What's the grossest thing you've ever eaten?
Asked by
McBean (
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)
August 14th, 2008
Sweetbreads? Beef tongue? Menudo (love it)? Part of a fly? My grossest is probably a sea cucumber. Those things should not be considered food.
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91 Answers
KFC
I love sweet bread.Homemade with some butter.
I have a dislike for liver so any dish that has it.
when i was a baby i ate a wood louse then spat it out, then ate it again. Those were the days! * sigh *
I can’t stand pea’s and most seafood.
trumi, homemade or home cooked? ;-)
i’ve been told i ate spiders more than once as a baby…
to me (now) it doens’t get much worse than that…
of course i was also told that whenever my parents took me to picadilly, i took all the veggies on my plate and dumped them into my water glass with my hands, which I also used as a stirring device, then I drank it.
So the question is, grossest for me, or grossest for the people who saw it?
Lima Beans! Why do they even exist? Eeeeewwww! Blech!
Seal meat. I was in the sixth grade, and as part of some multi-cultural program, we got to taste it, cooked by a Korean native. I still can’t believe I did that. The very idea offends me now.
creamed chipped beef on toast. something elemental about
the horrid chewy texture surrounded by slithery white stuff.
ew, ew, ew, and triple ew.
@ susan in the military we called that shit on a shingle
@susanc: You have confirmed that we went to the same college…ccb on toast, but not the tripe.
I once put mayonnaise all over my bowl of fruit because I thought it was that white, sweet, creamy fruit dip!!!
I’ve taken a huge gulp of a sweet drink left on my headboard in the middle of the night, only to discover in my groggy state that my mouth and hands were full of hundreds of ants. They’re spicy if anyone is wondering.
I’ve also put spicy seasoning in my oatmeal, which I thought was cinnamon.
And used garlic flavored pan spray to cook scrambled eggs.
All terrible.
@Spargett: If you could find a word to describe the horror I felt about you having ants in your mouth, you would be the genius people wrote about in years to come…
@Spargett: That is TERRIFYING! Did you see my ant question last week?
I remember a movie where a guy asked God what the grossest thing he ever ate was and God just said, “you don’t want to know. Finally he got to like the 14th grossest thing and God gave him a really gross answer. The grossest thing any of us have ever eaten probably came from some dirty kitchen in a clean looking restaurant.
My mother made a supposed scallop casserole. I love scallops, by the way. I am not sure what she did wrong, but it was absolutely inedible. When I tasted it and spat it out, and told her it was horrible, she said we had to eat it, and no one was going to leave the table until they did.
I was furious, but attempted to force it down The rest of my siblings just cried and refused to eat it. Finally, when I was almost finished with the vile stuff, she tasted it and spat it out.
Then she apologized and said we could leave the table, but I was furious at her that she did not believe me in the first place.
I ate rat soup and marmot soup when travelling through Laos. The rat wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but it was bitter as hell. Luckily the people there know that adding a dangerous amount of spice to any dish can make it at least edible by drowning out any disgusting flavour. The grossest part was our guide politely asking if we wanted the tail and, when we declined, him slurping it up and then crunching away on it. Ah, memories.
chitterlings or “chitlins” as they are called in southern or inner-city areas. tried them back in the early 70s and never went back to the taste. awful, awful taste and smell, but people still eat it. PIG INTESTINES.
Fried crickets in Mexico, and my grandmothers mashed Rutabagas. ewwwwwwwwwww!
When I was a young lad, I gave into my curiousity and decided to bite into an acorn (yes, I was smart enough to take the shell off). Well, the seeds were, let’s just say disappointing. They were bitter and had a pungent odor that stayed in your mouth for hours (similar to bad hazelnuts). I don’t how squirrel survive of that stuff.
Indy: The squirrels are probably wondering about us and Big Macs.
@Indy: I’ve tasted acorns plenty of times. I know that acrid flavor that you speak of. Not so good.
@paulc: I do believe that you win the award. I’m not sure why. But I might rather eat chitlins or crickets than rat. Especially the tail. Why is that?
I remember my grandmother saved a big bowl of chicken fat (to render at a later time) in the refrigerator. My poor uncle, thinking it was custard, snuck a giant spoonful. HA!
And years ago, my husband invited a co-worker over to our Christmas open house. His co-worker’s wife was from Costa Rica, I believe, and brought along what looked like little round doughnuts. I thanked her and put them on the dessert table. Well, lo and behold, they were not desserts at all. They were salt cod fritters made of reconstitued salt cod. Can you imagine waiting for that sweet flavor to hit your taste buds and end up biting down into a fishy flavored dough? Bad misunderstanding there for many people until someone thought to remove the plate from the dessert table.
Spargett: Fear Factor, Home Edition?
Sea Urchin. It had a very peculiar texture. Very very mushy and not that great good tasting at all.
I absolutely loathe mayo so anything with that is a narsty.
@gooch didnt like the Durian fruit? I had one about a month ago i thought it was pretty good. not great, but not horrible.
@uberbatman smelled so bad. The taste was not the worst but I could not get past the smell. gag.
Did anyone see the Olympics segment yesterday on common Chinese delicacies sold for snacks? Fried scorpions and sea horses skewered on sticks like kabobs are all the rage, but the TV reporter could not get up the nerve to take a bite.
goat testicles in a stick? Count me in.
Indy: We left you with sauce and onions dribbling out of a Philly Cheese steak. What happened since then?
@gail i would have loved to have tried either of those items. Im all for trying new things. I mean i look at it this way. If it tasted absolutely horrible people wouldnt eat it. So theres got to be something there.Maybe id like it, maybe not. But you wont know unless you try.
@cc34 I moved to Philadelphia and ate Philadelphia Pepperpot soup, which I was assured was a local delicacy. No one told me it was tripe soup!
True. I am such a food wuss. And I guess it depends on what you were raised to eat. I love chopped herring w. onions and sour cream and other treats my grandmother made for me when I was very little. My sister, who is 9.5 years younger and missed out, gags.
I ate horse meat once when I was 17 and in France (thought it was beef steak). It tasted fine until I learned just what that _filet-au-jus_was.
Here’s the story (and a recipe):
The conventional story goes that Philadelphia Pepper Pot was invented during the American Revolutionary War while George Washington and his troops were marooned at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777–78. Both morale among the soldiers and their food supplies were low; but, Washington ordered the camp cook to prepare something special for his men. A nice story. However, Philadelphia – the City of Brotherly Love – was also for long the main base for the northern slave trade. This dish is clearly a direct descendent of the Caribbean callaloo ; itself derived from what is virtually a national dish in much of West Africa . Sometime after American independence, this fantastic soup migrated into Pennsylvania Dutch country; where it was quickly adopted and has become a mainstay in their diet.
OMG i loveeeeeeeeee tripe. yum yum in my tum tum ^_^
@ubt Really? How uberbatman!
Well, I like tripe, too. I grew up eating menudo and had already happily acquired a taste for it by the time I understood what it was and that it was supposed to be gross. I also grew up eating beef tongue. I used to marvel at the taste buds on it.
My grandmother was from Mexico and my grandfather was from China. We ate all kinds of foods. I’ve had tamales made from all kinds of meats; goat, squirrel, wild boar (javelina), dove… you name it.
@McBean I love tongue sandwiches. (We peeled ours.) It is best to acquire the taste before seeing the tongue prior to prep, however.
Ohhh i like tongue a lot as well. Its like making out with a cow while you eat it lol. You taste it, it tastes you. Its all good.
@uberbatman: I spent a lot of time as a child scraping the cow tongue with a tip of my spoon. I did it when no one was looking, as a curiousity. I had no idea I was practicing good cow oral hygiene.
Anyone ever tried haggis? Don’t…...gross.
I was wondering about haggis.
Wasn’t he the half-giant in Harry Potter?
I had forgotten that I liked tongue until I saw what it looked like, uncooked. Many of the dishes we are talking about come from the inventiveness and thriftiness of impoverished families who needed to treat almost everything edible as food – varies, of course, from culture to culture.
Isn’t there an adage about pig- eating every part but the oink. (Google “trotters, oxtail stew, etc.”)
I can’t stand tripe either. Even the smell of it cooking makes me dry retch!!! I’ve eaten camel, actually it doesn’t taste too bad, a little gamey.
@Tandi – you mean camel doesn’t taste like chicken?
I would loveeeeee to try haggis a well. Shame i cant find it anywhere around here.
@gailcalled – shockingly enough, no.
Given the recent taste of caged, force-fed, corn-eating chickens these days, maybe chicken tastes like camel.
I went to my coffee shop and ordered my favorite iced coffee drink….took a BIG chug from it and gagged. I had the worker try it and turns out they mixed up the sugar with the salt. It was the grossest saltiest thing I’ve ever tried….
@TheHaight i did that one morning when i was really tired and hung over. Not really paying attention making my coffee with one eye open. See the thing is i like A LOT of sugar. Like 12 spoonfuls. Except it was salt BLACHHH.
that many spoonfuls? That sounds worse then mine! :p
AWWW JESUS FUCK THAT WAS NARSTY…....
i just pulled a spargett…..my dr pepper was chewy….dr pepper isnt supposed to be chewy. I looked at it and wouldn’t you know there were hundreds of ants crawling out of the can…...ew.
Aaaaagh…poor uberbatman. No one finds ant refreshing.
A friend of mine once recounted that her beer tasted a little “off” while she was sitting at the bar and chatting with a friend. She said that it also seemed to have a slight “crunch” at times. It turned out that some drunk standing behind her was ashing his cigarette in her beer.
You know what the worst part is McBean im not so much upset by the fact that i just drank well over 50 tiny ants. Im upset they ruined my dr pepper :(
I HATE HATE HATE sour crout. I absolutley loath it. I can not be near the stuff. When I was a kid the smell would make me vomit.
I remember one time when i was a kid at the boardwalk i knocked over a big thing of sour crout off a hotdog stand. It hit the ground and all the sour crout flew up and landed all over me. Discustingggggg smell elchhhh
McBean;
Anoterh great reason why smoking is forbidden even in bars in California!
@uberbatman: damn ants!
@ Judi: very true!
@ poofandmook: I love sauerkraut, too. I think it might be an acquired taste, though, like kimchee and pickled herring. In fact, I’ve never been able to do the pickled herring thing. :-)
@McLegume: My maternal grandmother fed me pickled herring so I think that starting young and being acculturated tame the thirst buds. We used to buy jars of pickled herring (Vita ) and add more chopped onion and fresh sour cream; ditto with canned sardines and tomato sauce.
Gail, my grandmother used to feed me pickled herriing when I was little too! She didn’t feed it to me as much as she ate it, so I wanted it too. I liked it then, but every time I’ve eaten it when I was older, even the smell of it is yucky to me.
La_Chica; I agree. I don’t think I could even swallow a bite now.
@Uber; There was a wonderful French movie made in 1988; Chocolat
“A young French woman returns to the vast silence of West Africa to contemplate her childhood days in a colonial outpost in Cameroon. Her strongest memories are of the family’s houseboy, Protée – a man of great nobility, intelligence and beauty – and the intricate nature of relationships in a racist society.”
Protée teaches the young child how to eat an ant sandwich; it is part of his culture and the little girl gravely and happily eats it.
(This is not the Chocolat of a decade later with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp/)
I also once had hot chocolate when I was a kid that had maggots in it. It was the most repulsive thing ever.
@gail: We used to eat canned sardines with tomato sauce and sardines with lime juice and Mexican hot sauce. I ate them happily when I was a child, but now I’ll only eat sardines if they are fillets. The idea of eating the skin, guts, and bones just grosses me out!
@McB: Me, too, now.
Hot chocolate with maggots doesn’t do much for me, either.
It would be an excellent “protein-filled” chocolate drink!
And, speaking of gross-textured drinks, has anyone tried bubble tea? I know it’s not disgusting like maggot hot chocolate, but…why does anyone drink it? Ugh!
When I was a baby, one of these crawled under our door and I ate it. True story. My mom said I’d squished it up and it was super nasty.
As a more grown up person, the most disgusting thing I ever ate was pizza with anchovies on it. The anchovies were hidden under the cheese and I didn’t realize it, but after three bites, the full flavor hit me and I almost threw up. I had to wipe my tongue off.
@AlenaD: There is something about an unexpected “fishy” taste that can completely send you ‘round the bend. I understand that completely. I don’t like anchovies on pizza, either, though I can eat a few anchovy fillets straight out of the can and enjoy them.
I just remembered another gross thing. This happened when I was a child, about 11 years-old. I picked up an opened can of V-8 juice (a single serving can) and chugged it down only to find that there was an island of thick, furry mold floating in it. I still remember what it felt like when it stuck to the roof of my mouth. After I removed the plug of mold with a tissue, I must have soaked my mouth with Listerine for 10 minutes. I’ve never quite enjoyed V-8 juice since.
Oh, I forgot to mention that slugs are the most disgusting creatures I can think of. There’s a scene in one of the Harry Potter movies where Ron’s “Slug Spell” backfires and he ends up vomiting up giant slug after giant slug. It’s really wretched.
And one more thing…Did the banana slug taste like a banana?
McBean, I <3 you for the Harry Potter reference. I’d forgotten about burping up slugs and YES, it was so disgusting!
As for banana slugs, based on the face my mom reports that I made at the time, I doubt it. You can, however, find out for yourself.. just head to the Santa Cruz mountains. If you want, you can join The Banana Slug Club, all you have to do is kiss one. Me, I went above and beyond, and thus, I am Empress of the Banana Slug Club. ;)
Our last night in Mongolia, my friend Hesh and I were staying at a Mongolian friend’s family’s summer homestead, and he and his parents prepared a feast. Course after course of sheep.
Because that’s how they roll in Mongolia. Lots of sheep. Lots of fermented mare’s milk. Little else.
Anyway, after eating way too much sheep and a huge plate of sweet biscuits and fly speckled butter that we thought HAD to have been the last course, our friend’s dad brought out one last steel pot. It was dark in the gyurt, but we could see bones coming out the top. Sheep. Clearly.
Oh well, we figured, one more piece each, and we’ll be done.
Hesh reached into the pot, pulled out a rib, and started gnawing.
I reached in, grabbed hold of a greasy bone, and pulled out my last course. A jawbone. Teeth. Gums. Hinge tendons. And a big, long, gummy slab of lip. Sheep’s lip.
It tasted exactly how you’d imagine boiled sheep’s lip would taste.
@jdegrazia; “Our last night in Mongolia”? Tantalizing. What’s the back story?
@gailcalled Six days earlier, one of my best friends from high school and I had left my apartment for the Beijing airport with nothing but two tickets to Ulaan Bataar and a phone number for a dude named Gans. I’ve actually never written the whole story, but I happen to have just posted this, noting the fact that this thread started me writing it today.
@jdegrazia: ...“A big, long, gummy slab of [sheep’s] lip”...Wow, I wish I did not have that image in my head before going to sleep. :-) And that was dessert?!
@McBean That was dessert. Or, probably more appropriately, it was the last possible thing they could force us to eat before politeness would have given way to sickness.
@jdegrazia: You were very brave. There’s something especially horrible about eating something’s face.
@jde: On Mongolian airlines? What was *their*menu like?
You and your friend were certainly intrepid….
@gail Don’t remember which airline. And def don’t remember the food. I usually sleep through meals on flights. The food on Chinese domestic flights is pretty silly, though. Lots of dried mystery meats and pickled mystery veggies. And vaguely sugary white bread.
The grossest thing I had to eat was a fried grasshopper that was in a sixth grade science fair. I don’t know what was so scientific about it.
My dad recently went to Japan on a business trip and was offered both raw chicken and horse. He refused, but still…. ew.
A girlfriend’s lady parts after she’d been on a horse for six hours. Wasn’t gross to ME, mind you—twas pure ambrosia, but some might think otherwise.
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