5 Disturbing Delicacies To Revolt Your Stomach
Diving into the Deep Sea of Disgusting Food Delights
We have all been victims of unappetizing food at some point in our lives, whether it has something to do with the smell, texture, appearance, etc.
There is some solace found in relating to people with similar distaste for food, it validates your taste buds and your judgment. Lucky for you, we’ve found some foods for everyone to collectively scrunch their noses up at, the foods being: Sannakji, Hakari, Haggis, Snake Wine, and Crocodile Carpaccio (the names themselves must be giving enough hints as to what we are about to delve into).
1- An oceanic nightmare slithers
If you’re someone who likes slimy, slithering food, this should be right up your alley. Sannakji is a South Korean dish made from live octopus that gets chopped up into small pieces or wrapped wholly around chopsticks and immediately devoured (they better chew it up properly before the stomach becomes their new habitat).
The most sought place for this meal is the famous Seoul Noryangjin Fish Market. This dish comes with a choking hazard that inevitably suffocates and kills you if you don’t chew enough.
Statistically, at least 6 people die per year from this dish. This dish caught the eye of PETA, an organization that raises awareness of animal cruelty, and there were a lot of righteously angry people who were disturbed by the abusive nature of this dish.
2- You have every right to fear sharks
This monstrosity of seafood dishes just carries onto the icy Icelandic shores where we are met with Hákarl, which is a dish that includes fermented (rotten) shark corpses that get primped after their insides have started disintegrating.
And to make matters worse, these pungent corpses are then hung in the open air to dry out their stench. I wonder if people truly realize how long 6 months is to wait before eating a dead animal that just tastes like ammonia and death.
This dish pairs well as a snack with vodka (drunk people don’t make the best decisions but at least the alcohol numbs the bad ones) but its significance is appreciated during the midwinter pagan festival called Þorramatur.
3- Slightly digestible meal if you ignore the way it’s cooked
At this point we need a break from the overly nauseating dishes, so let’s move on to slightly less repelling ones. Sweet puddings are something familiar to everyone’s palettes, but what if it was savory?
Scotland’s national dish, Haggis is a pudding made from a mince of mainly sheep organs (i.e. liver, heart, lungs) mixed with beef or mutton, oatmeal, and various seasonings.
Food enthusiasts must be wondering when the repulsive part comes in, well traditionally this dish was made by stuffing the raw ingredients into the stomach of a freshly killed sheep and boiled till it was edible. Now this particular dish is incorporated in different ways, such as pastries and pastillas. The traditional way of making this dish is a massive controversy in the culinary world.
4- Snakes on a plane (in a bottle)
We’ve all heard stories, and shared stories about some pretty weird animals being eaten, like bugs and scorpions, and snakes are no exception to that ever-growing list (eating them is one way to rise to victory against a dangerous animal).
If a conclusion has not been made yet then yes, this next dish is a Chinese delicacy. Like snakes, this dish is meant to slither down your throat effortlessly (if you can manage to not gag), as it is a beverage called Snake Wine.
This drink is meant to incorporate the essence of a snake rather than its insides by filling a glass bottle with yellow wine(usually rice wine) and a snake coiled in there amongst the liquid. Not only is this a wow factor for tourists but this drink has medicinal properties such as hair loss prevention and an aphrodisiac.
Even if a snake is initially venomous, the ethanol in the alcohol neutralizes it, rendering it safe for consumption.
To mask the flavor, people tend to pair it with fruits and berries, and everyone’s favorite toppings, scorpions, and geckos. Unsurprisingly, there has been an incident where the winemaker did not ensure the snake had been properly drowned, giving it months to gather its vengeance and attack as an unsuspecting drinker went in for a sip.
5- Carpaccio, the worst way to eat a perfectly normal dish
Saving the biggest for the end, if your stomach has held up till now our final dish comes from both the land and water bodies, a perfect end as all endings should be.
The carpaccio is a traditional Italian cuisine that consists of raw meat thinly sliced and drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice (for the tangy flavor).
There are two ways to approach this dish, the normal way, using fish or beef, or the insane culinary way, using crocodiles.
Since these are served raw, they are normally pre-made and defrosted come time to eat. This is probably the most expensive version of the carpaccio since crocodiles are very costly to hunt and prepare.
A word, from the pickiest eater to you, the reader
When did the idea of simple fried chicken and a platter of french fries become too boring and uncreative?
If it were up to me I would live off of different potato-based dishes, with a hint of protein (homemade chicken nuggets are a nostalgic delicacy).
This is entirely the opinion of someone who loathes even the smallest of greens (broccoli, spinach, cabbage…. the list is endless) but how bored would a person be of such simple pleasures of a warm home-cooked meal, that they intentionally risk their lives to try the nastiest combinations of food.
I understand the need for experience, and maybe I would be inclined to follow in the footsteps of these high-end food enthusiasts who travel just to eat food if I weren’t so specific about my tastes. But if this is something you are fully invested in then the world is your oyster (a food joke), go get your fill of it so we can hear all about it without having to go through the horror ourselves.
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