Strange food you've eaten or been offered . . .

[mightyboosh]

........tripe are something I don’t like but are eaten here

Tripe, really, in the US? Pardon my obvious ignorance but I thought tripe was just a UK thing. Not only that, I thought it was just a northern UK thing.

 

[Jcatbird]

Tripe, really, in the US? Pardon my obvious ignorance but I thought tripe was just a UK thing. Not only that, I thought it was just a northern UK thing.

Lol And I thought it was a southern US thing. I grew up where it was a common dish. Scrapple, hoe cakes, grits ,red rice, Poke Salad, dandelion greens. Very little ever went to waste. We had Day Lilly fritters, pigs feet ( yuck) Fried chicken feet and anything that could be used. I’m far less likely to eat these things these days. Streak o lean is still heavily used when cooking things like collards or black eyed peas. Ham bone is used to season in the same way.

 

[Willowy]

Tripe, really, in the US? Pardon my obvious ignorance but I thought tripe was just a UK thing. Not only that, I thought it was just a northern UK thing.

Hispanic Americans use tripe a lot. And Southerners I guess, although I didn't know that before now! There's enough demand that it's sold at Walmart and other grocery stores even around here. Not the nasty-smelling green tripe that you can buy from Hare Today for dogs, but cleaned tripe ready for menudo. What do Northern UK people make with it?

 

[Lari]

Pigs feet in China, kangaroo in Australia. Alligator. Those are my first thought as the oddest.

 

[maggiedemi]

my beloved, boiled peanuts were gross to my friend from up the coast

How do boiled peanuts differ in taste?

I had some peppers in Guatemala that were unidentified. Wow! Blazing sun hot!

Yum! Maybe Ghost Pepper or Scorpion?

 

[Jcatbird]

How do boiled peanuts differ in taste?



Yum! Maybe Ghost Pepper or Scorpion?

Not those because we knew them. Truly unidetified. We were at a small open market and all the food had been grown nearby. The person selling them may have hybridized them or perhaps they were just something that isn’t widespread. We saw other produce we did not recognize as well and the seller could not give us a name for the peppers. Just peppers. I know there are many plants that remain unnamed. The plants I was there to study were orchids and a new species was discovered around that time. (Not really new, just not yet documented)

 

[Winchester]

I've seen tripe in our meat counters at our Giant. I looked at it, shuddered, and turned away. No thank you. Same with kidneys. I've heard that steak-and-kidney pie is quite tasty. I guess it's one of those things that I'll never really know.

 

[mightyboosh]

What do Northern UK people make with it?
[/QUOTE

I tried it just once when I was a kid and thought it was horrible, otherwise I haven't really come across it since then. All I remember is that it was eaten with lots of vinegar and onions. I don't know what else folks did with it.
Like other offal stuff I think it was very much a working class thing because it was cheap and plentiful. It was one of the few foodstuffs that wasn't rationed during WW2.
Coincidentally, my dad bought a shop many years ago for his upholstery business and in the window was a big marble slab. It turned out that it used to be a tripe shop and the marble was used as a cool surface to display it on. I believe there were quite a lot of them way back when but as the years went by and people became more affluent and as other meats became cheaper, its popularity dwindled.

 

[mightyboosh]

Same with kidneys. I've heard that steak-and-kidney pie is quite tasty.

They are very popular here but I'm not keen on kidneys, bit of a weird taste for me. They are only just ok for me if they are in a steak and kidney pie.

 

[maeganj]

I work with a lot of Filipinos. So...balut is definitely one of those "you can hang with us" food items. Honestly it isn't that bad but I don't really crave it. Every once in awhile I'll get one in the mail as a joke. It never goes to waste but it irritates my husband.
So balut and dinuguan are probably the most revolting sounding things I've eaten.

 

[Xraystyle]

There's a food here called bundaegi. It comes in cans and is popular as a drinking snack. It's silkworms. I have never personally had it. And I never plan on having it unless someone offers me a bunch of money. lol.

Since I don't eat a lot of meat, I would not be considered an adventurous eater.

Probably the strangest/most dangerous thing I've been offered and consumed was Mongolian milk tea, Suutei tsai. It is actually pretty tasty. Milk, tea, and salt. I was offered it at the yurt of a nomadic family I stayed with for the night and I only say it was strange because it was left out at room temperature and because the family had cows, the flies that hung around had also most likely been hanging around the copious amounts of cowpies outside.

Funny enough however, I did get food poisoning on my trip to MOngolia but I think it was from a restaurant in the city rather than the things I ate out on the Steppe.

 

[maggiedemi]

I have a bottle of Banana Ketchup! It's really good. It doesn't taste too different from regular ketchup.

 

[Willowy]

There's a food here called bundaegi. It comes in cans and is popular as a drinking snack. It's silkworms. I have never personally had it.

My brother's girlfriend is Laotian. She buys those at the Asian grocery, and my brother and the baby shovel them down. So I guess they must be pretty good, because my brother isn't super adventurous when it comes to food. He has reasonably broad horizens, since we grew up overseas, but not that broad.

 

[MoonstoneWolf]

I like shark, bison meat, deer, squirrel, rabbit. Never had rattlesnake (my cousins grew up in Texas and said that rattlesnake was delicious. Had turtle soup and frog legs growing up that Grandpa would get. No one fixed them as good as Grandma did. Oh and I also had pork brains an elderly German lady would fix with cream gravy when I was a child.

 

[Katie M]

When I lived in Italy, my fourth grade class went on a field trip to a seafood market in Pozzuoli. While we didn't eat anything there (we had brought bag lunches), we were offered a live octopus to eat later. Thankfully, my teacher politely declined.

 

[strider rose]

the worst thing that i have tried was goat meat in old mexico ...... never again will i eat that

 

[klunick]

Local churches around me offer dinners of oysters and bull's balls. Never had them and never will.

 

[Willowy]

Do they actually serve real oysters with the "Rocky Mountain oysters"? Lol, that's kinda funny.

One restaurant around here serves Rocky Mountain oysters but I've never tried them and don't think I'm gonna start.

 

[Kat0121]

How do boiled peanuts differ in taste?

They are raw peanuts boiled in the shell usually in a crock pot with various seasonings and can be spicy or mild depending on where you get them. I prefer spicy. The flavor/ texture of the peanut is similar to that of a cooked bean. Peanuts are legumes after all. I love them.

 

[Willowy]

My mom tried boiled peanuts on a trip to Louisiana a couple years ago. Since then she makes them in her Instant Pot all the time. They're pretty good!