Food can quickly become boring or uninteresting if you eat it every day, so why not look for something new? If you’re feeling adventurous, you may want to opt for finding truly bizarre foods to feast on other than what you can find at your local grocery store. Who wouldn’t want to say they changed their meals up and ate ant larvae or worms instead of grilled chicken? If doing something like this sounds right up your alley, here are a few unique foods you can try from around the world (it’ll give you an excuse to travel too!).
Palolo
For some people, the first image that comes to mind when we hear the word worm is the number of them scattered along the sidewalks and roads during and after it rains. For others, however, worms make a popular dish, and in the South Pacific, palolo is popular indeed among Samoan people. They have a fishy flavor similar to caviar, and can be eaten either right out of the ocean when harvested or cooked with other foods for flavor.
Here’s a fun fact as an added bonus: the palolo’s head stays stuck to pieces of coral, so when they’re harvested, you’re only getting the back end of it. Enjoy your worm butt!
Escamoles
Once a delicacy among the Aztecs, escamoles—ant larvae—is a treat that’s still found today all around Central Mexico and in Mexico City. It has a nutty, buttery flavor and a creamy texture, both of which make it a prized meal to be had. To try escamoles, however, you’ll need to travel to Mexico yourself since it’s not allowed to cross the country’s border. What a reason to travel, right?
Turducken
Turducken has been around since the 1970s, and it’s something else altogether. It’s made by stuffing a partially deboned turkey with a deboned duck, which is stuffed with a deboned chicken stuffed with stuffing. To be less confusing, the order (from outside inward) is turkey, duck, chicken, stuffing. Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme is claimed to be the Turducken inventor, but some believe it was actually invented in a hunting camp, while an unnamed surgeon claims to be the true inventor. In any event, if you want three different types of meat at your next Thanksgiving dinner, give Turducken a try.