Alo! This week’s Cultural Tidbits Monday post will be a tibit alright, but you’ll learn something new still by Traveling Through Strange Food photos from around the world. Let’s see if you are left hungry or nauseated by the end of it 😉
Balut: Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines
Balut! (Photo: chadedwardus, Flickr)
Boiled, nearly-fully-developed chicken or duck embryo eaten right from the shell — that’s Balut for you! It is common street food in the Asian countries of Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Strange food to some (especially animal lovers), but just like regular eggs to others. What’s your take?
Thousand-Year Eggs: China
Thousand-year-old duck egg (Photo: Laughlin Elkind, Flickr)
Speaking of eggs, what about preserving those duck and chicken ones, with a mix of lime, salt, rice straw in clay and ash, then wait several months? Not a thousand-year process alright, but the penetrating ammonia-sulfuric smell will make you think they were kept underground for that long before putting them on your plate. Yay or nay in your book?
Fried beetles: Thailand
“Like beetles for a snack? Fried?” (PlanetStar, Flickr)
Not that strange food to some, but strange enough to me. A crunchy protein snack that you may find in Khao San Road…one I don’t think I’ll ever be able to try. Would you try these in Bangkok?
Casu Marzu: Sardinia, Italy
The Maggot Cheese in all its glory (Photo: Carol Spears, Wiki Commons)
Fancy some fermented cheese and larvae? Then head to Sardinia and eat some of their Casu Marzu (also known as MAGGOT Cheese)! Naturally, this delicacy tops my small Travel Through Strange Food list. The insect larvae is added to the cheese in order to promote fermentation, to such a level that it is borderline decomposed. Eat it with the larvae, which can jump at you when biting into it, or simply remove in order to enjoy the strong cheese without the crunch. Yikes…!
How about hakarl
Ha! I already talked about Icelandic food – but hakar was too strange for me to write about XD I guess I should have included it here as well 😉 good catch!
annnnd there goes my appetite lol
haha right? although some of it is quite tasty!
A list of things you won’t find me eating for sure. Although I DID eat a grasshopper taco in Mexico once, and I ate a beatle in Ecuador. Not going to happen. Blech!
aww, you didn’t like them? 😉 haha! The iguana was delicious though, I promise! Just like chicken wings 😀
Some on the list I would try, some not so much. I guess everyone has their cultural tastes that they carry. Much a learned behavior I guess.
I don’t think I could bring myself to eat any of these. Maybe the beetles. I only strange thing I had was some snake whiskey in Laos–a drink with a large cobra preserved in it. It was said to give you the strength of a cobra if you drink it. Tasted kind of scaly.
COBRA WHISKEY!? Yikes! I don’t know if I could take any of those either! :S whoops…
Thousand year eggs aren’t as weird as you’d think- I usually forget about it when I list the unique foods I’ve eaten. I think my strangest (and the one that grosses people out the most) to date, are fish balls. Not as in ground up fish, the organ.
Really!? Idk, but something about the smell of ammonia and sulfur make me nauseated just thinking about it…! But hey, if you say so 😉 I’ve never had them near me, so can’t really give a genuine review 😉 and fish balls? Ahh, I saw testicles are widely eaten when traveling the Middle East and living there for nearly 2 years. Never tried them, but my friends say they aren’t that bad. What made the fish balls so bad btw? 😉