean water burrowing in the sand.
They develop up like a tree so that their bodies can reach the ground layer and get some food.
None of this is particularly odd, and I’m aware geoducks have a great flavor, but they’re just about something.
Perhaps it’s the term ‘Gooey Duck,’ which doesn’t sound pleasant.
Or perhaps it’s the fact that they look like they should be censored by a big black box.
It may look somewhat familiar to some naughty heads
Where you may find it?
Particularly in East Asian and Pacific cuisine
How does it taste?
It tastes like a raw clam with salty oceany taste
5. Hákarl, fermented shark
First, take a poisonous shark. Then, cure it with a particular fermentation process and hung to dry for four to five months.
After drying, cut it into strips then, you’ll get Hakarl, the most disgusting food you will ever find in artics.
The strong ammonia smell makes many first-timers gag.
Where you may find it?
Iceland
How does it taste?
The fresh shark’s acid contributes to the ammonia smell. Soft yellow hákarl from the shark’s corpse has a cheese-like texture, while yellowish stomach meat is chewier.
Those who taste it describe the flavor from fishy and gentle to strong blue cheese.
4. Casu Marzu
Casu marzu is a Sardinian cheese produced from goat’s milk, sometimes referred to as maggot cheese.
But the manner people prepare it is what causes this dish so dreadful.
Cheesemakers add the eggs of flies early in the fermentation cycle. The eggs develop and start eating for weeks.
As it breaks the fats of the cheese down, there is a unique flavor that many eaters to be “delightful” in taste.
Many individuals carefully remove the maggots at the time of consumption. Some adventurers may keep them reflecting maggots add an extra flavourful punch.
Where you may find it?
Italy and some parts of France.
How does it taste?
It has a taste like stronger blue cheese Gorgonzola with a somewhat stinky taste.
3. Balut
If someone put balut on your tray, you might believe that a hard-boiled egg is served.
That’s until you open it and spill out an intact duck’s egg on the dish.
Balut is produced when fertilized duck eggs are put in hot sunlight, regarded as a street food delicacy in several Asian nations.
The server holds the eggs up to the light after about eight days and inspected to make sure the budding embryo is ready.
The eggs are then cooked and served with a salt dash and a few lemons juice squirts.
Where you may find it?
Southeast Asia
How does balut taste?
A good balut, including the embryo, is milder in flavor, and there’s nothing to be afraid of when it comes to the embryo’s texture.
2. Gaebul (Live Spoon Worms)
Whether cooked or raw, I mention it, Koreans enjoy their seafood, live.
Spoon worms (Gaebul) are a type of marine animal that is very commonly found in Soth Korean fish markets.
Together with its supposed “turn-on” characteristics, the odd-shaped presence of spoon worms gained them the nickname of “penis fish.”
Usually consumed raw and live, Gaebul is generally sliced into bits of bite-size that keeps turning around on the tray before popping into our mouth.
Do you never know what else is there in this crazy world?
Where you may find it?
Korea
How does it taste?
It tastes like chewy saltwater (To be clear, I never tried this dish and not considering to taste it).
1. Virgin Boy Eggs
After reading about spoon fish, let me be clear this is an SFW post, don’t get frightened by the vulgar cannibalistic name of this dish.
By eggs, I mean real eggs.
A local delicacy in Dongyang, China, regular chicken or duck eggs are immersed in the urine of children under ten years of age.
Egg makers gather urine from primary school volunteer kids. Locals are willing to pay twice for these bad guys with the notion that these eggs are great for body circulation.
We can only imagine what disgusting gross foods are waiting for you on the other side of the globe.
Be ready to stand for them–they charge about twice the price of an ordinary egg.
This is also a way for young boys to ‘piss off’ adults.
Where you may find it?
Dongyang, China.
How does it taste?
According to people who have tried it mention salty-sour taste.
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