Cambozola cheese. Nearly vomited.
Lentil soup. One kid in the entire school ate it.
How the hell do you wreck lentil soup that bad? Heck, there are lots of different cultures around the world that make tasty lentil soup. There’s German lentil soup with potato, carrot, and ham; there’s Indian dal in a range of flavors and colors; there’s Turkish Ezogelin soup with bulgur and paprika …
I have no clue. This was a school lunch 25 years ago, and we usually had really good lunch.
100% agree. Lentil soup is like the one dish that I have found very pleasent in all countries I’ve been to
Human food…
Is that food made for humans? Or made of humans…
Yes
Nettle stew. Yes, it’s good for you. It tastes like cow shit to me.
I don’t know about THE worst, but every single thing I are while at Disney land was pretty fucking bad. I had some barbeque skewers with my dad that were extremely bland, dry, and flavourless. I also had some sort of pink sugary drink that tasted kind of weird. My brother said his hotel burger had a really bad musk to it
My brother said his hotel burger had a really bad musk to it
So that’s where my ballsack burger went!
Durian fruit. That is the most vile thing I have ever tasted and the after taste lasted for like 5 hours.
That shit is fucking evil.
It’s not bad as long as you don’t think about baby poo while you eat it
I think the most famous description of Durian is “like eating custard in a sewer”. I’ve never tried it, since we don’t get it in the UK, but I’m curious. I had a Malaysian friend who loved it, but said many businesses and public transport would have signs up saying no Durian due to the smell.
It’s honestly not bad after a few tries. For me, the texture and overwhelming smell was a surprise at first but the actual taste isn’t that bad.
“It’s not bad as long as you don’t breathe.”
I have that same mantra about life
I am not a picky eater and enjoy many exotic, strong smelling/tasting foods.
But not durian.
Once took durian chocolate home from a trip to Malaysia. Had to open it on the balcony. Tasted like someone vomited right into my mouth. Had to leave the chocolate on the balcony for a few days because I could not stomach the smell.
0/0 never again.
bitter melon
I have never wanted to go back in time and prevent myself from doing something more than in the moment of tasting that wretched vegetableit took every shred of my willpower to get it down and not spit it out dramatically (was in polite company)
It is delicious if you make it right - sweet curry or dry spicy fries.
you can have all of my share, all yours 😫
I literally had it today.
I used to hate it like most people, then I understood that most people don’t cook it the right way.
AhEhEhm, AcKsHuAlLy…issa fruit
I’m a fruit, and I say that dastardly curse of a produce doesn’t deserve to share a label with me lol
Just be happy you’re not a vegetable
this is a good point haha
I’ve eaten chicken feet, haggis, blood pudding, sisig, century egg, durian, dinuguan, tripe and tongue tacos, frog legs, snails, alligator, whole softshell crab, and probably a few more delights that I ought to remember. The only one I absolutely cannot stomach is the century egg.
How was the century egg prepared? I knew some guys in high school that decided to buy random stuff at the asian grocery store and they ate the century egg as if it was a regular boiled egg then threw up. I’ve had it in small pieces with congee and that was pretty good though.
I’d used it in a recipe to try and make congee, inspired by a pop-up in Seattle called Secret Congee. Theirs is good as hell, but my first try deterred me entirely from that questline.
Sisig mentioned rahhh 🇵🇭🔥💯
We’re a “barrel man on the mantle” type of family, you know?
I dunno what that means but I’m guessing it’s not good. You also did mention Dinuguan which I like also.
Matter of taste I guess - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_man_(novelty)
I like dinuguan and sisig, but I’ve definitely had plates of sisig I’ve regretted.
Oh, that 😂 I’m so ashamed I didn’t get it straight away even though I’m Filipino 😅
What type of sisig did you have? It’s traditionally made with pig’s head but if you don’t want that, you can’t go wrong with pork belly or chicken cut into small chunks 👍🏽
It was pig’s ear and other head stuff, but the real problem was that it was about half as fresh as it should have been. I only mentioned sisig in this post as a way of listing all the gnarly stuff I’ve liked over the years to compare it to the one thing I just can’t handle (except as an ingredient in one dish ever apparently). Little quiet karaoke place with no customers that used to be in Seattle, back when I lived stateside. Not surprised to find out that it’s gone, they needed a different crowd.
I had a hunch it’s the way it’s cooked, should always be fresh.
Witloof, its this variant of cabbage that is long thin and completely white. And it has one of the most pungent bitter tastes ive ever had the misfortune to discover. The taste is hard to describe, but it’s similar to bee spit,also known as honey, except replace all the love and care that the bees spat with, with pure malice and wasp hatred. It is incredibly sweet, ungodly bitter and has after cooking the texture of overcooked pasta
My mother used to serve it without sauce, ham, or anything else to hide it. Vile.
Properly prepared or improperly prepared?
I had a chicken sandwich once that was still pink in the middle… Disgusting!
Chicken sashimi is a thing in Japan, so consider yourself cultured
I’ve had that and it wasn’t bad per se, it was just like… why? None of the benefits of the flavors of other raw meats like steak or horse, just bland and boring
Never had it but I’ve heard it kinda resembles a mild cut of sashimi
They also vaccinate their chickens against salmonella and don’t wash them with chlorine in Japan, unlike in the US.
Cultured? 🤔
Hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Logically, you should be thanking whoever made that for you.
Mother in law fed me pink turkey.
She used an insta pot, loaded to the brim with turkey legs, but she set it on air fryer mode by accident. Mine was on top, so it looked fine, and she didn’t notice the lower ones were raw until I’d already started eating.
Fun night. Didn’t get sick 🤷♂️
Worked for a Japanese company and visited the head office in Tokyo. One of the more senior managers took us to his favorite local sea food restaurant.
I hate seafood. Especially when it’s fancy and you get baby squid that looks like they were just fresh out of the water with no preparation etc (part of the “fancy”). However, culturally I had absolutely no possibility to do anything but eat, smile and praise. The courses just kept coming, each one being more disgusting than the last.
Someone on lemmy posted this recently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_pineapple
My mother in law is Korean so out of curiosity I had her pick up the Korean dish made from it (meonggae) after seeing the lemmy post. It taste like the smell of a dank metal spiral stair case at Seaworld. Even through all the (imo) tasty spices and seasoning. I asked my MIL what she likes about it and she said, “it tastes so fresh because one bite and your transported to the sea”. Especially with the older generation, the context can make the food way more than the taste
That’s like the one seafood I don’t like, specifically because of the metal taste. You can be “transported to the sea” without needing to lick spoons while you’re underwater.
Hard to say. I tend to opt for safe things most of the time. Twice as a child I was conned into taking a spam fritter under the belief it was fish. I like battered fish. It was not fish. I do not like spam.
Texture-wise, I cannot abide kidney. Used to love steak and kidney pies but something changed when my adult teeth came in.
Thirdly, I still have flashbacks to a serving of whitebait I ordered out of curiosity in a restaurant one time. They didn’t taste terrible that I remember. Just… whole little fish cooked and to be eaten whole. Never again.
And then there was the case of the Kit-Kat that I was eating blind, piece by piece from my coat pocket, and one of the pieces was hard and unpleasant. I am still not sure there wasn’t something else in my pocket that I grabbed and ate by mistake, but that’s pretty up there.
I hated kidneys for a long time because the first time I ate one (served with a mixed grill) I thought it was a mushroom. I love mushrooms and saved it to the end. Put the whole thing in my mouth and it was so much not mushroom that I couldn’t face kidneys for years afterwards. I very much enjoy a steak and kidney pudding now though (has to be proper steamed suet pastry).
And I love whitebait!
I mean there are foods designed to genuinely taste bad, but - keeping to food that I guess is supposed to taste good - I know one of my worst experiences as a kid was with a particular boiled sweet.
I don’t know what flavour it was supposed to be, but it tasted like somebody had shoved fly spray in my mouth. It was vile.
I once went to an Ethiopian restaurant with my family. Never again.
I can’t even describe it, but whatever evil concoction they call their version of bread is easily the worst thing I ever attempted to eat.
The lady who owns the Ethiopian place near me told me that it’s really hard to get the injera right when you first try it the US. The wild yeasts that occur naturally in Ethiopia are not present here. Is like how “real sourdough only comes from San Francisco.”
She said she couldn’t get it to work right with pure teff like back home and to play around for a long time with the mix of wheat, rice flour and teff before it was even edible.
Maybe the place you had it was still figuring it out.
Maybe. This was in Israel. There’s a sizable Ethiopian population here but it still might be difficult.
Fermented teff flour? I’ve always wanted to try it with raw kitfo out of curiosity
You can get close by way overfermenting regular sourdough. It’s very lactic.
Does it get that same floppy texture?
Yeah, almost rubbery.
It’s like a sourdough pancake. Absolutely delicious, and even more so when it soaks up the juices from the rest of the platter.
You don’t enjoy the unholy union of packing wrap and kitchen sponge?
How about tripe, the other kitchen sponge?
Too accurate 😭
Whaaaat injera bread is really good. Not even an acquired taste.
Til about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teff
I dunno, I think the Ethiopian food itself more than makes up for it. Unseasoned polenta on the other hand…
Zil Zil Tibs.
It’s been like 20 years since I’ve had Ethiopian food and I still remember exactly what I will get next time.
I’ve eaten a lot of pretty crazy stuff by western standards. The most challenging thing I have eaten was a giant water bug. The most challenging thing I haven’t been able to bring myself to eat was balut.
The water bug was definitely not the worst thing I’ve eaten though; it was unbelievably fragrant. Practically like eating perfume.
Esters I bet it’s rich in esters
Probably. I know it’s a pheromone and is much more concentrated in males making them more valuable/desired
My question for folks, though…:
When faced with eating a giant water bug for the first time, would you bite the head side first or the butt side first?I struggled with this decision…
ETA: (for reference)
Ok…it’s not a competition…but you win…
Is that someone people actually eat?
Probably, entomophagy is not that uncommon outside of western countries.
It is popular in a lot of Southeast Asia. You can even buy commercial chili pastes with the essence of water bug in them.
Balut actually tastes pretty good chicken and egg. Even though it was a duck egg. But yah I could never do it again.
