- Feeling hungry? Don’t worry, you won’t be for long.
A while back, we wrote about the new internet fad of eating rotten meat to get high. While this is only a fad – at least we hope so – people do actually eat some pretty gross things.
Now whether or not a food is disgusting depends completely on how you view it. Culture influences our tastes, after all, so not all of these dishes might seem all that weird to some people.
But most of the ones we collected here are kind of gross.
1) Rocky Mountain Oysters
Let’s start our food journey in the good ol’ US of A. There’s more to America than just apple pie and hamburgers, you know?
The name “Rocky Mountain oysters” is a bit misleading, since the dish doesn’t contain any seafood whatsoever. Instead, its main ingredient is bull testicles.
The testicles are skinned and pounded flat. They get a nice coating of flour, salt, and pepper, before being deep-fried and served.
Young bulls are often castrated for veterinary reasons, so Rocky Mountain oysters probably came around when someone wondered whether the surplus of severed balls was edible. Today, several towns in the U.S. hold testicle festivals, events centering entirely around the consumption of these… Oysters.
2) Hákarl
Hákarl is the national dish of Iceland. Essentially, it’s Greenland shark that’s been left to rot in the ground for several months.
You see, Greenland shark flesh has so much urea in it that it’s actually poisonous. However, the Icelandic people came up with an ingenious way of making the shark “edible.”
They gut and behead the shark, before burying it in a shallow grave. After fermenting for four months, the shark is cut up and hung to dry for a few months more before being ready serve.
Hákarl is often described as one of the most disgusting foods on the planet. Many famous chefs – including Gordon Ramsay and Anthony Bourdain – have barely taken a bite of it before spitting it out and refusing to ever touch it again.
3) Balut
Let’s hop on over to Asia, to the Philippines to be precise. Here we find balut – fertilized duck eggs with a partially developed embryo inside.
The eggs are allowed to incubate for 14-21 days before collecting. Then, they are boiled or steamed, before being served, usually with some kind of a sauce fitting local tastes.
Depending on how long the egg incubated, the embryo inside may resemble a baby duck. In some eggs, they have already developed bones, which will be “firm but tender” after cooking.
Balut connoisseurs usually eat the contents of the egg straight out of the shell. For all the grossness, they are actually more nutritious than regular chicken eggs. Must be all the baby duck.
4) Milt
Now, this author comes from a region where milt is local delicacy, so I don’t find this one particularly weird. That said, I’m sure some of you dear readers might be gagging at the idea of eating this stuff.
So, what is milt? Basically, it’s fish sperm. Female fish produce roe – like caviar – which male fish fertilize with milt.
The word can also refer to the sperm sacs of the male fish. Milt is actually pretty popular – it’s consumed everywhere from Japan and Korea to Russia, the Nordic countries, and the UK.
People generally eat milt either fried or raw. So how about it? Care for some lightly fried fish sperm?
5) Century Eggs
Let’s go back to Asia for a bit for some more eggs. This time, we’re headed to China to try some century eggs.
Chicken, duck, or quail eggs are places into a mixture of clay, ash, salt, quicklime, and rice hulls. After curing for a few months in this special sauce, the eggs come out looking pretty funky.
The egg yolk will turn into a greenish-gray mass, while the white becomes a brown, translucent jelly. They have an intense salty flavor, thanks to a final PH of around 9 to 12.
Despite their appearance and strange preparation method, century eggs are safe to eat. They’re usually consumed as hors d’oeuvres, straight out of the shell.
6) Warthog Anus
If you’re visiting Namibian bushmen, you might be invited to try some freshly cooked warthog anus. Whether you want to accept the invitation is up to you.
To prepare this dish, a warthog is slaughtered. After gutting, the butcher pulls out the anus and the last one foot of the intestine.
The feces are squeezed out, and the intestine thrown into a fire pit. Never mind the ashes and dirt, they’re supposed to get in there.
It’s important to not cook the intestine for too long – it should be served al dente, like the finest spaghetti. After all, who doesn’t want to have some bite to their warthog anus?
Not Anthony Bourdain. He put this dish on the same would-not-eat list as hákarl.
7) Casu Martzu
We saved the best for last. Or the worst, depending on how you want to look at it.
Casu martzu – also spelled as casu marzu – is a Sardinian fermented sheep’s milk cheese. We’re using the word “fermented” liberally here, because really, the cheese enters a state of decomposition.
But wait, that’s not all. An integral part of the cheese is the maggots. That’s right, casu martzu is infested with fly larvae that you’re supposed to eat with it.
Upon consumption, the maggots might try to leap out of the cheese. Better guard your eyes. And you want the maggots alive, because if they’re dead, Sardinians will tell you that the cheese is no longer edible.
Yeah, we might question if it was edible in the first place. And others have done so too – casu martzu is illegal to manufacture and sell in the EU and the U.S.
This stuff is so disgusting that they made it illegal. Meditate on that for a while.
Despite the ban, there’s a burgeoning black market for casu martzu in Sardinia. No pesky law can stop Sardinians from enjoying their rotten, infested cheese.
(Title picture courtesy of Shardan, used under CC BY-SA 2.5 license.)
