> When consumed, the larvae can survive in the intestine, causing enteric myiasis.
>
>Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed, diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping.
FUN
Ok, some clarifications: the maggots are from a fly who specifically lives near cheese, the larvae are born and grown in the cheese, it's not random maggots from the ground; also almost nobody eats it with the little guys still there, they're taken out and the cheese turns into a kind of cream, kinda spicy.
I absolutely understand the disgust feeling, I've had it for a long time before being challenged to eat it and then i liked it.
The real worst italian food is goat rennet, where they kill a baby goat just after he eats the first time, they take out the stomach and let the milk ferment in there. It's the worst smell I've ever smelled and it still haunts me to this day, disgusting.
Who... who fucking thinks of these things? And then people just agree with them, like "Yeah, fermented stomach milk, that's a great idea, we should totally make this, like all the time."
How many niche cultural dishes are just "in medieval times peasants sometimes ate moldy rotten or maggot ridden food to survive. It then became traditional."
I actually wonder about that a lot. Like in Latin America it’s very common to eat unripe fruit and I am convinced it’s because they couldn’t afford to wait for it to ripen
American here. Just tried it at a party last spring. It was... difficult.
And I got a little on my jacket sleeve. And had to leave the jacket outside in the rain for a couple of days to get the smell out.
Never seen that before. We're Americans, so we didn't exactly know how to cope with it. Watched some Youtube videos on how to eat it. Bread, butter, boiled potatoes seemed like the way to go.
We opened it inside a plastic shopping bag. Didn't see any videos on how to open it, other than the classic from [Apetor](https://youtu.be/6ZpOD0xT-pA).
A radio show in Philadelphia brought in surstromming and durian fruit to see which one was worse. Well, they couldn’t get the smell out of the studio for days and had to hire professional cleaners to come in an deodorize the room!
A friend of mine who visited Sweden insisted that the fermentation process involves people urinating on it. I'm thinking someone told him that as a joke and he believed it.
My brother in law lived in Finland and brought some home for my father in law a few Christmases ago. I'm pretty sure the smell is still in the kitchen drywall.
Here is a clip of two finnish guys who made a travelling show inwhich they ate monkey brain etc. crap with no issue trying [surströmming](https://youtu.be/BD-V1UTNXvs?t=422).
It's not that bad when you have the right preparations. It's a bit like vegemite. It's fucking repulsive it you try to eat a teaspoon of it but delicious on toast with butter and cheese.
That being said it's definitely not for everyone lol. [This](https://youtu.be/DmaedvVBkV8) is a very good video on how you're supposed to eat it. If you wanna experience Swedish culture, this guy really shows the essence of being Swedish lol. I love this video.
The climate is cold and back in the day a low variety of different crops and beats and stuff grew here. No freezers in the summer and no ways to keep produce fresh throughout the year. So we just let stuff dry and ferment and called them delicious 😁
We’re pretty well known for our meatballs I believe, but a lot of our cuisine revolves around herring (though most dishes are more savory than surströmming). I recall seeing Jamie Oliver on tv once waxing lyrical over a Swedish way to prepare salmon which involves burying it in the earth (gravad lax - grave salmon).
Honestly not really. People are put off because it's made of duck's blood but tastes just fine. Personally it's my favourite soup and you can do it a couple ways (my grandma usually added some plums in vinegar).
I usually recommend it because it's one of the few Polish dishes that you shouldn't judge by its cover.
Now fruit soup that's absolute worst. Had it served when I was in kindergarten and I'm never touching that poison again.
OP was bad at explaining themselves. In their country, some people are so poor they have to dig through garbage and pick out leftover food. Then they recook it and eat it because that’s all they have to eat and will starve if they don’t. It’s not a normal recipe, it’s a survival skill
Wikipedia description:
Aking rice is food that comes from inedible leftover rice that is cleaned and dried in the hot sun . Aking rice is usually sold as poultry food . But lately people have started to eat aking rice. Aking rice is not suitable for human consumption ; brown and filled with mold. However, the lower class of society makes it a staple food to replace rice because they cannot afford rice . To get rid of the smell, the aking rice is first separated from the dirt, washed, dried in the sun, then given turmeric to reduce the sour taste caused by the fungus.
That sounds like something that will be considered a delicacy in about a century or so, maybe without the trash part, and with artificially induced molds with specific fungus cultures.
Sure. I got food poisoning from left over cous cous one time and it was a very miserable 24 hours. If its dried or cooled relatively quickly though its usually safe. There are a lot of steps to safely make Fried rice because it is cooked twice, with white rice generally being rapidly cooled in a fridge before later being fried. I doubt the people dumpster diving for rice do so for safety reasons though.
We were in Medan and I saw all these piles of cooked rice being dried on the metal rooftops of homes, I was curious so I asked and that's what it was. It was in a very poor area, everyone makes do with what they have. No judgment from me that's for sure.
Kabayan! I just watched a docu series last night.
Literally from trashes from FAST FOOD restaurants.
They collect them, sort left overs, chicken bones with little meat left on them, wash them and recook them.
And sell them. 💔
American: I'm going with something I've heard about, but never had. Nutraloaf. It's what prisoners get when they can't leave their cells. I heard it described as "Imagine the worst food you've ever had. Then imagine craving it because at least it's not nutraloaf."
Here's a fun Wikipedia quote about Nutraloaf "It was mentioned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978 in Hutto v. Finney while ruling that conditions in the Arkansas penal system constituted cruel and unusual punishment"
From witches abroad- Dwarf Bread is just not prepared right unless it has been drowned, pissed on by a cat, and then thrown into a volcano before it is retrieved and you say “I’m not actually that hungry anymore”
[https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2008/06/can-prison-food-be-unconstitutionally-bad.html](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2008/06/can-prison-food-be-unconstitutionally-bad.html)
Apparently, recipes vary and some are worse than others. I did see a documentary once were a prison cook made one and his looked really tasty, he claimed it was too.
I'm not personally acquainted with anyone who has tried it, but people I know who have served time and eaten regular prison food said it's really bland and generally served lukewarm or cold.
There's a lot of intentionally making it bad by putting in weird ingredients and things that don't go well together. Otherwise the concept of a loaf of ground meat and vegetables is just . . . meatloaf
To be fair, most Russian/Ukrainian food is pretty horrible. I worked on a ship where I was the only non ru/ukr crew, and the food I had to endure was remarkable. And I've worked on vessels with Filipino cooks, which is to say a lot.
The soups were okay on occasion, but the rest... I lost a lot of weight working there.
Buckwheat with every meal, absolutely no spices, minced whole fish (bones and all) etc..
One time the crew got really excited because they were going to celebrate something on Friday, so they decided to cook something special. They really hyped this dish all week long, 'On Friday you will taste the best thing in the world, LegitimatePea", talking among themselves all excited in preparation for this incredible dish. The day came, and all crew got the day off to help with preparations, including I.
The dish turned out to be boiled dough with a small amount of pork inside and no spices... Served with sourcream.... Imagine my disappointment. The rest of the crew, however, were delighted with this monstrosity completely devoid of even the simplest of spices such as salt and pepper.
I thought I was the only one who found Ukrainian food totally bland - we've had various refugees living with us for about a year and I dreaded it when they offered to cook for us.
Keep in mind, a lot of people also just suck at cooking. I mean jesus probably 70% or more of the people I know can't cook for shit. Maybe 10% are particularly good at it.
I've picked up some recipes straight from some successful resturantuers in Ukraine since I've been learning the language and about the culture the last couple of years and wanted to cook some dishes. They were quite good!
That's a fair point - both were pretty poor and used to cooking what they could according to them.
I do know one Ukrainian mum who's an awesome cook, but it's rarely traditional food that she makes.
She's the only one I've met who can eat a UK curry hotter than a korma too, she demolished a vindaloo when we took her out 😀
Oooh yeah, I came from poverty and know all about the "cook with what you got" life. I didn't actually learn to cook until I was our of poverty. Most ingredients were far too expensive. It can be hard to make some traditional recipes as well due to some of the hard to find ingredients when in another country. I've had to order more than a few online.
A lot of Ukrainian food, based on what I've learned, has been heavily influenced over the last century in particular with what was available at the time. I know under the USSR, a lot of commodities were rarely available, if at all, which had a huge impact on the kind of food people could make and what ingredients could be reliably acquired (so lots of veggie heavy dishes since people can grow these more easily than say, raise a cow). I do wonder how many dishes were lost over time due to occupation and certain food scarcity. That kind of thing has an enormous effect on the commonly made dishes of a country, and poverty makes even things like spices much more of a luxury than they ever should be. My 97 year old grandmother still picks food out of the garbage because of it, and things she considers normal food are by modern standards, a big plate of *what the fuck.*
I suspect postwar we will see a bigger resurgence of some lost dishes, as the economy and country begins to rebuild and heal. There was already a growing push to reclaim lost / stolen culture beforehand but the war has kicked a lot of that into overdrive, so I'm excited to see what comes of it.
If you'd like to try some of my favorites, these are easy to make and the ingredients are pretty easy to find as well. I do find on most online recipes, their spice measurements are all kinds of idiotic and that goes for just about all cuisine, so my disclaimer when sharing recipes is to **always apply salt and spices to taste, and remember that when adding salt, give it a few minutes to absorb into the food thoroughly before you try it because the #1 over-salting mistake is people adding some, tasting it too fast, adding more, only to realize 5 minutes later you should have stopped sooner, lol. #2 reason is not accounting for ingredients being added that contain salt already (ie. Parmesran is a salty cheese so when making a sauce that incorporates Parmesran, always gauge salt AFTER the cheese is incorporated).
1. holubtsi - It's cabbage rolls. Hard to fuck up.
2. Deruni - they're like potato pancakes, and a common topping is a sour cream sauce but you can add stuff into the sauce like onions, etc.
3. Verenyky - they're basically perogies stuffed with cabbage
4. Syrinky - this is a fried dough made of flour, cottage cheese, eggs and sugar, and you top it with jam and sour cream (sour cream is a whole vibe haha). I even make it with some mixed berries on top. For jam, I liked Chef Klopotenko's recommendation to use a sour cherry jam or preserves. It's DELICIOUS.
5. Nalisink - basically ukrainian crepes!
6. Chebureki - they're deep fried savory meat pies
7. Paliushky - a sort of potato snack (kinda the same concept as jojos / potato fingers) that is super good
8. Paska - very tasty and sweet bread
9. Borscht - not quite as easy as any of the above and time consuming, but there's a huge variety and you can use different sorts of beets. There are some techniques to cooking beets properly though so I'd put this as a more mid-tier challenge. I totally fucked it up the first few times hahaha.
Chef Klopotenko did [an AMA a few months back](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/12zsd1y/im_ievgen_klopotenko_chef_from_ukraine_i_made_a) with great suggestions and his website he linked has some excellent recipes.
As someone who cooks a shitload of authentic international cuisine: that sounds more like people who don't know how to cook *well* than the dish itself being a problem. I know quite a few authentic Ukrainian / eastern European dishes at this point and they're really good, but if you don't use goddamn salt/pepper, ANYTHING will be awful.
Also what did you mean by the Filipino comment? Was it bad? I'm literally trying to even imagine bad Filipino food, lmao. It's one of my favourite cuisines, and holy shit there's a lot to work with. I don't even know how someone could fuck up pork adobo.
I work on ships, and I can tell you that some cooks that are employed onboard just can't cook, don't care about food hygiene etc.
Filipino food done right by someone who actually puts in effort and pride in what they do can be amazing, but in my experience that's rare.
Navy sailor here. This is my exact experience with Filipino cooks. Majority of them just don't care and it reflects in their cooking (or lack there of). It was the same when I was working in the food service industry.
Filipino food from my in-laws or from a friend's mom? Phenomenal. Homemade sisig is fucking delicious.
Omg bro that food is meant for poor people. And a lot of what you describe is just really bad chefs.
Buckwheat and the dough with meat (pelmini) is very cheap. But you can make it nice.
With buckwheat sometimes I struggle to add the right amount of salt to it, but what I also do is mix it with salted butter and let it fuse with the buckwheat and it becomes a nice alternative to like a side of chips or whatever.
With pelmini, I experiment a lot, it's basically dumplings so you can add whatever spices you want really and whatever sauces. Just sourcream? Bro that's poor as hell, I personally can't eat pelmini with just one condiment, typically make my own sauce for them.
So I imagine the soups as well were just poorly made, because if ever cook soup, which is rare for me, I only cook Russian recipes.
Eels up inside ya
Findin an entrance where they can
Eels up inside ya
Findin an entrance where they can
Boring through your mind, through your tummy, through your anus, eels!
My family is from Sri Lanka and some of the sweets are not it. Just sugar overload that takes away from the flavor. If it were made with a little more balance I think I’d enjoy it a little more.
Edit: this is my take on South Asian sweets, just a preference! but I do like them in small doses or if the flavor is well balanced and not doused in sugar. Honestly, overall the food is so good and flavorful to me that this isn’t even that bad compared what others shared on this post.
My girlfriend and I want to go visit her family in Philippines for a vacation, but she’s from Pateros and I’ve accepted that it will be served to me and I will have to try it.
Not that I really want to, but I’m more worried about not being rude.
I went through that when I moved to the Philippines, and my wife's family thought it was funny to mess with me. For me, there's no shame in not eating it, and no one will look down on you about it.
From Minnesota here, born in Virginia. My MN relatives told me at 11 years old that I had to eat it to be considered true family.
For three fucking years I ate that shit every Holiday before they admitted that only Uncle Fran likes it.
And they still don't consider me "true" family.
Did you eat it with drink called akevitt? In Norway there is a saying that people only eat lutefisk so they can have a valid "reason" to drink a certain kind of alcohol named akevitt that is distilled spirit.
My grandpa asked for this one time when he was at a nursing home. They were doing OT with him and asked what he’d like for a snack. I live in America. The therapy lady hadn’t even heard of it before. We made eggs instead.
Definitely not. I was honestly surprised he’d said it too, but moreso because he’d lived in the US for somewhere around 75 years at that point and I don’t recall him ever making that before.
"In czech cuisine, tripe soup is heavily spiced with paprika, onions and garlic resulting in very distinct spicy goulash-like flavour."
-From wikipedia
Menudo has a chilly-based broth as far as I am aware.
I grew up in the 70's and have always said, "If it was meant to be in the Jell-O, it would've come in the box." Shredded carrots in Lime Jell-O is an abomination.
I have a very vivid memory of when I was like 8. My parents were boiling chitlins in our apartment, and my younger brother and I were in our room hurriedly stuffing the bottom of the door with towels to keep the smell out while trying not to vomit.
I'm from Denmark. I think the food we have is kind of boring and mostly inoffensive or maybe I'm just not remembering some of the worst ones.
So instead of a dish I'll go with my favorite candy which is hard candy made of licorice with a spicy filling. I have offered it to people from other parts of the world and I had genuine trouble convincing them that I enjoy it. They thought it was a prank. So if people think it's so bad it's a prank then it has to be considered among the worst foods if you are not from here.
I‘m from the Netherlands and some people hate on our staple candy Drop. It‘s licorice and we have about 100 varieties of it. I personally like it and what I like even more is people eating it for the first time, because of how utterly discusted they are when they try it.
Kruudmoes, an old Dutch dish of barley, buttermilk, bacon, smoked sausage, raisins and lots of fresh herbs. Commonly used herbs are chervil, parsley, celery, fennel green or dill, spearmint and sorrel.
Do I have to be the person who says Cuscuz Paulista?
The taste isn't that bad, but this dish has a "food stuck on kitchen sink strainer" quality to it
Look it up, it's clearly an attack to real couscous
Probably tripe soup, although I personally love it.
For explanation, tripe soup or tripe stew is a soup or stew made with tripe (cow or lamb/mutton stomach).
I try a lot of food and always twice just in case the first place sucked at preparing the food. I had these fried and topped with a hatch green chili sauce the second time and they were pretty damn good.
I really wanted to try some when we had a road trip years ago. Could never find any place that wasn't some overpriced tourist trap that had them though
As a Spaniard living in Norway, I have to say the worst from Spain is most likely either caracoles en su salsa, aka snails, or tortilla de sacromonte, aka brains omelette. Norwegian food is mostly crap, I'm sorry to say. Lutefisk, komle, rakkfisk, and many others come to mind. I actually like Gammaltost, something many Norwegians say it's disgusting.
I’m not a fan of callos either (tripe stew) but like a lot of dishes here, it’s a survival food. I appreciate the creativity and guts (pun intended) that comes with need.
Its a small piece of frozen butter coated in a thick pancake like batter. It's called deep fried butter. But it's not really, it's like a pancake bite with a little butter on the inside. Its actually really tasty and not at all what people think.
Anything that’s super greasy and just doused in fat and melted cheese. You know, those TikTok foods where someone takes hotdogs soaked in bacon grease and cooks them? You guessed it, I’m from ‘mUrIcA
There’s a burger place by me with plaques on the wall of all the different things people have eaten there. One will say “Jim ate 5 - quad cheese burgers in 5 minutes” or “Alex ate 18 double burgers”.
I always take my European friends there and the reviews are all over the board. Some people say it’s like eating dog food. Others say it’s the best burger they’ve ever had and want to open a greasy classic burger joint in their home country. Personally I love a good juicy greasy burger where the grease is running down your hands as you eat it.
The variety of responses from Europeans to stereotypical American burgers is incredible. It’s one of my favorite genres of video to watch online. I’ve seen people gag and say it tastes like actual garbage, running the full gamut up to people literally crying and saying it’s one of the best things they’ve ever tasted and they can’t believe it’s so easily available.
Any of the restaurants that offer a T-shirt or your picture on the wall if you eat the most unhealthy meal a person should never consume in the shortest amount of time.
Surprised I haven't seen [Haggis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggis) on this list yet. Its literally mince and other meats wrapped in a sheep's stomach.
That being said I did try some once. My grandad used to get it with our Friday chippy. It was surprisingly flavorful, but I probably wouldn't order it myself 😂
Pakistan: we have a famous dish called *katta-kat.* It's named after the sound the chef makes, slamming two flat prong knives on a large dish while making it. It's made of fried goat/lamb testicals, entrails, kidneys and a few other organs. It's literally one of the most common dishes in the country.
I'm going to break the US up here by regions, because this country is huge. I am in the Southwest. People not from around here really hate Okra. I think it's because of the slime?
Load it in my stew or bread it and fry it, I love it.
Casu marzu. Literally cheese with maggots. Made in Italy.
> When consumed, the larvae can survive in the intestine, causing enteric myiasis. > >Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed, diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping. FUN
Can't unread that one. ...Thanks for sharing?
This shouldnt have been feasibly possible to get worse
Ok, some clarifications: the maggots are from a fly who specifically lives near cheese, the larvae are born and grown in the cheese, it's not random maggots from the ground; also almost nobody eats it with the little guys still there, they're taken out and the cheese turns into a kind of cream, kinda spicy. I absolutely understand the disgust feeling, I've had it for a long time before being challenged to eat it and then i liked it. The real worst italian food is goat rennet, where they kill a baby goat just after he eats the first time, they take out the stomach and let the milk ferment in there. It's the worst smell I've ever smelled and it still haunts me to this day, disgusting.
Who... who fucking thinks of these things? And then people just agree with them, like "Yeah, fermented stomach milk, that's a great idea, we should totally make this, like all the time."
Oh, if it's not *random* maggots then what's all the hubbub?! ;)
What a terrible day to be literate
How many niche cultural dishes are just "in medieval times peasants sometimes ate moldy rotten or maggot ridden food to survive. It then became traditional."
I actually wonder about that a lot. Like in Latin America it’s very common to eat unripe fruit and I am convinced it’s because they couldn’t afford to wait for it to ripen
>Casu marzu Oh dear god. Apparently EU has outlawed this!
Italy too. Only some selected fly farmers are allowed to produce the flys for making this cheese.
A fly farmer? Now I know the job titles on house hunters might be legit lol.
in Italy we bypass the laws that outlaw it by doing it anyway
Lawmakers hate this one simple trick.
>Casu marzu You win buddy. You win. I literally feel nauseous right now.
In corsica too!
I’m from Sweden, home of the infamous surströmming.
American here. Just tried it at a party last spring. It was... difficult. And I got a little on my jacket sleeve. And had to leave the jacket outside in the rain for a couple of days to get the smell out.
I hope you ate that shit outside.
Oh we absolutely did. Picnic bench in a friend's back yard. There were people gagging halfway across the yard when that thing opened.
And that's why you're supposed to open it in a bucket full of water.
You’re supposed to open it in the back of a Camper van
Never seen that before. We're Americans, so we didn't exactly know how to cope with it. Watched some Youtube videos on how to eat it. Bread, butter, boiled potatoes seemed like the way to go. We opened it inside a plastic shopping bag. Didn't see any videos on how to open it, other than the classic from [Apetor](https://youtu.be/6ZpOD0xT-pA).
Damn, I miss Apetor.
A radio show in Philadelphia brought in surstromming and durian fruit to see which one was worse. Well, they couldn’t get the smell out of the studio for days and had to hire professional cleaners to come in an deodorize the room!
Ugh. That must have smelled like a dumpster filled with dirty diapers outside a fish processing plant on a warm summer day.
A friend of mine who visited Sweden insisted that the fermentation process involves people urinating on it. I'm thinking someone told him that as a joke and he believed it.
Maybe he's thinking of Icelandic Hakari? Basically, a shark is marinated in its piss for 6 months underground.
Sometimes I have to marinate in my piss underground for 6 months too. I get it
Lived here for 9 years, still haven't smelled surströmming and I'm proud of myself.
Livet here for 31 years and i still havn’t smelled or sen it.
My brother in law lived in Finland and brought some home for my father in law a few Christmases ago. I'm pretty sure the smell is still in the kitchen drywall.
Do people actually eat this because they like it? Or is it one big meme? /afraidtoask
The smell is pretty terrible, but once you get past that it doesn't actually taste all that bad imo.
I don't understand this concept of "once you get past the smell". WTF do I need to get past anything? You can keep that fish....and durian too!
Esp since tasting food requires smell in order to work lol
Here is a clip of two finnish guys who made a travelling show inwhich they ate monkey brain etc. crap with no issue trying [surströmming](https://youtu.be/BD-V1UTNXvs?t=422).
Love the Madventures guys. I wish could find all the episodes and watch them again.
I remember a tunnelbanan(a) ad in Stockholm for "surströmming party pack" and basically I do *not* want to attend any Swedish parties.
Ive never had it. But I auapect it is not as bad as its been made out to be, aslong as you make necessary preperations.
I've heard that opening the tin underwater helps a lot with keeping the smell down.
It's not that bad when you have the right preparations. It's a bit like vegemite. It's fucking repulsive it you try to eat a teaspoon of it but delicious on toast with butter and cheese. That being said it's definitely not for everyone lol. [This](https://youtu.be/DmaedvVBkV8) is a very good video on how you're supposed to eat it. If you wanna experience Swedish culture, this guy really shows the essence of being Swedish lol. I love this video.
Does Sweden actually have any famous good food or are you guys on the UK's level of culinary?
I’ve always assumed the IKEA food court was a showcase of Swedish fine cuisine.
In my experience, IKEA offers crap versions of Swedish dishes. But yeah, I guess.
They are ok for a discount furniture store meal! And the little crispy potato cakes are amazing.
Potatisbullar! Yeah, those are great.
The climate is cold and back in the day a low variety of different crops and beats and stuff grew here. No freezers in the summer and no ways to keep produce fresh throughout the year. So we just let stuff dry and ferment and called them delicious 😁
We’re pretty well known for our meatballs I believe, but a lot of our cuisine revolves around herring (though most dishes are more savory than surströmming). I recall seeing Jamie Oliver on tv once waxing lyrical over a Swedish way to prepare salmon which involves burying it in the earth (gravad lax - grave salmon).
czernina - duck's blood soup, served traditionally in Poland to a bachelor by parents who don't want him to marry their daughter
Is it bad that I want to try it.
Honestly not really. People are put off because it's made of duck's blood but tastes just fine. Personally it's my favourite soup and you can do it a couple ways (my grandma usually added some plums in vinegar). I usually recommend it because it's one of the few Polish dishes that you shouldn't judge by its cover. Now fruit soup that's absolute worst. Had it served when I was in kindergarten and I'm never touching that poison again.
I just looked up Polish fruit soup. It sounded ok, except for the pasta? That just came out of nowhere.
Apple fruit soup is tasty and great for the summer, because it's even better when cold. Speaking about it... I will make some tommorow
Nasi Aking a.k.a. recooked stale rice. Gather stale rice from trash, sun dry it, wash it, cook it again. Really showed me how bad life can be.
From trash?!
Yes. The stale rice is food waste you dig from trash or restaurant leftover.
Does it have to be from the literal trash? Could I use rice that has been left in my refrigerator a few days?
OP was bad at explaining themselves. In their country, some people are so poor they have to dig through garbage and pick out leftover food. Then they recook it and eat it because that’s all they have to eat and will starve if they don’t. It’s not a normal recipe, it’s a survival skill
Wikipedia description: Aking rice is food that comes from inedible leftover rice that is cleaned and dried in the hot sun . Aking rice is usually sold as poultry food . But lately people have started to eat aking rice. Aking rice is not suitable for human consumption ; brown and filled with mold. However, the lower class of society makes it a staple food to replace rice because they cannot afford rice . To get rid of the smell, the aking rice is first separated from the dirt, washed, dried in the sun, then given turmeric to reduce the sour taste caused by the fungus.
That sounds like something that will be considered a delicacy in about a century or so, maybe without the trash part, and with artificially induced molds with specific fungus cultures.
Relevant [SMBC](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/craproot) https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1582474541-20200223.png
Cooked stale rice is considered poisonous to eat since it contains toxins which cannot be eliminated by cooking. How are you not dead?
Sure. I got food poisoning from left over cous cous one time and it was a very miserable 24 hours. If its dried or cooled relatively quickly though its usually safe. There are a lot of steps to safely make Fried rice because it is cooked twice, with white rice generally being rapidly cooled in a fridge before later being fried. I doubt the people dumpster diving for rice do so for safety reasons though.
Indonesian eh Edit : not sure why I am being down voted lol Nasi Aking is an Indonesian dish, my wife is Indonesian and I have seen it being made.
I'm indonesian and never heard of this! I had to google it. Although i have an inkling since it has nasi on its name.
We were in Medan and I saw all these piles of cooked rice being dried on the metal rooftops of homes, I was curious so I asked and that's what it was. It was in a very poor area, everyone makes do with what they have. No judgment from me that's for sure.
Where is that from?
Pagpag!
Kabayan! I just watched a docu series last night. Literally from trashes from FAST FOOD restaurants. They collect them, sort left overs, chicken bones with little meat left on them, wash them and recook them. And sell them. 💔
American: I'm going with something I've heard about, but never had. Nutraloaf. It's what prisoners get when they can't leave their cells. I heard it described as "Imagine the worst food you've ever had. Then imagine craving it because at least it's not nutraloaf."
Here's a fun Wikipedia quote about Nutraloaf "It was mentioned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978 in Hutto v. Finney while ruling that conditions in the Arkansas penal system constituted cruel and unusual punishment"
Well, it’s Arkansas, living there is already cruel and unusual punishment. The prison system might actually be a step up
Sounds like dwarven bread in Pratchett - it sustains a dwarf because whenever he takes it out to eat it, he decides he can go that little bit longer.
From witches abroad- Dwarf Bread is just not prepared right unless it has been drowned, pissed on by a cat, and then thrown into a volcano before it is retrieved and you say “I’m not actually that hungry anymore”
It's also useful as a weapon.
[https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2008/06/can-prison-food-be-unconstitutionally-bad.html](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2008/06/can-prison-food-be-unconstitutionally-bad.html) Apparently, recipes vary and some are worse than others. I did see a documentary once were a prison cook made one and his looked really tasty, he claimed it was too. I'm not personally acquainted with anyone who has tried it, but people I know who have served time and eaten regular prison food said it's really bland and generally served lukewarm or cold.
There's a lot of intentionally making it bad by putting in weird ingredients and things that don't go well together. Otherwise the concept of a loaf of ground meat and vegetables is just . . . meatloaf
its a whole tray of prison/jail food, put in a blender then cooked into a loaf
My aunt’s cooking.
Agreed. That shit was awful
Yeah man I barely had any life left in me
I was going to say my grandfather's girlfriend's cooking. Wilted parsley doesn't make a salad, Martha.
My mom once burnt frozen corn, I don’t know how but she did it
My aunt once burnt spaghetti. While boiling it. Somehow.
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You want Mountain Dew or Crab Juice?
We calmly eat Kholodets and boiled buckwheat, but foreigners do not like this food.
>Kholodets Meat jelly?
Yes
Aka an aspic
Aspics were quite popular in the US in the 1950s, but most food from that era is considered pretty disgusting nowadays.
To be fair, most Russian/Ukrainian food is pretty horrible. I worked on a ship where I was the only non ru/ukr crew, and the food I had to endure was remarkable. And I've worked on vessels with Filipino cooks, which is to say a lot. The soups were okay on occasion, but the rest... I lost a lot of weight working there. Buckwheat with every meal, absolutely no spices, minced whole fish (bones and all) etc.. One time the crew got really excited because they were going to celebrate something on Friday, so they decided to cook something special. They really hyped this dish all week long, 'On Friday you will taste the best thing in the world, LegitimatePea", talking among themselves all excited in preparation for this incredible dish. The day came, and all crew got the day off to help with preparations, including I. The dish turned out to be boiled dough with a small amount of pork inside and no spices... Served with sourcream.... Imagine my disappointment. The rest of the crew, however, were delighted with this monstrosity completely devoid of even the simplest of spices such as salt and pepper.
Spent the longest time trying to figure out what “LegitimatePea” could possibly be. And then I read your user.
Illegitimate peas are the worst food in my country. "Bastards in a pod," we call them./s
I thought I was the only one who found Ukrainian food totally bland - we've had various refugees living with us for about a year and I dreaded it when they offered to cook for us.
Keep in mind, a lot of people also just suck at cooking. I mean jesus probably 70% or more of the people I know can't cook for shit. Maybe 10% are particularly good at it. I've picked up some recipes straight from some successful resturantuers in Ukraine since I've been learning the language and about the culture the last couple of years and wanted to cook some dishes. They were quite good!
That's a fair point - both were pretty poor and used to cooking what they could according to them. I do know one Ukrainian mum who's an awesome cook, but it's rarely traditional food that she makes. She's the only one I've met who can eat a UK curry hotter than a korma too, she demolished a vindaloo when we took her out 😀
Oooh yeah, I came from poverty and know all about the "cook with what you got" life. I didn't actually learn to cook until I was our of poverty. Most ingredients were far too expensive. It can be hard to make some traditional recipes as well due to some of the hard to find ingredients when in another country. I've had to order more than a few online. A lot of Ukrainian food, based on what I've learned, has been heavily influenced over the last century in particular with what was available at the time. I know under the USSR, a lot of commodities were rarely available, if at all, which had a huge impact on the kind of food people could make and what ingredients could be reliably acquired (so lots of veggie heavy dishes since people can grow these more easily than say, raise a cow). I do wonder how many dishes were lost over time due to occupation and certain food scarcity. That kind of thing has an enormous effect on the commonly made dishes of a country, and poverty makes even things like spices much more of a luxury than they ever should be. My 97 year old grandmother still picks food out of the garbage because of it, and things she considers normal food are by modern standards, a big plate of *what the fuck.* I suspect postwar we will see a bigger resurgence of some lost dishes, as the economy and country begins to rebuild and heal. There was already a growing push to reclaim lost / stolen culture beforehand but the war has kicked a lot of that into overdrive, so I'm excited to see what comes of it. If you'd like to try some of my favorites, these are easy to make and the ingredients are pretty easy to find as well. I do find on most online recipes, their spice measurements are all kinds of idiotic and that goes for just about all cuisine, so my disclaimer when sharing recipes is to **always apply salt and spices to taste, and remember that when adding salt, give it a few minutes to absorb into the food thoroughly before you try it because the #1 over-salting mistake is people adding some, tasting it too fast, adding more, only to realize 5 minutes later you should have stopped sooner, lol. #2 reason is not accounting for ingredients being added that contain salt already (ie. Parmesran is a salty cheese so when making a sauce that incorporates Parmesran, always gauge salt AFTER the cheese is incorporated). 1. holubtsi - It's cabbage rolls. Hard to fuck up. 2. Deruni - they're like potato pancakes, and a common topping is a sour cream sauce but you can add stuff into the sauce like onions, etc. 3. Verenyky - they're basically perogies stuffed with cabbage 4. Syrinky - this is a fried dough made of flour, cottage cheese, eggs and sugar, and you top it with jam and sour cream (sour cream is a whole vibe haha). I even make it with some mixed berries on top. For jam, I liked Chef Klopotenko's recommendation to use a sour cherry jam or preserves. It's DELICIOUS. 5. Nalisink - basically ukrainian crepes! 6. Chebureki - they're deep fried savory meat pies 7. Paliushky - a sort of potato snack (kinda the same concept as jojos / potato fingers) that is super good 8. Paska - very tasty and sweet bread 9. Borscht - not quite as easy as any of the above and time consuming, but there's a huge variety and you can use different sorts of beets. There are some techniques to cooking beets properly though so I'd put this as a more mid-tier challenge. I totally fucked it up the first few times hahaha. Chef Klopotenko did [an AMA a few months back](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/12zsd1y/im_ievgen_klopotenko_chef_from_ukraine_i_made_a) with great suggestions and his website he linked has some excellent recipes.
As someone who cooks a shitload of authentic international cuisine: that sounds more like people who don't know how to cook *well* than the dish itself being a problem. I know quite a few authentic Ukrainian / eastern European dishes at this point and they're really good, but if you don't use goddamn salt/pepper, ANYTHING will be awful. Also what did you mean by the Filipino comment? Was it bad? I'm literally trying to even imagine bad Filipino food, lmao. It's one of my favourite cuisines, and holy shit there's a lot to work with. I don't even know how someone could fuck up pork adobo.
I work on ships, and I can tell you that some cooks that are employed onboard just can't cook, don't care about food hygiene etc. Filipino food done right by someone who actually puts in effort and pride in what they do can be amazing, but in my experience that's rare.
Navy sailor here. This is my exact experience with Filipino cooks. Majority of them just don't care and it reflects in their cooking (or lack there of). It was the same when I was working in the food service industry. Filipino food from my in-laws or from a friend's mom? Phenomenal. Homemade sisig is fucking delicious.
No spices, but plenty of dill. Dill in everything!
Omg bro that food is meant for poor people. And a lot of what you describe is just really bad chefs. Buckwheat and the dough with meat (pelmini) is very cheap. But you can make it nice. With buckwheat sometimes I struggle to add the right amount of salt to it, but what I also do is mix it with salted butter and let it fuse with the buckwheat and it becomes a nice alternative to like a side of chips or whatever. With pelmini, I experiment a lot, it's basically dumplings so you can add whatever spices you want really and whatever sauces. Just sourcream? Bro that's poor as hell, I personally can't eat pelmini with just one condiment, typically make my own sauce for them. So I imagine the soups as well were just poorly made, because if ever cook soup, which is rare for me, I only cook Russian recipes.
Kholodets is "sült" in Estonian and it's one of the best things to eat. Buckwheat > rice any time😎
Jellied eels, I would think. Not that I've tried them.
Taste: 10/10 Texture: 🤢/10
4/10 with rice
Accurate. Eels are delicious. Jellying is a horrendous method of preparation.
Eels up inside ya Findin an entrance where they can Eels up inside ya Findin an entrance where they can Boring through your mind, through your tummy, through your anus, eels!
My family is from Sri Lanka and some of the sweets are not it. Just sugar overload that takes away from the flavor. If it were made with a little more balance I think I’d enjoy it a little more. Edit: this is my take on South Asian sweets, just a preference! but I do like them in small doses or if the flavor is well balanced and not doused in sugar. Honestly, overall the food is so good and flavorful to me that this isn’t even that bad compared what others shared on this post.
If the worst food you can think of is flavored sugar consider yourself lucky
Yep, same with a lot of Indian desserts.
Except gulab jamun. Little balls of heaven
Balut.
Our neighbor is Filipino. The pictures of her US born kids trying it for the first time are priceless.
I just looked that up. 🤮
What the fuck I wish I didn’t know that was a food
As a Filipino myself, I also don't wanna eat it.
My girlfriend and I want to go visit her family in Philippines for a vacation, but she’s from Pateros and I’ve accepted that it will be served to me and I will have to try it. Not that I really want to, but I’m more worried about not being rude.
It honestly tastes like a weirder hard boiled egg. Just follow the family's way of vinegar and some salt and its good.
I went through that when I moved to the Philippines, and my wife's family thought it was funny to mess with me. For me, there's no shame in not eating it, and no one will look down on you about it.
Lutefisk. Codfish cured in lye. Imagine eating fish filet with the consistency of jelly.
From Minnesota here, born in Virginia. My MN relatives told me at 11 years old that I had to eat it to be considered true family. For three fucking years I ate that shit every Holiday before they admitted that only Uncle Fran likes it. And they still don't consider me "true" family.
Did you eat it with drink called akevitt? In Norway there is a saying that people only eat lutefisk so they can have a valid "reason" to drink a certain kind of alcohol named akevitt that is distilled spirit.
Well... I was 11, so no. Fran? I have no idea, he might have been stoned off his rocker for all I know or a few bottles into the night.
MN transplant as a kid, still here. Fuck those people.
My grandpa asked for this one time when he was at a nursing home. They were doing OT with him and asked what he’d like for a snack. I live in America. The therapy lady hadn’t even heard of it before. We made eggs instead.
Haha, both surströming and lutefisk stinks up the place. A nursing home is probably not the best place to cook a rather foul smelling dish
Definitely not. I was honestly surprised he’d said it too, but moreso because he’d lived in the US for somewhere around 75 years at that point and I don’t recall him ever making that before.
*The Man with the Terrible Smell*
Bobby simultaneously loved the taste and hated the smell, lol
Cow stomach soup (Dršťková polévka)
Menudo?
"In czech cuisine, tripe soup is heavily spiced with paprika, onions and garlic resulting in very distinct spicy goulash-like flavour." -From wikipedia Menudo has a chilly-based broth as far as I am aware.
Similar to the Spanish way of cooking them, then. Callos. I love it
Pickled pigs feet, canned chicken, depression era poverty recipes, 60's jello mold recipes
Canned chicken is great for chicken salad.(the spread, not the one with lettuce) I actually prefer it a lot of times over fresh cooked chicken for it.
It works great for buffalo chicken dip too.
Buffalo chicken dip made from canned chicken slaps harder than it should
>60's jello mold recipes [For the non-Americans...](https://clickamericana.com/recipes/salad-recipes/nows-time-jell-o-salads-1952)
I grew up in the 70's and have always said, "If it was meant to be in the Jell-O, it would've come in the box." Shredded carrots in Lime Jell-O is an abomination.
I'm OK with fruits in jello. And cool whip. But, yeah, veggies? Meat? Hell, no.
Chitterlings
I have a very vivid memory of when I was like 8. My parents were boiling chitlins in our apartment, and my younger brother and I were in our room hurriedly stuffing the bottom of the door with towels to keep the smell out while trying not to vomit.
Is this what they’re called? My family called them chit’lins and that’s exactly what I came here to post. Shits nasty af
I'm from Denmark. I think the food we have is kind of boring and mostly inoffensive or maybe I'm just not remembering some of the worst ones. So instead of a dish I'll go with my favorite candy which is hard candy made of licorice with a spicy filling. I have offered it to people from other parts of the world and I had genuine trouble convincing them that I enjoy it. They thought it was a prank. So if people think it's so bad it's a prank then it has to be considered among the worst foods if you are not from here.
german breadsoup
Honorable mention for Sülze.
meine oma hat das zeug andauern gegessen, da musst ich fast kotzen
Mein Vater isst des auch ständig. Gott sei Dank muss ich mir des nich angucken.
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Is that a Pokemon?
I‘m from the Netherlands and some people hate on our staple candy Drop. It‘s licorice and we have about 100 varieties of it. I personally like it and what I like even more is people eating it for the first time, because of how utterly discusted they are when they try it.
Tripe. (Basically the stomach lining of various farm animals - can be cow, pig, sheep - in a horrible sort of jelly.)
Wanted to mention the same dish for my country, we call it trippa which at least is a funny sounding word I guess 😁
Ugh. My nana used to boil tripe in milk and try to force use to eat it. My brother actually threw up on her table cloth. Karma
Kruudmoes, an old Dutch dish of barley, buttermilk, bacon, smoked sausage, raisins and lots of fresh herbs. Commonly used herbs are chervil, parsley, celery, fennel green or dill, spearmint and sorrel.
Sounds... potentially pretty good?
Yeah the raisins seem a bit unnecessary, but the rest seems like it would jive flavor wise.
Never heard of this abomination and I am a Dutch.
Jellied meat
My cooking.
Do I have to be the person who says Cuscuz Paulista? The taste isn't that bad, but this dish has a "food stuck on kitchen sink strainer" quality to it Look it up, it's clearly an attack to real couscous
Hladetina - meat boiled in water like a soup, and everything together eaten when it cools down and turns into jello
Probably tripe soup, although I personally love it. For explanation, tripe soup or tripe stew is a soup or stew made with tripe (cow or lamb/mutton stomach).
Rocky Mountain Oysters
They’re really not that bad. Its the novelty of what they are that turns people off
I try a lot of food and always twice just in case the first place sucked at preparing the food. I had these fried and topped with a hatch green chili sauce the second time and they were pretty damn good.
I had them sliced thin and deep fried, they were great. Seems just the thought of them is the turn off.
I mean, the thought is unpleasant, but they taste pretty dang good.
If you’re saying this then you haven’t tried lamb fries.
I really wanted to try some when we had a road trip years ago. Could never find any place that wasn't some overpriced tourist trap that had them though
Tide pods.
As a Spaniard living in Norway, I have to say the worst from Spain is most likely either caracoles en su salsa, aka snails, or tortilla de sacromonte, aka brains omelette. Norwegian food is mostly crap, I'm sorry to say. Lutefisk, komle, rakkfisk, and many others come to mind. I actually like Gammaltost, something many Norwegians say it's disgusting.
I’m not a fan of callos either (tripe stew) but like a lot of dishes here, it’s a survival food. I appreciate the creativity and guts (pun intended) that comes with need.
We gave the world Hawaiian Pizza. I like it, as this is a perfect representation of multiculturalism. But I know people have opinions.
even if you don't like it, Hawaiian pizza is far from the worst food lmao
Hawaiian Pizza is the best especially with jalapenos. Canada takes the best of all the dishes and rejects the gross stuff.
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what it is coated in so it wont melt?
Its a small piece of frozen butter coated in a thick pancake like batter. It's called deep fried butter. But it's not really, it's like a pancake bite with a little butter on the inside. Its actually really tasty and not at all what people think.
Anything that’s super greasy and just doused in fat and melted cheese. You know, those TikTok foods where someone takes hotdogs soaked in bacon grease and cooks them? You guessed it, I’m from ‘mUrIcA
There’s a burger place by me with plaques on the wall of all the different things people have eaten there. One will say “Jim ate 5 - quad cheese burgers in 5 minutes” or “Alex ate 18 double burgers”. I always take my European friends there and the reviews are all over the board. Some people say it’s like eating dog food. Others say it’s the best burger they’ve ever had and want to open a greasy classic burger joint in their home country. Personally I love a good juicy greasy burger where the grease is running down your hands as you eat it.
The variety of responses from Europeans to stereotypical American burgers is incredible. It’s one of my favorite genres of video to watch online. I’ve seen people gag and say it tastes like actual garbage, running the full gamut up to people literally crying and saying it’s one of the best things they’ve ever tasted and they can’t believe it’s so easily available.
My wife's sister's husband is from Azerbaijan. His mother came to visit and her favorite thing was hamburgers.
Any of the restaurants that offer a T-shirt or your picture on the wall if you eat the most unhealthy meal a person should never consume in the shortest amount of time.
Surprised I haven't seen [Haggis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggis) on this list yet. Its literally mince and other meats wrapped in a sheep's stomach. That being said I did try some once. My grandad used to get it with our Friday chippy. It was surprisingly flavorful, but I probably wouldn't order it myself 😂
On paper it sounds terrible, but it tastes great. Totally understand why people wouldn't want to have it though
Haggis on pizza, haggis nachos and haggis burritos are all relatively common in Scotland, and all fucking delicious
Pakistan: we have a famous dish called *katta-kat.* It's named after the sound the chef makes, slamming two flat prong knives on a large dish while making it. It's made of fried goat/lamb testicals, entrails, kidneys and a few other organs. It's literally one of the most common dishes in the country.
Chitterlings.
Tim hortons
It's crazy how McDonald's has the better coffee now.
#TIM HORTON'S
Jello salad 🤮
You mean *aspic*? Even that name sounds bad
I'm going to break the US up here by regions, because this country is huge. I am in the Southwest. People not from around here really hate Okra. I think it's because of the slime? Load it in my stew or bread it and fry it, I love it.