Top 10 Bizarre and Weird Foods People Eat Around the World

For many people eating the most bizarre foods is more like a hobby or sport. There are many such strange foods around the world. Here is the yucky food list of the weird foods to try. Some even find these disgusting food tasty while others just take it as a challenge. They may not even find it appetizing but they care more about the experience, the origin of the food and what other people find tasty or fascinating about the food.

At times, our revulsion for such bizarre food could merely be the result of a social or cultural disconnect. The natives might simply love what you consider disgusting or weird food. For instance, natives of Vietnam catch snakes, slit them alive, squeeze the blood and pour it into glasses mixing them with rice wine and drink it up.

If that’s not gross enough for you, here are some more of the grossest food in the world in this list of top 10 bizarre foods that people eat all over the world. Can you stomach it?

LEARNING POINTS

• Disgusting food challenges
• Bizarre food from different countries
• What is the nastiest food in the world
• Crazy food people eat around the world

List of 10 Strange and Bizarre Foods Around the World

1. Squirming Octopus, San-nakji – Korea

One of the top ten strange foods in the world is a squirming octopus. It is also known as San-nakji  and commonly prepared in Korea. The octopus is taken live from water tanks and served on the table after cutting into small pieces and seasoning it with sesame oil.

• Originally San-nakji hails from the Mediterranean and considered a seafood delicacy.
• Those who like eating weird food might be excited to see the pieces on the plate are squirming and alive.
• It has to be eaten carefully, as the suction cups on the arms of the octopus remain active. It has to be chewed well before you swallow it, so that the tentacles do not attach themselves to your mouth, cheek, teeth, tongue or worse still, your windpipe.
• Another kind of preparation involves wrapping the live octopus with vegetables and chili paste, to be served as a side dish.
• Though San-nakji is a bizarre dish, it has been valued as a delicacy in Korea for several hundreds of years. It is a health food and enhances vitality to the body with proper preparation of San-nakji.

2. Top Among Bizarre Foods: Human Toe Cocktail/Sourtoe Cocktail – Canada

This is surely one of the grossest food in the world. You can order this cocktail in a bar in North Canada. These are drinks laced with toe nails.

• These are toes that have been well preserved in salt, so that pathogens do not survive.
• This is the signature drink of the Downtown Hotel, Dawson City, Canada.
• The club has more than 100,000 members.
• They can drink the sourtoe with the alcoholic beverage of their choice, with the Yukon Jack Whisky being the most popular one.

3. Tuna Eyeballs

Among the weird foods around the world, you can find these strange fish eyes observing you from their packaging in Japanese stores. The dish started becoming popular during the 90s.

• This is one of the unusual dishes said to have a good amount of Omega 3 fatty acids. It is believed that it improves cognitive skills and intelligence. This spread the eating of Tuna eyeballs.
• Mostly served in Japan and in East Asian countries.
• In this unusual food, the eyes are cooked and fried or stewed or just steamed. It is seasoned with soy sauce or sugar or some rice wine and sake. Tuna eyeballs tastes like a hard boiled egg.
• In order to relish this strange food, they first eat the eye muscles and the fats and then move to the eyeball. Under the shell, there is a fatty substance similar to a squid or an octopus.

4. Fried Brain, Sandwich – USA: One of the Weird Foods in America

You can eat liver and kidney for sure, but brain? Many would draw a line at that. However, the truth is that animal brains are now being eaten all over the world. They use them in tacos and sandwiches.

• The texture of this crazy food is somewhat like scrambled eggs. In fact, most recipes mix animal brain with scrambled eggs, as the flavors complement one another.
• This is one of the weird foods around the world, which is said to be full of cholesterol, so quite unhealthy to eat.
• They are still served in St.Louis, Missouri and Indiana. The brain is breaded and then fried and the flavor is obscured by adding onions pickles and mustard, presenting one of the world’s weird food combinations.

5. Dried Lizards – China; Thailand; Indonesia; Philippines

This is one among the most bizarre foods in the world. Dried Lizards are used in soups and sometimes infused with alcohol to get the full benefit of their medicinal properties. It tastes like fish and can surely be ranked among the most disgusting foods in the world.

• What is the weirdest food in the world? Lizards are dried and then simmered in the soup pot for several hours, so that the taste gets released. Chinese dats or yam is also added for additional taste. Salt and pepper is also added for effective result.
• Dried lizards are added to soup. You can get it in medical shops in China, packed in pairs, as you have to consume both male and female to receive the health benefits.
• Beneficial for sexual vitality, stamina, energy, taken as a cough syrup. It is also supposed to help in losing weight, making bones stronger and cleaning up the digestive system.

6. Cats and Dogs

It is considered perfectly safe and even delicious to eat cats and dogs in China and many parts of Asia, such as Vietnam, Taiwan and Korea. These are part of bizarre food from different countries.

• Cats and dogs are eaten as a solo meal or just added to another meat dish.
• In Taiwan, they supply stray dogs/cats to restaurants and vendors, though the practice is banned by the government.
• These types of weird dishes are considered as a warming food during the winter months.
• Cat is mixed with snake and chicken in Guangdong and is eaten for fortifying the body.

Note: In war torn zones, Syrian refugees were asked to eat stray cats/dogs.

7. Weird Snacks: Fried Grasshoppers – Thailand

You might cringe at eating a grasshopper or a cockroach, but others enjoy it as an appetizer. In Bangkok, deep fried grasshoppers are local treats sold in pushcarts. It is common to fry insects in the Ubon province of Thailand. Apart from grasshoppers, they fry ants, silkworms and crickets and even scorpions.

• Grasshoppers, a staple in Thailand bug carts, are fried in oil first and then seasoned with chili powder or some spray.
• The legs are held while eating them.
• Grasshoppers are also cooked in some dishes.
• You can find these fried grasshoppers and other insects in carts all over Thailand, available as exotic snacks. One cart usually offers 5 to 6 varieties of these bug snacks.
• Though they look scary, they are harmless for eating, figuring in the top 10 most disgusting foods in the world.

Note: Winged termites are a delicacy in Ghana, dragonflies in Bali and agave worms in Mexico.

8. Icas or Queen Winged Ants – Brazil

It’s a rare delicacy in Brazil and one of the odd foods of the world. When it rains in the spring, these ants come out of the ground and people start ant hunting and stock up the icas, freezing them in bottles for the whole year. The town is about 190 miles from Sao Paulo. These are big ants, about an inch in length, and quite fat.

• It is one of the unusual food around the world and is eaten as a substitute for protein.
• People drive miles to come here and buy these ants.
• They are also eaten as an aphrodisiac and are considered as a natural type of antibiotic.
• Here, they cook the ants using conventional Brazilian recipes.
• In Colombia, the queen ants are being exported to European countries, where they are being used in chocolate.
• There are special restaurants and kitchens where they fry the icas.
• A typical haul of ants is sold for $15 a kg.

Note: Top chefs are turning to these insects for creating new menus as part of their national diet.

9. Balut – Philippines

Balut is a popular street food in Philippines and in Vietnam. It’s a duck egg, or rather a partially formed fetus having feathers, beak and so on.

• This is an embryo of a duck, which the locals boil and eat from the shell.
• Balut is boiled or steamed and usually served with beer.
• The normal time of incubation before it is cooked is around two to three weeks. If it is incubated for a further period, the embryo is more well developed, and you can even see the duckling features more clearly.
• The bones are soft and can be chewed or even swallowed whole.

10. Bule Bulak Oying – North East India

What is the nastiest food in the world? Rats!! But rats are not despised everywhere. In fact, they are also considered a delicacy in some parts of the world. The Adi tribe in north east India celebrates the 7th of March each year with a favorite dish called the Bule Bulak Oying.

• It is made using a rat’s body. It makes use of the stomach, the intestines, the liver and the testes as well as the foetuses. This is boiled along with the tail and the legs. Salt, chilli and some ginger is added.
• Both household rats as well as wild species are used. The tail and feet are considered the most tasty parts.
• They even present these dead rats as gifts during a marriage. They also present them to kids, rather like a Christmas gift.

Wrap Around

These are just some of the weird and most unappetizing foods in the world. In fact, they must have surely repelled you. They are sickening and totally unacceptable to most of us. It might even make some of us puke or gag.

It is so amazing that the human palate is so different in various parts of the world. Every culture eats foods that can be repulsive to others but are interesting food to some.

However, some people want to move out of their comfort zone and try out new foods or just participate in some disgusting food challenges.

Maybe, these foods would be considered if the world enters a food crisis and there’s nothing else to eat on the planet? The world might very soon enter such a food crisis. If we don’t double up on food production within the next fifty years, we may not have enough food to feed the population. These bizarre foods and insects could be an efficient source of protein for mankind.