Extreme Cuisine: Food On A Stick, Deep Fried Food, And Other Weird Foods

The next time your kids turn their nose up at what you’ve placed on the dinner table, here’s a new comeback for you.

Instead of the familiar, “There are kids starving in other countries that would love to have this.”  Just tell them, “We could all move to Indonesia so we can eat deep fried monkey toes instead! How does that sound?”

That’s no joke. In Indonesia they do, indeed, enjoy their monkey toes deep fried. And they eat it right off the bone.

They also happen to eat bats… smoked — claiming that it tastes just like beef jerky.

How weird is that?

Different cultures around the world, even right here in the good old U.S.A., have acquired a taste for some really bizarre foods.

 

Weird Food On TV

Just ask the Travel Channel’s Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods. He travels the globe in search of strange cuisine that the average person would find absolutely disgusting.

Oddly enough, his travels recently brought him right into my own backyard so to speak as his show highlighted weird foods in the state of Minnesota.

It’s the Land of Swedes, Norwegians, and Finlanders, and Zimmern sampled many delicacies brought over from the old country.

Lutefisk (fish preserved in salt, then reconstituted with lye and water into something that hardly resembles fish when it’s served) is an annual right of passage for anyone with a Scandinavian bloodline. Fortunately, I’m of English decent. (I dodged a bullet there, for sure!)

He also had a bowl of wild rice and sucker head soup. A sucker is one ugly fish that is readily available during spring spawning season. If you’re lucky, you get at least one head in your bowl of soup which you chew and suck to extract every tasty morsel.

Of course, his isn’t the only American TV show to focus solely on the act of eating foods which sound completely disgusting.

Reality TV shows like Survivor and Fear Factor often give contestants incentives to eat bugs — dead and alive — and other forms of wildlife which aren’t normally considered delicacies in this country.

Other weird food  TV shows include:

• No Reservations, hosted by Anthony Bourdain on the Travel Channel
• Freaky Eaters, bizarre food addictions & strange food cravings on TLC
• The Layover, hosted by Anthony Bourdain on the Travel Channel

 

 

More Weird Foods From Other Countries

Everyone’s heard of bird’s nest soup from China. But can you imagine tuna eyeball? It’s a delicacy in both China and Japan. It’s packaged just like a cut of fish, but with a big eyeball the size of a tennis ball looking up at you from under the clear plastic wrapper.

Would you like a glass of wine with your dinner? How about a glass of baby mouse wine? Imagine a bottle of wine loaded with the carcasses of a dozen or so small mice! Could there be anything more gross? Apparently, the Chinese think this is a good way to quench your thirst.

Here are some links to other weird foods from around the world:

• 10 Weird Foods I Ate In Taiwan
• TV Celebrities And Their Weird Food Experiences
• 5 Exotic Foods We Want To Try (Plus 5 We Don’t)
• Weird Food Directory
• 10 Unusual Things Covered In Chocolate
• Weird Food Delicacies From Around The World
• SLIDESHOW: Weird Food Of The World
• The World’s Most Unusual Foods
• Pickled Beef Tongue (With Recipe!)
• 10 Weird Gourmet Foods

 

In Afghanistan, barbecued testicles are a delicacy…

 

 

In Cambodia, they like to eat big hairy spiders (cooked tarantulas)…

 

 

Weird Food At McDonalds

Thinking about traveling to some far off exotic land? Perhaps you’re planning on dining at well-known fast food joints such as McDonald’s to play it safe.

Well, you better bring your Tums with you because the menu might be a bit different from the one you see at your local drive-thru.

In Thailand, for example, McDonald’s serves items like Thai Spicy Fish McDippers coated in crispy bread crumbs and hot chili seasoning. In Singapore, you don’t get a bun on your burger. They use rice cakes instead. You can order a hot fresh tuna pie at McDonald’s in the Philippines — once again, proving that big corporations tailor their products to meet the needs of the local customers.

Even at our own Honolulu Hawaii McDonald’s they’ve replaced the ham in the McMuffin with Spam.

  

 

 

Deep Fried Food

Deep fried foods must have originated at state fairs. Where else are you likely to indulge in such unhealthy, strange-looking food than at a carnival or a fair?

Try these on for size: deep-fried bacon, deep fried butter, Krispie Kreme chicken sandwich, deep-fried Twinkies, even fried Coca-Cola. They just keep coming out with something new each year!

I guess it kind of goes hand-in-hand with these wacky food festivals.

Here are some of the deep fried foods that have found their way into the hearts of Americans:

• The Most Ridiculous Deep Fried Foods
• How To Make Deep Fried Oreo Cookies
• 25 Awesome Foods You Never Knew Could Be Deep Fried
• Deep Fried Butter… And More!

 

 

Food On A Stick

Just like deep fried foods, Americans also love food on sticks. And they seem to have originated at state fairs too! Check out this list of 53 foods on a stick at the fair. (They’re all available at ONE single state fair!)

Food on a stick is the ultimate “outside-the-box” way to serve food. I mean, who knew you could put stew on a stick? Chicken lips on a stick and zucchini weenies are just 2 other stickable edibles.

Want more? Check out these interesting foods on sticks:

• Deep Fried Things On A Stick
• 20 Best/Worst Foods On A Stick
• PHOTOS: Food On A Stick Collection On Pinterest
• 52 Foods On A Stick
• Trend Alert: Food On A Stick!
• 10 Surprising Foods On A Stick

 

The Chinese eat just about anything on a stick!…

 

Oh by the way, has anyone here tried Scrapple?

Locally called “everything but the oink”, scrapple makes use of hog offal (think: head, heart, liver, kidney), which are boiled to make a broth, to which cornmeal is added to make a mush. The finely ground meat is returned to the pot along with seasonings like sage, thyme, savory, and pepper. Although it’s typically made to use up leftovers, you can buy scrapple in some grocery stores in the mid-Atlantic states.   Source

…It might go well with Chicken in a Can!