The world is full of unusual dishes that might seem strange to some people.
Ordinary food from one part of the world may seem disgusting to people on another continent
and dishes that some people eat everyday can seem crazy or just inedible to others.
Of course, the people thinking they’re crazy might not be wrong, since some of the food
I’m about to show you can quite literally kill you.
Are you brave enough to try these curious bites?
Well let's find out!
LIVE OCTOPUS Octopus is a staple on a lot of menus - like
calamari but tastier.
However the South Koreans do it slightly differently: they like their octopus alive.
That alone sounds like a horror show, and you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that,
because it can definitely kill you.
The powerful octopus suckers can get stuck to the inside of your throat and block your
airway until you suffocate to death.
People still do it though, even famously on camera in the Korean film Oldboy.
However, other people who have tried it on camera didn’t do it quite as elegantly as
the actor in that film - it’s not as easy as it looks, as this Chinese blogger found
out during a live stream.
Take a look!
FUGU When you think of food, you'll almost never
think of the word deadly, but you might need to add that word to the list if you’re visiting
Japan.
Fugu is an expensive delicacy at the top restaurants in Tokyo and it can kill you almost instantly.
It’s actually puffer fish which contains life-threatening Tetrodotoxin poison.
There is no antidote.
When eating this fish, you are putting your life in the hands of a specially trained chef
- the brain, eyes, skin, and even the highly toxic liver are cautiously removed by chefs.
If even a tiny piece of a deadly organ is left behind, let’s just say it won’t be
a very pleasant experience.
It must be pretty delicious to be worth that risk.
FESEEKH Risking your life for something delicious
is one thing, but what about risking your life for something rotting?
Well every year in Spring, the Egyptian ministry of health issues a warning against the traditional
Egyptian delicacy called Feseekh, but people keep eating it anyway.
So what is this irresistible dish?
Stinking fermented fish.
The tradition dates back thousands of years to the days of the Pharos.
These days however the fermentation process is meant to be controlled more carefully,
but the dish is often prepared incorrectly and the mullet fish end up rotting and that’s
when they get dangerous.
It seems you can’t tell the difference between correctly prepared Feseekh and rotten fish,
because loads of people eat the wrong one every year and get incredibly sick - the rotting
fish gives you botulism poisoning, which is just as terrible as it sounds.
The illness causes the symptoms you would expect from eating rotten fish - like cramps
and vomiting - but it can also cause breathing problems too.
Why anyone would risk paralysis and death to eat rotten fish remains a mystery.
GIANT ISOPOD Have you ever seen a sea creature and felt
like they definitely live on the bottom of the ocean for a reason?
Giant Isopods are one of those creatures.
They look like a cross between a cockroach and a lobster but they can grow to a terrifying
size of 2 feet!
They can eerily live for years without food, but really they’re scavengers who eat all
the rotting, dead sea creatures that float down to the ocean floor.
Sound appetising?
Well, despite what you just heard, Japanese people have decided they’re worth eating
and have been munching down on these creepy creatures for years now.
It’s not a very common dish, but even one person eating these sea cockroaches seems
like too many, especially when you hear that to make the sea bugs edible, you need to remove
their stomach which is full of rotting sea flesh that they found on the seafloor and
it apparently smells absolutely revolting.
Some say it tastes like crab or prawn, while others say it’s more like chicken, but none
of that makes it sound worth while eating something that looks like it comes out of
a horror movie.
CASU MARZU If you think you have a more sophisticated
taste, and plain old deep fried insects aren’t enough with you, why not pair them with cheese?
But be warned, this isn’t your ordinary cheese, infact, it’s surprisingly dangerous.
It comes from Sardinia in Italy and it’s called Casu Marzu, literally meaning rotten
cheese, but it’s so much worse than you think.
It’s actually pecorino filled with maggots, and it’s been banned due to its health risks.
The Italians say it’s worth it, it's apparently delicious, but what you’re actually eating
is the maggot excrement after they’ve eaten the rotting cheese, and that’s what gives
it its distinctive flavour and soft texture.
As if that’s not disgusting enough, the cheese needs to be eaten with the live maggots
still wriggling around inside it, as dead maggots are supposedly a sign that the cheese
is no longer safe to eat.
However even with live maggots, the cheese comes with some safety tips: firstly, it should
be eaten with your eyes closed, not to avoid the sight of writhing maggots going into your
mouth, but because when the maggots are startled, they can jump into your eyes.
Secondly, it’s important to chew thoroughly, because if you don’t kill every maggot by
mushing them up between your teeth, they can live inside you and rip holes through your
insides.
I personally think I’ll give this one a skip…
STARGAZY PIE We all know you eat with your eyes, but what
about when your food has eyes looking back at you.
In a village called Mousehole, in England, their weird holiday dish called Stargazy Pie
does just that.
It’s just a fish pie, which shouldn’t really be strange at all, except that they
make it with the fish heads and tails poking out of the crust.
It’s been placed by the New York Daily News as one of the most disgusting things people
can eat.
Ranking it ninth between dried lizards and snake whisky.
Today the dish is prepared with 7 types of fish, while the stuffing consists of peeled
fish, potatoes, bacon, boiled eggs, onions and herbs.
If fish heads sticking out of your meal sounds fighting, maybe a regular pie will suit you
better...
SHIPWORMS If the thought of wriggling worms can put
you off your dinner, this may not be the dish for you.
Tamilok is a Filipino delicacy which makes it sound deceptively delicious until you find
out it’s other name that it goes by: shipworms.
These jiggly little creatures are found in rotting wood and die as soon as they’re
exposed to the air and sun, which makes them sound uncomfortably alien.
They’re not aliens though, but they aren’t worms either - they’re molluscs, so more
like a slug than a worm.
Once harvested from their decaying nests, they have to be prepared before you can eat
them, so their heads and - you might be surprised to hear this word when talking about a worm,
but - their feet are ripped off and their insides are squeezed out like a tube of toothpaste.
Then they’re nice and clean so they’re served raw - It’s basically a spicy, water-based
slug-noodle soup, and it’s said to taste like slimy oysters or salty jelly.
FRIED INSECTS If sea bugs aren’t your thing, you might
want to try something a little more recognisable…
You might not think you can eat insects, but it turns out you can have a bite of just about
any of them, and fried insects are actually a street-food favourite in some parts of Asia
and they’re very popular with tourists.
They’re also a great source of protein, but I doubt that will convince you to give
these creepy crawlies a try.
But even if you’re not going to taste them yourself, you’re almost certainly still
interested in what they’re like but that’s not an easy answer because each type of insect
is unique - and there are a lot of them.
It seems texture is just as important as taste: caterpillars are soft and are sort of like
eggs, while some other kinds of worms, like bamboo worms, are crunchy like popcorn, while
crickets are described as super crunchy bits of chicken.
The list of things to try is seemingly endless - grasshoppers, small green frogs, cockroaches,
or more expensive creatures like tarantulas and giant forest scorpions, none of which
seem like they would go down well at a party.
JELLIED EELS As it turns out, England likes doing weird
things with fish.
Perhaps the most traditional dish in London is jellied eels.
Unbelievably, it’s exactly what it sounds like - eels in jelly.
Eels are weird to begin with, slippery and wriggly creatures, and to chop them up and
put them in jelly doesn’t sound particularly appealing.
It became popular back in the 18th Century, when the River Thames which runs through London
was just crawling with eels.
They were cheap and easy to catch, so they ate them all the time.
The jelly occurs on its own when you boil the eels in water and vinegar which is usually
flavoured with lemon and nutmeg, and then leave it to get cold, which is how it’s
meant to be eaten.
It’s popularity is declining though, but I’ll leave it to you to decide why.
DEEP FRIED MAPLE LEAVES This is a dish you can try in the Japanese
city of Osaka, located on the Honshu island.
Japanese people have been eating fallen maple leaves as a treat since the 1300s, and this
doesn’t come as a surprise since the Japanese say that everything that's deep fried tastes
much better, so why not deep fry a maple leaf?
One city in particular called Minoh, seems to house the world’s pro leaf fryers, and
their process is quite intensive - they collect huge amounts of particular types of maple
leaves, but not those from branches, only the ones that have already fallen, claiming
the yellow ones are the best, then they’re thoroughly washed a salted in barrels for
a year to preserve them.
Then they dust off the salt the following season, rinse their leaves, dip each one in
a sweetened tempura batter and deep fry them, one by one, all by hand and with an amazing
amount of attention given to each leaf.
The result is a delicate and very pretty sweet bite made with something you would normally
treat as garden rubble.