Can you stomach this? 93% of People Can't Identify These Bizarre Foods from an Image! Can you?
By: Valerie
3 min
Image: Shutterstock
About This Quiz
Let's face it. There are some bizarre foods across the planet. From concoctions filled with insects, to the slimy who-knows-what glop that settles in your stomach like a pound of lard. Have you ever been interested in the strangest foods the world has to offer? Take this quiz to see how many of them you can name.
Yes, blood sausage is actually made of blood cooked up with various natural flavorings, oats, barley, or breadcrumbs. It's all stuffed into a sausage skin and is eaten around the world. Some people find the idea revolting, but blood sausage, or black pudding, is actually a popular and tasty dish.
Escargots à la bourguignonne, a popular gourmet dish in France, is made of snails cooked in white wine, garlic, butter and parsley. They are served in their own shells. Said to have a similar consistency to mussels or clams with a pretty rubbery texture.
Marmite is made from yeast extract, a by-product of brewing beer, and looks like a sticky, brown paste that's usually spread on toast or eaten with cheese. It's one of those "love it or hate it" products not everyone can appreciate.
In Africa, these edible bugs are used to flavor stews or eaten on their own. People who tasted them, say that stink bugs have a crunch to them and taste a little bit like apples.
Popular in the US, Rocky Mountain Oysters are not actually oysters despite their name. What you see are bull testicles deep fried in a batter of flour, pepper and salt. This dish, which can be also made of pig or sheep testicles, is well-known as a true Western delicacy.
Meet the famous American mystery meat. It's believed that Spam is made from chopped pork shoulder meat, ham and potato starch, but nobody is really sure what ends up in there.
This traditional Sardinian dish is just sheep's milk cheese but it contains live insect larvae. In theory, these little maggots are supposed to enhance the flavor, but they start to jump when they panic and if you consume them, sometimes they survive in the stomach and burrow into your intestines. Sounds delightful.
Just enough salt is used to prevent the raw Baltic Sea herring from rotting so when opened, it releases such a pungent aroma that it usually needs to be eaten outside. If you can eat it, of course.
Tacos with pork brains, sesame, soy sauce, and green onions have an incredibly bad reputation now. Not long ago, ABC News told told a story of one Arizona woman who had to undergo six hours of surgery to remove a worm that had lodged in her brain. Her doctors are pretty sure that the parasite got into her system after she ate a pork taco in Mexico.
Ying Yang Fish is a brutal but popular dish in Chinese cuisine and consists of deep-fried carp or other fish that remain alive even after cooking. After the fish's whole body is rapidly deep-fried, it's served immediately and supposed to be eaten while its head is still fresh and moving. Yuck!
Sakura-niku, literally translated as cherry blossom meat, is not as nice as it sounds. In fact, it's just raw horse meat served on its own, or as part of sushi, named like this because of its intense red or pinkish color.
Shark Fin Soup is a rare, exotic, gourmet dish of Chinese origin served at special occasions such as weddings and banquets. Notably, the fin itself is not very flavorful and it is used only to add texture and, of course, because it is seen as a delicacy. The cruel and barbaric way in which the fins are harvested make this dish very unpopular. It is even banned in a number of countries.
Haggis is Scotland's national dish with an exceptionally bad reputation. Traditionally encased in the animal's stomach, this weird savory pudding is a mix of sheep's innards, oatmeal and spices.
Good quality raw ground beef, served with onions, capers, raw egg and seasoned with Worcester sauce is really popular in France. While you should never make it at home, in the hands of a chef, steak tartare is a truly beautiful - and tasty - thing.
Eaten in China and Japan, Tuna Eyeball can be bought in almost any store there for less than a Pound. People say that it tastes kind of like squid and the eyeball comes surrounded by fish fat and muscles that are also believed to be tasty.
Before modern methods became available, fermenting was the most popular preservation method. Stinkheads - fermented salmon heads - are a part of native Alaskan diet and one of the traditional delicacies you can still try nowadays.
Also known as Blood Sausage, this dish is made using either pig's or cow's blood. Even though the idea may sound revolting, black pudding is delicious and pretty widely available.
Durian, an exotic Asian fruit, is probably the smelliest fruit in the world. This Asian fruit has such a strong, weird smell that it was banned on the Singapore Rapid Mass Transit.
Of course this egg is neither a century nor a millennium old, but it looks pretty rotten. The process of making a Millenium Egg is not really complicated - the normal egg is preserved in a mixture of clay, ash and quicklime for a few months until the yolk turns dark green or black and the white becomes a brown, translucent jelly.
Ikizukuri is the traditional Japanese practice of preparing sashimi from live seafood such as fish, octopus, shrimp, or lobster. It's believed that in this case the meat tastes better, but it's still a pretty horrifying and cruel way to prepare your food.
Blodplattar is a quite famous dish served in Finland, Sweden and Norway, made of whipped blood and other ingredients. Even though blood pancakes are healthy, nutritious, and rich in iron, it's still a pretty creepy dish not everybody can enjoy.
Cockscombs are a rare dish for gourmets only. Even though they look pretty nice, colorful, and taste just like soft little chicken nuggets, they are still weird and not for everyone. Could you eat one of those?
Mongolian Boodog is essentially meat that is barbecued from the inside. Made out of goats or marmot, it's a pretty delicious barbecue but the preparation of this dish often involves killing the goat in a cruel fashion.
Olive loaf can mean both meatloaf stuffed with green olives or an olive bread. Some people find the luncheon meat with olives inside to be a pretty weird food combination, but is it really bad? For most of us, it sounds delicious.
The Witchetty grub is the large, white caterpillar of a cossid wood moth that can be found in South Australia's Central Desert. The larva eats only the woody roots of the Witchetty bush, and that's how it got its name. People say that it tastes just like scrambled eggs.
Scrapple is a weird sibling of a meatloaf made of a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal, wheat flour, and spices. Originally of Pennsylvania Dutch origin, scrapple or "pan rabbit", was made from the pieces of the pig that couldn't be used anywhere else.
Fried Gizzards are traditionally made with chicken, but turkey, goose and duck gizzards are also very good. It's a widely available dish in the US that pairs great with beer and can be cooked in different ways.
Made of the little bats that live in heavily-forested areas of Palau, Fruit Bat Soup is a rare dish that will cost you extra. Of course, only if you're ready to try this traditional food of Indonesia.
Feet of hogs can be salted and smoked in the same way as other pork cuts, such as ham and bacon. People either love them or hate them, but nevertheless, it's still a pretty popular snack in the Southern United States.
Lutefisk (pronounced LEWD-uh-fisk) is dried fish that has been soaked in a lye solution for a few days. It is then rinsed with cold water, boiled or baked, and served with butter, salt, pepper, and other spices to taste.
Big grasshoppers seasoned with salt, pepper, and chili are still quite popular in Thailand. Fried in a big wok, they taste like hollow popcorn skin, except a little juice squirts out when you bite into them. No matter how good they taste, the idea of fried grasshoppers still sounds nauseating to many.
Also known as Greenland Inuit Fermented Seal dish, Kiviak looks pretty scary and unappetizing. If you have a sensitive stomach, don't ever try this bizarre traditional dish made of fermented sea birds.
Bushmeat is meat from various non-domesticated mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds not everyone would eat. It can be almost any animal, including threatened and endangered species. To name a few: elephants, gorillas or other primates, crocodiles, cane rats, lizard, and guinea pigs.
Burgoo is a spicy stew, similar to others, that is often served with cornbread or corn muffins. It's well known as the main dish of the civic fund-raisers in the American South.
It's still a mystery how anyone could think about soaking a dill pickle in Kool-Aid but it's a real thing quite popular in the US nowadays. The best part? You can make the unnaturally colored, red sweet and sour pickle at home and it won't cost you a dime.
Made of the edible larvae and pupae of ants, Escamol is a quite disgusting national dish from Mexico. It's somewhat of a delicacy there and is said to be just like cottage cheese with a creamy, nutty taste.
Guo Li Zhuang is a restaurant brand that specializes in dishes prepared from the genitals of different animals. The Guo Li Zhuang Restaurant in Beijing's most (in)famous dish, Dragon in the Flame of Desire is just a roasted yak's penis served with other food on a large plate.
Meet another dish made of an animal's reproductive organs. Shirako is, in fact, a cod's sperm sac. It's soft and creamy to taste. Can be served both steamed or deep fried.
This special soup is made of an edible nest of a bird called the swiftlet or cave swift. These birds produce special nests found only in caves and harvesting them is a dangerous business during which many people die each year.
100 or 1000 year old egg/century egg/millenium egg
Stinkheads
Sago Delight
"Sago Delight", or "Fried Sago Worms", are said to be creamy and mild tasting when raw or meaty, and taste like bacon when cooked. The fried worms are considered a delicacy in much of Southeast Asia.
Boiled or steamed silkworms, Beondegi is a popular snack all over Korea. You can easily buy these from street vendors anywhere. Those who tried it say that it tastes like wood, which is kind of hard to imagine.
This is one of the most dangerous foods out there - Fugu or blowfish contains a poison called tetrodotoxin, which is 1,200 times deadlier than cyanide. Fugu can be served only by expert chefs who must undergo two to three years of training to obtain a special license.
Another weird example of Korean cuisine, Sannakji ranks high on the cruelty scale - it's essentially the tentacles of a baby octopus that are cut into small pieces while still alive and wriggling. They are served fresh, just lightly seasoned with sesame and sesame oil.
Tripe looks like a mix of some weird sea creatures and has a peculiar and not entirely appetizing chewy, sponge-like texture that will take some getting used to. Made of the edible first or second stomach of a cow or other farm animals.
In its essence, it's the rotting carcass of a Greenland shark. Before it's ready to eat, it's buried underground in a shallow pit and pressed with stones to drain its poisonous internal fluids. Hakarl is also famous for its strong, ammonia-rich smell.
Usually, Khash is made of boiled cow or sheep's feet and head, although other cow parts, such as the brain, head and stomach are also used a lot. Once a winter comfort food, now it's more an exotic, traditional food from Armenia that only real gourmets can enjoy.
Shiokara, an exotic dish made of strips of flesh squid, preserved with salt in their own innards, is a kind of chinmi, literally translated as ‘rare taste'. Shiokara is really popular among the drinkers in Japan and usually comes with rice and sake.
Balut is a developing bird embryo that is boiled and eaten right from the shell. For some reason, it's a common street food in the Philippines and is usually served with beer.
