Disgusting foods that other cultures actually love By Justin Jones  [2 more lists]

Vietnam and the Philippines

Everyone loves a good boiled egg for breakfast. Crack and peel the shell, give it a sprinkling of salt and pepper to taste, and dig in to that familiar and delicious taste and consistency. But what if it was a duck egg instead of chicken? And what if inside that creamy yellow yolk, there was a half-formed duck fetus, complete with fledgling feathers and beak? This sounds like a joke, like a hoax, like the time that woman supposedly found a human finger in her bowl of chili from Wendy’s. Unfortunately, this terrible creation is a real meal. If I were to ever eat a monstrosity like this, I like to think that I’d cut out your own tongue and bash my head repeatedly in an attempt to disremember the traumatic event. In Vietnam or the Philippines, this freak of embryonic nature is actually a common street food known as Balut.

I grew up on a sort of hobby farm, and we had our own chickens and fresh eggs. Occasionally, an egg would sit in the coop a few days too long and when I’d crack it into the pan on a sunny Sunday morning, a small embryonic chicken would gloomp out of the shell and lie there sizzling in its own amniotic fluid. This experience was always gross, and a little bit sad, but I never, NEVER thought about eating the damn thing!

I can only imagine the same thing happening to a young Vietnamese boy on his farm, and at first sight of that sad little malformed fowl fetus, he must have jumped into the air laughing and clasping his hands together with glee. Oh, what a treat! Lets boil the rest of them and sell them on the streets!

Brunei

This is a strange one – and while it’s meant to be popular in Brunei, it doesn’t even sound edible. The natives will take the trunk of a Sago Palm tree and grind it into saw dust. The resulting powder is then boiled for a few hours until it achieves the delicious consistency that can only be described as a combination of rubber cement and semen. And that's it. They just boil sawdust down to glue and then eat it. It’s nearly tasteless and has almost no nutritional value.

Supposedly, they actually use the same stuff as roofing glue.

Global!

Let’s cut right to the chase here: tripe is animal guts. It's usually made from the lining of the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach, but as if the intestines of one animal weren't enough for to quell your insatiable cravings for entrails, tripe can also be made from sheep, goat, and pig. There are strict rules about cleaning and handling of the entrails while making tripe sausage (which makes one wonder why they wouldn’t make their mystery meats out of noses and tails like respectable, hot-dog-loving Americans), but despite their best efforts, the stuff still retains a bilious, stomach-acidy taste. Really, it’s like eating vomit. According to wikipedia, one kind of tripe, called Abomasum tripe is found “much less frequently, owing to its glandular tissue content.” Now, I don’t know about you, but foods that have a high glandular content are generally off my dining list – that is, unless I’m chewing on a freshly purchased black-market human adrenal gland – there’s no better way to start your morning!

I made the mistake of ordering a tripe crepe while I was in France a few years back. I was trying to be adventurous. Bad choice, mon ami! I spent the entire meal choking back the urge to vomit. Not that it would have mattered much.

The most terrifying part of this awful offal is that it’s not confined to the strange and snooty pallets of the French. No, this beast has gone global! From Scotland’s Haggis to Portuguese Dobrada and all the way to Nigeria’s Obe ata pelu Shaaki.

Guts all around!


Justin Jones is a food-venturous travel junkie who will try anything once. find out more at http://www.JustinWasHere.com or follow him at http://www.twitter.com/JustinJones