Food & Drink
Weird Meals From Around the World
posted in Food & Drink . posted by M Kepnes on August 21, 2008 . 11 Comments
There’s a lot of good food in the world and there’s a lot of bad food. Then there’s the weird and bizarre food. Stuff so strange, so odd colored, from such odd animals, you’ll wonder how anyone can eat this? Who would even think of making this? Well, if you’re looking to try a local delicacy that’s unique, bizarre, and exotic, look no further than these five dishes:
Haggis
Haggis is the traditional dish of Scotland. There are many recipes but most contain sheep’s ‘pluck’ (heart, liver and lungs), onion, oatmeal, spices, and salt. After this is all mixed together, the dish is stuffed inside the sheep’s stomach and cooked for three hours. Delicious!

Maggot Cheese
This cheese from Sardinia, Italy is known locally as “casu marzu.” It’s is famous for the cheese fly larvae found inside. The cheese goes beyond the normal fermentation process to near decomposition, a result of the digestive action of the larvae. The insects are introduced into the cheese in order to get it to this stage. Some people clear the larvae before eating but some enjoy this cheese with a side of larvae. Seconds anyone?

Bird’s Nest Soup
This soup is a considered a delicacy in China. Built using the nests of cave swifts, this soup uses the bird’s saliva to give it its texture. The nests are rich in nutrients and believed to help digestion, sexual prowess, alleviating asthma, increasing concentration, and boosting the immune system. Bird’s nest soup is a real health panacea. Who knew bird saliva could be so healthy? Forget Chicken Noodle Soup, Bird’s Nest Soup is the new “it” dish for what ails you.

Thousand Year Eggs
Thousand-year eggs are another Chinese dish made by preserving duck or chicken eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice straw for several weeks to several months. After this is completed, the yolk becomes a dark green substance with a strong sulfur and ammonia smell while the egg white becomes dark brown and jelly-like. This dish is considered a delicacy and is usually found at special events, such as weddings.

Muktuk
Muktuk is a traditional Eskimo dish of frozen whale skin and fat. Usually made from the skin and blubber of the Bowhead Whale, this dish is eaten raw. However, it is occasionally diced, breaded, deep fried or sometimes pickled. Conservation laws limit the number of whales that can be caught each year, but that doesn’t mean this dish is expensive. It can be found all over Alaska and is a food for the true adventurer.

So next time you are looking for something different on your plate, try one of these bizarre foods.
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11 Comments for "Weird Meals From Around the World"
I have tried bird’s nest and thousand yrs eggs..the birds’ nest is actually nice but very expensive. the 1000 yrs eggs hmmm .. i am not sure that i like it .. it’s ok to eat but not tasty.. i don’t think it has a lot of flavour.
I don’t think it’s a thousand years egg..
haven’t heard of that., i think that s a century egg. It is a hundred years and not thousand, that is why it is called century egg.
Similarly to Haggis, a Hungarian speciality called disznósajt (brawn, pork-cheese), is made of spiced chitterlings of pig and stuffed into pig’s stomach.
yea, that’s a CENTURY EGG. we have it here in Asia. not a thousand years egg.
It’s eeeeeeeeeeeeew! Dat’s it. Cnt imagine
Haggis doesn’t look bad at all..
After all heart and liver are tasty (heart soup and cooked liver). Don’t know about the lungs, but I suppose they taste similar to liver.
And cooking in stomach is no different from the way meat is sometimes cooked in a skin (kind of like cooking underpressure).
I think old egg is something I’d avoid. But comment before sttaes it is edible O_o ..
Thousand Year Eggs and Century Eggs/Hundred Year Eggs are the same thing. The people of different places just call it by different names.
The first photo looks SOOOO DISGUSTING!! I feel like I wanna throw up everything I’ve eaten in my life…
I can’t stand liver (from a genetic standpoint, it’s even dangerous to me), but normal sausage is *always* made in the (cleaned) intestines of an animal. So using the stomach is just the natural way to go if you want something round.
There’s a similar dish to haggis in Bavaria, called Pressack (or Presskopf). Which comes in different variations, and can be compared to cold cuts (it’s eaten cold).
How could anybody ever eat tha casu marzu that is one of the most disgusting things ive ever heard of! Why would anybody eat “maggots” that even gives me the creeps!!
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