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I was having a conversation with a coworker the other day and we were discussing what the single most interesting food item / ingredient we had ever tried. I don't mean an entire dish, indeed we have a thread for that: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3631285 I just mean a single ingredient, like sturgeon caviar, or Lao Gan Ma, fish sauce, sweetbreads, Decatur Alabama Mayonnaise Based Barbecue Sauce, or even chili powder if you're from Minnesota. For me it was probably the first time I encountered bone marrow. I remember the first time I had it being absolutely floored by the quality of the tissue, the unctuous fatty nature of its contents - and how it spread so easily once you fished it out of the bone. Conversely, on the trashy end of the spectrum my life changed forever in November of '92 when I first remember having French's Fried Onions.
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Feb 4, 2015 00:35
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Gator. Fresh out of the back pond of a friend's house. I also convinced him to not go and kill it himself, rather calling a professional with a CITES tag take care of the job. We butchered and cooked it ourselves. Fried fresh it's an interesting nugget of meat, a little chewy and not unpleasant. Slice AGAINST the grain of the muscle, it can also be a little fibrous. It's best stewed in a gumbo though, all the gelatinous stuff renders out into the stew very nicely, and the meat is deliciously dark and toothsome without being tough or gamey.
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Feb 4, 2015 01:19
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Boudin. I'd moved to Houston and most groceries had some. So I, not knowing what it was, grabbed some. I was very surprised by the contents but holy gently caress was it delicious. Rice in sausage??? And then I had red boudin (sausage made with pork blood in there too). It was all amazing, and I've not had boudin since I left Texas. Also the aforementioned Lao Gan Ma changed my life and can change yours, too. My father got a javelina (a relative of wild boars native to far southern Arizona and Mexico) when hunting and cooked it in a pit when I was a child, and I remember really liking it, but I haven't had javelina in over two decades at this point. Ghost of Reagan Past fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Feb 4, 2015 |
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Feb 4, 2015 02:06
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The two I would say are sichuan pepper and fresh black truffles. Not together. Both strong, interesting flavours that don't taste of anything else.
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Feb 5, 2015 13:51
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Squirrel. I'd never eaten one until a few years ago, and was really surprised both at how little meat there is on one, and how tasty they are. Curried squirrel is great.
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Feb 5, 2015 14:28
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Li Hing Mui (Dried salted plum) has got to be one of the weirdest, most distinct foods I've ever had. I hated it the first time I had it, I believe it was Li Hing powder coated gummi bears or sour worms in Hawaii. For some reason, it kept beckoning me back and I got a serious addiction to it. I haven't lived in Hawaii in almost 15 years but I still get the craving and order some gummies from Honolulu once in a while.
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Feb 5, 2015 18:22
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Vacuum compressed watermelon, if that counts. Super different from just "regular" watermelon, but also super tasty. As a student, we had the opportunity to work with caul fat, something I'd jump at to do again, and because we were young and stupid, we decided to eat some of the leftover scraps. It tasted like cold fat.  ZetsurinPower posted:Li Hing Mui (Dried salted plum) has got to be one of the weirdest, most distinct foods I've ever had. I hated it the first time I had it, I believe it was Li Hing powder coated gummi bears or sour worms in Hawaii. For some reason, it kept beckoning me back and I got a serious addiction to it. I haven't lived in Hawaii in almost 15 years but I still get the craving and order some gummies from Honolulu once in a while. https://www.wholesaleunlimitedhawaii.com/shop/index.php Their lychee is good too; the texture and mouthfeel is a little strange but oddly satisfying.
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Feb 6, 2015 03:37
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Seal; in the form of a merguez. Pretty oily but strangely appealing.
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Feb 6, 2015 04:45
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Salt. That poo poo's magic.
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Feb 6, 2015 15:36
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Long pork really made me change my worldview
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Feb 6, 2015 23:38
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Uni was pretty interesting. Tasted good, but very subtle.
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Feb 7, 2015 00:14
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Black garlic. It's like garlic, but not. Very memorable. I just got a head of it. It would take way too much patience to make it myself.
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Feb 7, 2015 09:13
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Pepperoni. That shits amazing.
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Feb 9, 2015 02:52
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kinmik posted:
Nice, that is actually the same place I order Li Hing gummies from once in a while. I've sprinkled the powder on fruit like apples, mangoes, and pineapple which is pretty awesome. Once problem I've encountered is that all of the powders seem to contain Aspartame, which tastes super fake and kind of nasty. I found one retailer who sells an "all natural" version of the powder without Aspartame, but it didn't taste right and it went stale very quickly.
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Feb 9, 2015 18:40
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Witchetty grubs. High protein. Good in a satay. Decent texture. More pleasant to eat when dead.
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Feb 9, 2015 18:52
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... bacon?
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Feb 11, 2015 17:26
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Durian. Smells like mercaptin, the stuff they put in natural gas to let you know you've got a gas leak. Taste like custard and made my body feel warm. Very disgusting belches followed. Had a sea cucumber at a Chinese New Year dinner once. Once. Never again. It had the texture of KY Jelly that had been left to dry out for thirty days and then slightly reconstituted by soaking in water for 20 minutes. Slimey on the outside with a slight bite and then slimey goo on the inside. I managed to swallow two bites with only a slight gag reflex. There were four at the table and when asked how I liked my dish I said, "It's great! Want to try it?". The first person to try a bite gagged big time and spit it out. No one else would try it. I should have had the suckling pig. twit666 fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Feb 13, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 23:53
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I'm going going a slightly different road here but this sticks out in my memory: We had a guy tryout for a chef position and part of it was a 1 hr cook us food session, and he was a pretty cool dude and we were allowed to help tryouts find stuff or answer questions about what ingredients we had on hand or whatever. He's working next to me and he was like hey, ever eat leek roots? Spoiler: they taste like onions but it was just a moment of sheer "huh" that stuck with me. They were a cool looking garnish on his scallop appetizer. Not a particularly exotic ingredient, but just a new way of looking at something I see every day
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Feb 12, 2015 19:11
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Preserved lemons.
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Feb 12, 2015 22:21
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This isn't a single ingredient, but the ginger, thyme and jalapeno hot sauce I made last year was insanely good.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:58
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A 10 plate meal made out of a cobra in Hanoi. Including the blood and bile in the rice wine. Bonus: heart. Everything was actually pretty good! The liver was terrible though.   
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Feb 14, 2015 22:24
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Probably pig's blood, straight up coagulated and cut into cubes, rather than used in a broth or as a blood sausage base. Not bad at all though. Quite a bit like soft tofu in texture and really didn't have a "bloody" flavor.
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Feb 16, 2015 04:48
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I'm about to try cooking some camel, any pointers on what to do with it? (Will report back if it's good/bad/weird)
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Feb 16, 2015 10:28
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I've never worked with it but I'd expect lean meat kinda like horse, don't overcook it.
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Feb 16, 2015 18:32
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Yolo Swaggins Esq posted:I'm about to try cooking some camel, any pointers on what to do with it? I actually heard it's like goat. This, however, is not first hand information. I'd probably cube and stew it. Oh man. Great Dumb idea. Crock pot pulled camel. Get me a Costco of Sweet Baby Rays.
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Feb 17, 2015 07:17
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Yolo Swaggins Esq posted:I'm about to try cooking some camel, any pointers on what to do with it? I had it once in Sydney. My memory is that it was very oily, but the rest of the food was very hit or miss so it could have been the kitchen.
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Feb 17, 2015 09:28
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Yolo Swaggins Esq posted:I'm about to try cooking some camel, any pointers on what to do with it? I would slice it thin and cook it slow. It can be gamey and quite tough. Any recipe you might consider goat for, will work quite well with camel.
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Feb 17, 2015 10:00
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Shooting Blanks posted:I had it once in Sydney. My memory is that it was very oily, but the rest of the food was very hit or miss so it could have been the kitchen. Gwynplaine posted:I would slice it thin and cook it slow. It can be gamey and quite tough. Any recipe you might consider goat for, will work quite well with camel. Suspect Bucket posted:I actually heard it's like goat. This, however, is not first hand information. I'd probably cube and stew it. Thanks, it's currently sitting in my fridge waiting for me to accept that beer isn't food. I'll probably go with the slow cook idea though 
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Feb 17, 2015 10:46
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Fresh Turmeric. Looks like carrot, tastes like awesome, stains everything.
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Feb 17, 2015 15:55
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Liquid Communism posted:Curried squirrel is great. Squirry
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Feb 17, 2015 17:29
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kinmik posted:caul fat We've been using this enzyme that works as a meat glue, eliminates the need for caul. It's pretty sweet. As for my ingredient, it's Sodium Alginate. Mixing that into a liquid and then dropping dollops into a bath of calcium water makes a super thin membrane that holds a spherical shape, but pops in your mouth almost instantly. We fried liquid tzaziki by spherifying it and breading it. The inside was totally liquid, with a fried exterior. Trippy as gently caress.
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Feb 18, 2015 05:38
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FrancoFish posted:We've been using this enzyme that works as a meat glue, eliminates the need for caul. It's pretty sweet. I think I just got hard
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Feb 18, 2015 07:26
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FrancoFish posted:We've been using this enzyme that works as a meat glue, eliminates the need for caul. It's pretty sweet. How does transglutaminase eliminate the need for caul fat? Sure it can bind meats together, but I've never heard of it being used to form a sausage or case a meat ball? Nor add fat and flavour to a dish.
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Feb 18, 2015 18:44
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Cavenagh posted:How does transglutaminase eliminate the need for caul fat? Sure it can bind meats together, but I've never heard of it being used to form a sausage or case a meat ball? Nor add fat and flavour to a dish. I was speaking purely in the context of holding meats together. Obviously you need it for sausages, and there better options (in my opinion) for fat and flavor.
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Feb 18, 2015 22:35
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Yeah, I'd heard of transglutaminase, and I think ChefSteps on Youtube has an excellent demonstration for using it to make a roast or something that looked sublime. In that particular instance, we were using the caul fat to hold a chicken roulade together. It came out like nothing I had seen thus far. This was also in like 2008, so of course techniques would have progressed to better methods. I'm just saying that taking out a shriveled little thing packed in salt and spreading it out into a delicate filigree-like membrane onto a cutting board was a solely satisfying experience and I'd do pretty much anything to work with it again.
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Feb 20, 2015 03:38
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twit666 posted:Durian. Smells like mercaptin, the stuff they put in natural gas to let you know you've got a gas leak. Taste like custard and made my body feel warm. Very disgusting belches followed. Durian always makes me feel like I'm eating out of a rubbish bin and enjoying it for some reason.
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Feb 20, 2015 07:01
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FrancoFish posted:We've been using this enzyme that works as a meat glue, eliminates the need for caul. It's pretty sweet. Speaking little sodium alginate-like spheres, finger limes are cool as hell. They're little, thumb-sized limes but instead of segments like other citrus, the inside is full of dozens of indivudual lime juice capsules. I haven't seen one in a couple of years but they make a really cool garnish.
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Feb 20, 2015 19:35
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Liquid Communism posted:Squirrel. I'd never eaten one until a few years ago, and was really surprised both at how little meat there is on one, and how tasty they are. Curried squirrel is great. Yeah I used to take out squirrels with a BB gun in my grandmom's backyard when I was a little kid, and watch my dad and uncle clean them. We had a walnut tree in the back yard so anytime we were short on money for food it was like hey. Might as well have some squirrel. Good stuff, really.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:34
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Century egg. Tastes similar to what I thought a hundred year old preserved egg would taste like.
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Feb 28, 2015 22:09
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Weeks. Not a century.
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Mar 1, 2015 01:18
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