Welcome to a whirlwind tour of 10 bizarre cultural foods that will make you lose your lunch. From Arctic bird droppings to eggs steeped in boys’ urine, these dishes push the limits of culinary curiosity and test the bravest of stomachs.
10 Bizarre Cultural Foods Overview
10 Ptarmigan Droppings
Ptarmigans are hefty Arctic birds that resemble a more elegant chicken. To the Inuit of northern Canada they are a vital food source because, unlike migratory fauna, they stay put throughout the brutal winter months. In a landscape where hunters can endure weeks without a major catch, a reliable protein source is worth its weight in gold.
The Inuit have learned to make use of every single part of the ptarmigan – even its feces. But ptarmigan droppings are not a casual trail snack you can grab on the way to a seal nursery. Preparing this dish requires a delicate process. First, the droppings are gathered in winter, brought indoors, thawed, and dried – fresh droppings simply lack the proper flavor.
Next comes the seal. The raw seal is cut into chunks, chewed, and the chewed pieces are spat into a bowl. Adding extra saliva is encouraged. The dried ptarmigan droppings are then mixed with the masticated seal meat, stirred well, and a splash of rancid seal oil is added for extra gusto. According to those who have tried it, the result isn’t as terrible as you might imagine.
9 Jumiles
Every November, families across Taxco, Mexico, gather for one of the most important culinary celebrations of the year. The city comes alive with the aromas of hot corn tortillas, freshly ground chilies, and ripe tomatoes, while markets buzz with vendors hawking their wares to crowds of eager visitors. If you stop at a food stall for a quick bite, you won’t leave without a generous helping of the main ingredient – live stink bugs.
Known locally as jumiles, these green, crunchy insects are a prized treat in southwestern Mexico. They appear in massive numbers in November and linger until the end of February, during which locals harvest them by the basketful. Live jumiles are usually tossed into tacos, but they can also be ground into salsa, fried in their own oily secretions, grilled, roasted, toasted, or boiled. If you’re impatient, no one will bat an eye if you simply pop a live jumile into your mouth. The flavor is often described as “cinnamon‑like.”
8 Shiokara
For many Western diners, sushi represents the pinnacle of Japanese cuisine. If you’re feeling daring, you might try a dish called odori don, but that’s usually as far as most go.
It’s a shame, because Japanese gastronomy stretches far beyond sushi. Take shiokara, for instance. This delicacy consists of seafood served in its own fermented entrails, resulting in a lumpy, chewy, pungent slurry that can range in hue from light beige to deep brown, depending on the animal used. The most common variety is ika‑no shiokara, made from squid, though dozens of other versions exist. Typically, it’s paired with alcohol, and the customary practice is to bite into a generous spoonful of shiokara followed immediately by an even larger gulp of sake or whiskey.
7 Cobra Hearts
On Mangga Basar Street in Jakarta, cobra stalls open at sunset and stay bustling into the early morning. Here, patrons can partake in one of Indonesia’s most unique and macabre medicinal rituals – a shot of fresh cobra blood mixed with palm liquor.
The setup is straightforward. Beside each stall sits a cage bristling with angry black cobras. When a customer is ready, the vendor whips out a butcher’s knife, decapitates the calmest cobra he can grab, then holds the snake’s body upside down and squeezes every last ounce of bright red blood into a glass, all while chatting about the myriad health benefits of the sanguine concoction. Benefits touted include increased male sexual stamina, firmer breasts, and clearer skin for women. Vendors can earn up to $100 a night. After the snake is fully drained, it’s filleted and the meat is grilled shish‑kebab style.
In Vietnam, cobra blood nightcaps become even more hardcore. The process is similar, but instead of merely decapitating the cobra, the vendor tears out the still‑beating heart and tosses it into a glass filled with the snake’s blood and a few shots of rice wine.
6 Bodog
Even in the 21st century, Mongolia retains a strong nomadic culture that still practices the customs of their ancestors, many of which date back to the era of the great Mongolian Khans. While modern technology has seeped into the steppe between China and Russia – solar panels now sit beside traditional round, tent‑like ger – some traditions remain untouched.
Bodog, also known as Mongolian barbecue, is one such tradition. It involves cooking goat meat inside the goat’s own hide. The process is intricate and time‑consuming. After a goat is killed and beheaded, it is hung by the top of its severed spine while the chef painstakingly removes every bone, organ, and scrap of meat from the interior of the hide, taking great care not to pierce the skin. The viscera are left in steaming piles for dogs to pick off the snow‑dust‑covered ground, while the meat and bones are set aside and seasoned.
Eventually, the goat becomes an empty sack, signaling the start of cooking. Hot stones from a fire are stuffed into the dangling limb cavities, followed by a layer of meat, then more hot stones, layer by layer, until the goat is full. The sack is then tied shut at the neck and left to cook from the inside out. Periodically, the whole package is seared on the outside until the fur burns away, leaving a white balloon inflated with steam from the cooking juices. The result is a spectacular bodog.
5 Frog Juice
Peru boasts one of the most geographically diverse landscapes on Earth. From the lush Amazonian lowlands to the wind‑swept peaks of the towering Andes and down again to pearl‑white beaches brushed like a painting along the Pacific rim, it’s a country that offers everything – a visual casserole of nature’s most savage beauty. It’s home to ancient Machu Picchu, the icy pyramid Alpamayo, and the mysterious Nazca lines.
But one tradition is far from cool: every day at open‑air markets in Lima, vendors prepare a special concoction rooted in centuries‑old Peruvian folklore and mysticism – jugo de rana, or “frog juice.” Simply put, it’s a frog tossed into a blender with a dash of spices, herbs, and a squirt of honey. Supposedly, it’s good for everything from anemia to erectile dysfunction. When made with the endangered scrotum water frog, it’s nicknamed “Peruvian Viagra.” However, any frog may be used, and they’re employed indiscriminately regardless of conservation status.
According to the BBC, vendors can sell over 100 of these smoothies each day, each featuring a freshly blended frog as the creamy centerpiece. The open sale of the drink illustrates the clash between tradition and modern conservation laws in Peru. If ten jugo de rana stalls close one week, ten more pop up the next. The practice is akin to trying to stay dry in a hurricane by swatting raindrops; if left unchecked, entire Amazonian frog species could vanish in the time it takes to chug a mug of slimy, green, frog‑flavored “Viagra.”
4 Wasp Crackers
In early 2015, a handful of photos began circulating online, showing a cracker studded with dead wasps, reminiscent of chocolate chips. Far from a hoax, these wasp crackers are genuine and apparently quite popular around Omachi, Japan.
More of a fad than a delicacy, the crackers are made from digger wasps harvested from the wild. The wasps are boiled, dried, and then incorporated into the traditional rice‑cracker mix, or senbei. The idea originated when a group in Omachi partnered with a local bakery to create the crunchy treat. According to RocketNews24, the wasps taste like bitter raisins, and the only real downside is the occasional leg getting stuck between your teeth.
3 Dragon In The Flame Of Desire
China’s cuisine doesn’t beat around the bush. The food is vibrant, in‑your‑face, and full of life, a culinary kaleidoscope cultivated over centuries. An old Chinese saying claims they’ll eat anything with four legs except a table, and the six‑ and eight‑legged critters are certainly on the menu. Yet even in China, some dishes are considered rarities.
The Guolizhuang Restaurant has struggled to get its offerings into the mouths and hearts of Beijing’s diners for a good reason: every dish is made from penis. When you order “The Essence of the Golden Buddha,” “Lotus Flowers with 1,000 Layers,” or “Dragon in the Flame of Desire,” you receive ox penis, donkey penis, or yak penis, respectively. The menu also offers a single dish made from tiger penis, priced at $5,700 and requiring months of advance ordering to procure the parts. If you can’t decide which penis to try, you can order the “hotpot,” which features six types of penis and four testicles – essentially the Applebee’s sampler plate of genitalia.
2 Snake Wine
If you travel anywhere in Southeast Asia, you’ll likely encounter a bottle of snake wine at some point. Found from Ho Chi Minh City to Hong Kong, snake wine stems from a long tradition of holistic medicine. It’s said the snake infuses the liquor with healing properties capable of treating everything from skin conditions to arthritis, with the effect believed to come from the snake’s venom seeping into the wine.
Regardless of the truth, there’s something morbid about seeing a curled‑up snake floating in a jar of amber booze. According to Vice, production is even more unsettling: a live snake is coaxed into a bottle, then rice wine is poured over it, drowning the snake alive. A shot of the concoction certainly packs a bite, but sometimes the bite comes from the snake itself. There have been several stories of home‑made snake wine where the snake remained alive after months of storage. In 2013, a Chinese woman reportedly went to the hospital after the viper in her wine leapt out and bit her.
1 Virgin Boy Eggs
For centuries, spring has heralded one of the most revered traditions in Dongyang, China. As the weather warms and the first signs of greenery grace the hillsides, egg vendors make their yearly pilgrimage to the region’s elementary schools, where rows of buckets await collection for transport back to market stalls.
Over the next few days, a new scent fills the air – the “smell of spring,” according to some locals. If you wander the city’s streets, you’ll likely see large pots brimming with eggs simmering in a clear, yellowish liquid.
The liquid is the urine of young boys. Virgin boy eggs have been part of Dongyang’s culinary heritage for hundreds of years. No one remembers how the practice began or why the urine must come from boys, but tradition endures. Once the urine is collected from schools (boys are encouraged to urinate into buckets rather than toilets), the eggs are dropped into the pots and boiled. After the shells are cracked, the eggs are returned to the liquid to soak for a few more hours. It takes a day to produce a batch, and the eggs sell for twice the price of a regular boiled egg.