Everybody loves exploring the delicious dishes from cuisines around the world, but it takes a brave soul to try some of the weirder, bizarre and unusual delicacies that some cultures eat. Some of the foods that we might consider to be gross or disgusting can be significant to a culture, steeped in tradition or have an important backstory to explore.
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The Strangest Delicacies in the World
We have collected so many unique and interesting recipes from around the globe that we wanted to count down our most bizarre dishes so far! So without further ado, here are the weirdest foods eaten around the world.
1. Kiviak (Greenland)
Kiviak is a dish from Greenland consisting of hundreds of dead auk birds stuffed into the body of a dead seal. The seal is then sealed up to be completely airtight, covered in oil to repel flies and maggots, and then fermented for three months.
The pungent, toxic smelling bird meat is said to taste a bit like very mature cheeses or liquorice. The dish is often eaten over the winter months when it is harder to catch food, and especially at special occasions such as Christmas or birthdays.
Of course, who wouldn’t want to eat a fish shaped like a penis? Well in South Korea the penis fish is a popular delicacy, also known as Gaebul.
Penis fish typically eaten raw, sliced and served with a savoury sesame oil sauce. It is purportedly a little bit bland with a slight sweet taste, which makes the sauce crucial.
Casu Marzu is quite simply Pecorino cheese that has been completely decomposed and occupied by maggots. It is dangerous to eat and could be fatal, which is why it is banned in most countries.
It originates from Italy where it was eaten by those in desperate poverty who had little else to eat. It is now a sought after delicacy on the black market for those who wish to try the infamous illegal cheese.
Hákarl is an Icelandic delicacy of fermented shark meat that is famed for its incredibly pungent odor. It takes 9 weeks for the fermentation process to reduce the natural toxins in shark meat, making it ready to eat with no cooking required at all.
Snake soup is a 2,000 year old delicacy eaten mostly throughout China but also some other parts of Asia. Different snakes can be used and often a customer will pick out the snakes that they want to use.
However, the most popular snakes eaten are python and water snake. It is cooked over a period of 6 hours and is considered to be healthy and full of medicinal benefits.
Although not particularly well-known for their weird food, this Norwegian recipe for sheep’s head, known as Smalahove, wins the prize for being just outrageously odd. Smalahove is a very traditional recipe that is usually eaten on the Sunday before Christmas.
After preparing and boiling the sheep’s head, it is often then served with rutabaga and potatoes. The tastiest part of the sheep’s head is apparently the cheek. One serving is usually half a sheep’s head per person, yum!
Surströmming is well-known as the smelliest food in the world, and for a very good reason! This disgustingly stinky fermented fish is banned on planes due to the powerful odor it emits!
Swedes usually eat Surströmming with thin flatbreads and oat breads and it reportedlyhas a very sour, sharp, peppery taste with a salty baseline of flavor. Mostly though people say it tastes awful! This is a dish that’s only for the brave!
8. Hormiga Culona: Edible Fat-Bottomed Ants (Colombia)
Fat-bottomed ants (known as Hormiga Culona) are a popular delicacy in Colombia where they are either roasted or fried, and eaten like peanuts!
There are lots of health benefits to Hormiga Culona, which are a great source of protein and even considered to be an aphrodisiac. Most report that they have a smokey flavor and are quite crunchy!
Bird’s nest soup is a popular delicacy in various parts of China, the nest of a swiftlet is used to cook a brothy soup with endless purported health benefits.
It is said that bird’s nest soup helps to tackle alzheimer’s, repair skin, increase immunity, reduce fatigue, restore damaged cells and many more!
However, bird’s nest soup is known for being a pretty expensive delicacy due to the cost of purchasing the nest itself.
This is likely due to the demand and lack of supply since obtaining the nest is quite dangerous and there are many ethical considerations with over supplying them.
The Tamilok Woodworm is a popular Filipino delicacy found in decaying, rotten logs in swamps-like mangroves.
The wood is then cracked open in order to extract the slimy creatures from inside. Once you’ve cracked open the log, you can find the tamilok clams wiggling through the wood, making holes as they go along.
Similar to oysters it has a fishy, slimy texture complimented by a very off-putting stench.
This one actually looks delicious but it’s actually a recipe made from cow’s intestines.
Tripas or tripe is not actually that uncommon, in fact there are lots of countries around the world that have traditionally eaten it, but Mexico and Portugal are two of the countries that have continued to eat it regularly.
And take a guess at how the Mexicans eat it, that’s right, in a taco! The delicious cow’s stomach can be cooked and then eaten with a delicious taco sauce made out of fish sauce, jalapeño and lime juice.
America, land of the free, home of the deep fried butter. Yes, that’s right, Americans have decided to take a large piece of fat and deep fat fry it in order to create this absolute monstrosity of a snack.
I guarantee you’re looking at this and contemplating whether you would try it and I agree, it would probably taste delicious.
But let’s face it, deep fried butter balls are pretty disgusting and deserving of a place on this list of weird foods.
Shiokara is a Japanese delicacy of squid intestines fermented in their own viscera (guts). It’s stinky, slimy and a very acquired taste that Westerners will struggle to stomach.
Fugu is a type of pufferfish eaten as a delicacy in Japan and known for the fact that it can be potentially deadly if not prepared correctly. The fish naturally contains poison which needs to be very carefully separated from the meat by specialized chefs.
Now the worst thing about this dish is that it looks absolutely disgusting. Buchada de bode is essentially the intestines of a kid goat that is cooked and served in the stomach.
But really, cooking intestines in the stomach isn’t unique to Brazil. Haggis in Scotland is very similar to this buchada de bode recipe as it utilises the stomach as a method to hold and cook ingredients.
Fried guinea pig (cuy) is a traditional Peruvian dish and is a food served at celebrations in Peru
Cuy is hugely popular in Peru and is very easy to find. It is essentially guinea pig which can be cooked in a number of ways such as spit-roasting or frying.
Tourists often want to try cuy as it has gained a reputation as a must-try dish when visiting the country. This means that stalls and restaurants will serve the dish to tourists all year round, even though it is mostly eaten by peruvians on special occasions.
It is also eaten in other parts of South America such as Colombia and Bolivia – basically anywhere where guinea pigs are considered to be a pest rather than a pet. The cooked guinea pig is then commonly served with potatoes and vegetables.
Century egg (or hundred-year egg) is a black preserved egg of a duck, chicken or quail. Of course, century egg got its name from the art of preserving the egg for hundreds of years before eating, but more commonly they are just a few months old.
Still, a very old egg doesn’t sound too delicious to me! The egg turns black with a dark green yolk after being processed in clay, ash and quicklime. The taste is of century egg course…. interesting, and has a very strong taste.
Ohhh Canada! Land of the moose, home of the stuffed moose heart. In fact, this dish does something very typical of the interesting dishes we uncover on Travel Food Atlas.
Much like dishes such as this Peruvian dish made from cow hearts, utilising all of the available organs of an animal rather than just eating the meat it a common trend.
The moose heart is not wasted and is instead cleaned and trimmed, then stuffed with garlic, celery, onion, sage, and herbs. It is then roasted and sliced up ready to eat.
Fruit bat soup is a dish consumed in the Pacific island of Palau where it is was once a staple of the local diet. It is now considered to be more of a delicacy but it acts as a great source of protein and so was a very useful dish to cook.
Fruit bats get their name from the fact that they feed on… you guessed it… fruit, as opposed to most bats who feed on insects.
There are mixed reviews about the taste of fruit bat soup with some very passionate advocates whereas others who are slightly underwhelmed by the flavor.
Frog legs are a famous French dish consisting of the legs of frogs, cooked in a wide variety of ways. Also known as Cuisses de Grenouilles, frog legs can either be grilled, stewed in a soup, stir-fried, baked, boiled, sautéed or battered and fried.
Frogs legs are known to be packed with nutrients, including protein, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin A, and potassium. As far as the taste and texture is considered, frog meat is believed to share a lot of similarities with chicken and fish.
Everyone knows Australia is famous for its crocodiles, but not many people know that croc meat can make a delicious skewer! In the USA they make a similar recipe with alligator meat, particularly in regions such as Florida or Louisiana where alligators are a common pest!
Usually the meat of a reptile is considered to be quite rubbery, but those who cook it often will have recipes to marinade the meat that softens it up.
After grilling on the barbecue, the skewers are often served as a kebab with pita bread and salad. Delicious, but still weird!
Chicken feet are a delicacy in many countries throughout the world including Mexico, China, Indonesia, Eastern Europe, Jamaica and many more.
In China chicken feet are fried, steamed and then simmered in a spicy soy-based sauce. They are often eaten as a simple bar snack but can also be served as a main dish.
Jellied moose nose is a delicacy in Canada and Alaska where a moose nose is cooked in garlic, salt, pickling spices and vinegar and then cooled in a broth to form a jelly like substance.
Well doesn’t that look like a delicious piece of meat? Probably the grossest part of the animal to eat and definitely one of the strangest dishes eaten in the world, but bulls testicles are not even that rare.
In Argentina, Spain and Mexico the testicles are fried and served with salsa, but in the US you might know them as rocky mountain oysters. Criadillas is the Latino recipe for bulls testicles that comes out looking surprisingly not too bad once cooked.
Eating testicles might not sound too appetizing but it is a surprisingly common snack in countries where bullfighting is popular.
Wasp crackers, also called Jibachi Senbei, are a Japanese snack similar to senbei rice crackers but filled with digger wasps. Other ingredients include water, eggs, sugar, salt, oil, sesame seeds and soy sauce.
Old wasp hunters set traps near the neighboring countryside to capture the wasps. They are then added to the boiling water and, once boiled, they are dried and combined with the rice cracker mixture. The blend is then stamped in a hot iron cracker cutter.
Canned Bread is exactly what it sounds like, it’s bread in a can. Canned bread was purportedly created in the 1920s when ovens were less common and so steaming over an open fire was the easiest way to make bread.
This is exactly how Canned Bread is made and, despite the fact that regular bread is now cheap and widely available, Canned Bread never went away. Whilst it might be useful in an extreme emergency, it is very dense and chewy. It is typically eaten with butter, cream cheese or jam.
Goong ten or “dancing shrimp” is a delicacy in Northern Thailand where a bowl of live shrimp are doused in sauce and served to the customer to eat raw.
The shrimp are often calm until they are covered in the sauce which them causes them to jump around trying to escape, giving the illusion that they are dancing.
The sauce is in fact delicious so the flavour and taste is not actually that gross. But the fact that you’re eating a live animal that is one of the most bizarre sensory experiences you can have with food.
Muktuk is an inuit delicacy consisting of the skin and blubber of bowhead, narwhal or beluga whales, cut into chunks. It is often served raw but can also be pickled and deep-fried before serving with soy sauce.
Presskopf is a type of German sausage that is made by cooking various animal parts and internal organs in a broth. It is then formed into a gelatin and cut into slices of sausages to eat cold, either on its own or in a sandwich.
Fesikh is a potentially deadly, very smelly Egyptian fish delicacy. It is most well known for being deadly if it is not prepared correctly, but its pungent smell is outrageous.
The fish is preserved in salt for two weeks or more, which is what causes its signature smell. It is then deep-fried and served with bread and salad. Most actually consider Fesikh to be quite tasty if you can overcome the smell.
Beondegi are a South Korean delicacy consisting of cooked silkworm pupae, typically either boiled or steamed. They are a very common street food snack where they are served in a paper cup with a toothpick.
Beondegi has a strong, notable taste but not an unpleasant one, and are said to smell like burned wood. The texture is the most unusual because the larvae are like little bags that, despite being almost empty, sometimes explode in the mouth when modeled.
Camel meat is consumed in many countries including Eritrea, Somalia, Syria, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Kazakhstan; and the burger is one of the most simple ways to enjoy it.
Camel meat is considered to be one of the leanest red meats available. With a little bit of a sweet aftertaste, camel meat is very similar to beef in terms of flavor and texture. A camel burger also looks relatively similar to a traditional beef burger.
Coconut worm is a type of snout beetle at its larvae stage. Also known as Duong Dua in Vietnamese, a coconut worm is light yellow in colour, generally sweet in taste, and about 3-5 cm long in size. Usually eaten live, a single coconut worm is sold at around 25,000 Vietnamese dong (US$1) in Vietnam.
Khash is an Armenian soup prepared using boiled cow or sheep parts such as the head, feet, and stomach (tripe). Typically consumed early in the morning during the winter season (usually from September to April), it is served with garlic, radish, dried national bread lavash, and homemade vodka.
Stargazey pie is a typical Cornish dish, in the UK, that is prepared using baked pilchards (sardines) that poke their heads out of the top of the pie. What differentiates stargazey pie is the use of fish heads (and occasionally tails) that tend to stick out through the crust. They give the impression of gazing at the stars, hence the name.
Tuna eyeballs are a delicacy in some parts of the world, particularly in Japan where is it known as Maguro No Medama Yaki, which translates to ‘grilled tuna eyeballs’. They are prepared by boiling or simmering the eyeballs of fresh tuna and serving them as a side dish or snack. Some people also enjoy eating them raw.
A fried brain sandwich consists of fried sliced calves’ brains on sliced white bread, originating in the USA. They were once widely consumed in Indiana and the Ohio River valley but are now slightly less common, with just a few restaurants still selling the delicacy.
Baby eels, popularly known as angulas, are pale, worm-shaped seafood eaten in the Basque region of Spain. Baby eels were traditionally cooked and consumed individually in a small earthenware dish along with a unique wooden fork prepared using Boj wood.
Ants egg soup is a traditional North-Eastern Thai and Laotian delicacy prepared using ant eggs combined with snakehead fish, garlic, galangal, lemon grass, tamarind bean, lime juice, basil leaves, tomatoes and fish stock. The ant eggs used consist of both the eggs and pupae of weaver ants (commonly called red ants in Thailand).
A witchetty grub is the larva of the witchetty bush cricket, considered a delicacy by some Indigenous Australians. It is high in protein and is usually eaten either raw or cooked. The raw grubs have a nutty flavor, while the cooked grubs taste like scrambled eggs.
Turtle soup is a delicacy prepared in many different variations in countries including China, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan and the United States. The ingredients vary accordingly depending on the culture but all recipes use the meat of turtles in a type of soup or stew.
Locusts eaten as food are prepared using different techniques depending on the country, they are most commonly fried, smoked or dried. For example in Israel locusts are cooked by adding them to a boiling broth first. They are then cleaned off, rolled in a mixture of flour and coriander seeds, garlic chilli powder, and then deep fried. In Mexico people consume chocolate-covered locusts.
Snake Blood liquor, also known as “Rượu Ngọc,” is a traditional Vietnamese drink that consists of the freshly harvested blood of a venomous snake mixed with rice wine. The snake’s blood is collected from a live snake, and the dish is typically served immediately after the blood is harvested before it has a chance to coagulate.
Chapulines are a Mexican snack of deep-fried grasshoppers, made by deep-frying grasshoppers in oil until they are crispy and crunchy. The dish is typically seasoned with spices such as chili powder, garlic, and salt, which give the grasshoppers a savory and spicy flavor.
