# The oddest thing you've cooked?



## Claire (Apr 6, 2011)

What is the most odd thing you've tried to cook, and what were the results?  I don't mean Zimmern or Bourdain, just combinations you weren't expecting, or a new product you didn't think you'd like but tried, etc.


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## Claire (Apr 6, 2011)

Mine was a couple of years ago, a friend returned from a trip to Scotland and threw a Scottish-themed party.  It was great fun, and I looked for a recipe, not necessarily "authentic", but preferably from a Scottish chef.  I found Scotch marinaded shrimp.  I don't even _like_ Scotch, and can take or leave shrimp, but it was a huge hit, even with me.  It certainly disappeared at the party (my husband, who loves scotch, insisted on a good brand, I think it may have even been single malt).  Whoda thunk?


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## PattY1 (Apr 6, 2011)

*The most odd thing you've cooked

Beef Tongue. The X said it was good.......
*


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## Linda123 (Apr 6, 2011)

A turducken....got it free....don't want another one!


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## CraigC (Apr 6, 2011)

Don't know how many folks would consider it odd, but Karen made a smoked salmon cheese cake at my request. She isn't into smoked fish but I loved it! I took some to work and asked if anyone wanted some homemade cheese cake. You can imagine the reaction when they discovered the cheese cake was savory and not dessert.

Craig


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## Rocklobster (Apr 6, 2011)

My father in law and I cooked sheeps lung once. We did it in a tomato sauce. It was horrible. I put about half a cup of chili flakes on mine to try and get it down. NASTY!


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## Saphellae (Apr 6, 2011)

Rock.. that is GROSS lol


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## Zhizara (Apr 6, 2011)

When I commercial fished, I always brought Mom a fish when I got home from a trip.  Once I brought her a triggerfish.  Now triggerfish is not what you'd call scaly, more like armored.  One captain skinned it like a catfish using pliers.

This one was gutted, but with the skin on.  She decided to just bake it, skin and all.  The skin came off easily and it tasted fantastic.


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## DMerry (Apr 6, 2011)

A bear roast, many years ago.  It was frozen and I waited until we had nothing else to eat when I thawed it out and roasted it.  It tasted great!


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## FrankZ (Apr 6, 2011)

CraigC said:


> Don't know how many folks would consider it odd, but Karen made a smoked salmon cheese cake at my request. She isn't into smoked fish but I loved it! I took some to work and asked if anyone wanted some homemade cheese cake. You can imagine the reaction when they discovered the cheese cake was savory and not dessert.
> 
> Craig




That does sound good...

Hmmm....

I haven't done cheesecake in a while.


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## Selkie (Apr 6, 2011)

An entire case of twenty one year old U.S. Navy canned "C" rations. They were still good, even the pork in gravy and canned water.


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## Rocklobster (Apr 6, 2011)

Selkie said:


> and canned water.


 
I really like the dehydrated water.


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## Selkie (Apr 6, 2011)

Rocklobster said:


> I really like the dehydrated water.


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## 4meandthem (Apr 6, 2011)

An antelope roast!


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## Hoot (Apr 6, 2011)

I have said it before....I was raised eating a number of critters most folks would say is odd.   Eel, beef tongue ( for that matter I have eaten deer, bear, and pig tongue), chitlins,  pig's feet, chicken feet, well the list is long. I reckon odd is in the mind of the diner.


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## LindaZ (Apr 6, 2011)

I made beer braised beef in the crock pot once - and only once! It didn't taste too bad, but the smell - well, that's another story. Took two weeks to get the smell out of the house. NEVER again.


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## taxlady (Apr 6, 2011)

Porcupine, it was really, really delicious. Cook it like pork - it's fatty and could have trichina. Don't eat the liver if the porcupine has been eating pine or other evergreens.


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## Bolas De Fraile (Apr 7, 2011)

When I was young I had a mate who was a Gypsy as a treat his Mum would coat a hedgehog in clay and put it in a fire.The clay goes rock hard so when you pull it off it takes the quills out.


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## medtran49 (Apr 7, 2011)

We had homemade escargot once.  

Talk about smelly kitchens!!!! My ex decided we'd go crab hunting one night.  There was some kind of crab that would come out at night onto the roads down around Homestead, city right before you go into Florida Keys, and he wanted some of those crabs he'd had when he was a kid in Cuba.  Off we went and came home with a bunch of crabs.  Well, he didn't cook and I didn't know the first thing about cooking crabs (I was about 20) except that you steamed or boiled them so we decided to boil them.  OMG!!! the smell, it was nauseating.  He was able to eat them, I don't know how he got it down with that odor permeating the house.  I picked the rest of them, there was NO WAY I was eating that, froze the meat, and he finished it later on.  There was nothing wrong with them.  We found out later by asking an older Cuban woman about them, that you always cook them outside because of the smell.  It took weeks for the house to smell normal again and even though it was summertime we'd open the windows and turn on the fan when we were home.  I couldn't even look at any kind of crab for months and months afterward.  

Karen


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## betterthanabox (Apr 7, 2011)

Chocolate covered bacon


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## CWS4322 (Apr 7, 2011)

Lutefisk. The smell remained in the house for 2 weeks. Never going to cook that again.


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## Selkie (Apr 7, 2011)

CWS4322 said:


> Lutefisk. The smell remained in the house for 2 weeks. Never going to cook that again.



I recall watching Alton Brown's "Road Tasted" motorcycle trip up the Mississippi river valley, and after reaching Minnesota, they tried Lutefisk, which no one could stomach!  But, it was funny watching them try!


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## CWS4322 (Apr 7, 2011)

It definitely is an acquired taste. To my knowledge, MN is one of the few places where you can buy Lutefisk in the grocery store...and where the Lutheran churches still hold Lutefisk suppers in December...because of the way it is preserved, there are portions that are "jelly like" and other portions that are firm...that jelly-like texture is, well, an acquired taste. Thankfully, Surstoermming never caught on in MN. (The o has an umlaut).


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## kadesma (Apr 7, 2011)

As a kid I use to go frogging with my dad. That part of it was fun, cleaning,cooking and eating them was NOT. I finally got a taste for them. Now well not able to frog anymore and I refue to buy them at the fish market
kadesma


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## mollyanne (Apr 7, 2011)

I used to scuba dive off the Baja Peninsula of Mexico and Southern California coast. We would often come back with Abalone. I had no idea how to cook them. Someone suggested I take a rolling pen to crush a bag of BBQ Frito chips, use a mallet to tenderize the abalone meat, dip in egg, then in the Fritos, fry them, and then sprinkle some fresh lemon juice on them. They were tender and delicious actually.


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## Selkie (Apr 7, 2011)

mollyanne said:


> ...We would often come back with Abalone. I had no idea how to cook them. Someone suggested I take a rolling pen to crush a bag of BBQ Frito chips, use a mallet to tenderize the abalone meat,...



Although I never dove off of So. Calif., my good friend did, and after wrapping the abalone in saran wrap and aluminum foil, we'd lay it on the asphalt and drive over it with a pickup truck several times in order to tenderize it... and it worked!


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## CWS4322 (Apr 7, 2011)

When I lived in MN, when I was in HS, I was on a ski team--we'd stop in Duluth and eat--one of the "items" on the menu was fried frog legs--I loved them. But, I doubt I would ever think of cooking them...don't know if I could eat them now! Hormones (okay guys, that's menopause--taste buds change!).


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## pacanis (Apr 7, 2011)

I don't like frog legs as much as I used to, but I still have them a couple times/year. So much simpler just to cook garlic chicken wings.


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## Steve Kroll (Apr 7, 2011)

Two things: alligator, and earthworm cookies.

The cookies were made in a high school home economics class. I seem to recall the lesson having something to do with survival foods. Anyway, the earthworms were first washed and cooked in boiling water, after which they were dried in the oven, and crumbled like bacon bits. The worms were then mixed into oatmeal cookie batter and baked.

I don't recall much about the taste myself, but I do remember trying them out on a few unsuspecting individuals. No one had any problem with them until you ran down the list of ingredients. The looks on peoples' faces was priceless.


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## ChefJune (Apr 7, 2011)

Not really all that odd, but I don't like them at all. I cooked Chitterlings (aka Chitt'lin's) on a dare. The folks who are them said they were good.

I just stuck with the accompanying spaghetti and cole slaw.


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## ChefJune (Apr 7, 2011)

Selkie said:


> I recall watching Alton Brown's "Road Tasted" motorcycle trip up the Mississippi river valley, and after reaching Minnesota, they tried Lutefisk, which no one could stomach!  But, it was funny watching them try!


 
Nasty, nasty stuff.


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## buckytom (Apr 7, 2011)

lutefisk is a dare food. all nationalities have them, this is the norsk variety.

i happen to like it, btw, along with fiskeboller.


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## Claire (Apr 7, 2011)

CWS4322 said:


> When I lived in MN, when I was in HS, I was on a ski team--we'd stop in Duluth and eat--one of the "items" on the menu was fried frog legs--I loved them. But, I doubt I would ever think of cooking them...don't know if I could eat them now! Hormones (okay guys, that's menopause--taste buds change!).



Isn't that the truth.  But why did my aversion have to be watermelon and cucumbers?  I keep trying to love them the way I did.  Why couldn't it be potato chips or something fattening?


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## Claire (Apr 7, 2011)

Selkie said:


> Although I never dove off of So. Calif., my good friend did, and after wrapping the abalone in saran wrap and aluminum foil, we'd lay it on the asphalt and drive over it with a pickup truck several times in order to tenderize it... and it worked!



Abalone was one of my early cooking experiments.  We got it off some cliffs at Vandenberg AFB.  I pounded the living daylights out of it and tried to turn it into a chowder.  It was fish-flavored rubber bands (I think I didn't realize exactly how much pounding would be involved ... maybe I was too gentle).  I'm not sure if I've had it since!  For toughness, it was pretty darned close to the time I tried to cook beef heart (another high school attempt!).


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## Sprout (Apr 10, 2011)

This may not sound that strange to a lot of people, but my husband once told me that he wanted chicken cooked in strawberries. I've had chicken with fresh fruit in salads many times and always love it, but for some reason I couldn't get my brain to mix the flavors of chicken and warm strawberries. He finally bugged me enough that I gave it a try. Not wanting to waste good fresh strawberries, I mashed up thawed frozen strawberries with lime, cilantro, a touch of sugar and salt. I cut some chicken breast into thin strips, lightly salted it, browned it, then added the strawberry sauce for the last minute or so of cooking until it was warm and the chicken was cooked through. I served it in whole wheat pitas. I think we used shredded romaine in them, too. We both loved it! I'm not sure why I couldn't get my brain to like the combination before I actually made it, but it turned out great!


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## PrincessFiona60 (Apr 11, 2011)

Dad's CO on Guam was a fisherman and whatever he caught my Mother would cook and he would join us for dinner.  If I understand the story correctly, he got back late and put the barracuda he caught on the air conditioner so he wouldn't wake us up.  He called Mom around noon the next day and told her about it.

Mom called Dad and told him the fish smelled horrible.  My parents, teenagers from Wyoming, didn't know anything about fish, unless it was a trout.  Dad told Mom to cook it anyway.  I still remember the taste of the one bite I took...I was 4 years old.  Dad's CO was the only person to eat *that* fish.


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## Selkie (Apr 11, 2011)

PrincessFiona60 said:


> ...I was 4 years old.  Dad's CO was the only person to eat *that* fish.



Yuck!!!!


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## BigAL (Apr 11, 2011)

I just smoked some frog legs yesterday, I loved them.  Wife wouldn't try them, kids said it was too fishy.  Bunch of Nancy's!

I've also smoked beef heart and tounge.  Kids liked both of those.

I like try'n the "odd" stuff, never know what you'll like.  I now will pick frog legs over chicken wings any day.


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## PrincessFiona60 (Apr 11, 2011)

Selkie said:


> Yuck!!!!


 
If I see Barracuda on a nature show, I can smell and taste it...still!


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## Constance (Apr 11, 2011)

I cooked caribou once...it's in the venison family, but has a little sweeter taste than deer.


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## Claire (Apr 12, 2011)

I lived in North Dakota in my late teens/early 20s and Lefse and Ludifisk were at every potluck.  There isn't much I turn my head at, but ludifisk?  Lye soaked fish?  

I do remember once seeing a recipe for stuffed beef heart and I made it.  It was terrible.  Beef heart is so darned tough.  The stuffing was rice-based, and my father hates rice (don't ask me why).  I was probably 16 or 17.  It tasted ok, really, and everyone ate it (we were raised with organ meats), but it was quite rubbery.


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## BigAL (Apr 12, 2011)

Claire said:


> I do remember once seeing a recipe for stuffed beef heart and I made it. It was terrible. Beef heart is so darned tough. The stuffing was rice-based, and my father hates rice (don't ask me why). I was probably 16 or 17. It tasted ok, really, and everyone ate it (we were raised with organ meats), but it was quite rubbery.


 
Cook it longer and it gets very tender.  I did cut out some of the "silver skin" or what ever it is called that just won't break down, then smoked it.  I did 1/2 a beef heart and smoked till internal temp of 195* or so.  Came out nice and tender and we all really liked it.


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## sparrowgrass (Apr 12, 2011)

Groundhog.  Bear chops.  Raccoon.  Snapping turtle.

And when I first moved here, I bought a whole hog.  It came from the meat locker in white packages, and two of the packages were labeled 'head'.  Each had half the head in it, minus the eyeballs, thank goodness.  I just boiled them in a big pot, picked the meat off and added barbecue sauce.  Pretty good.


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## pacanis (Apr 12, 2011)

PrincessFiona60 said:


> If I see Barracuda on a nature show, I can smell and taste it...still!


 
Luckily that didn't translate to air-conditioning instead


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## PrincessFiona60 (Apr 13, 2011)

pacanis said:


> Luckily that didn't translate to air-conditioning instead


 
You are so right...I could have easily developed an aversion to the AC...


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