16 Bizarre Food Items From Around The World, Ranked By How Much You Kind Of Want To Try Them

Country Of Origin: Australia

What Even Is It? How does one describe vegemite? Well, in simplest terms, it's a beer yeast paste, meaning it's made from the leftover yeast at the bottom of a beer barrel. It's usually smeared on toast, but if you hang around an Australian for long enough, you might just see them spooning a jar late into the night. Hey, no shade. We've all been there with peanut butter.

How Is It Made? Once the yeast is collected from the beer, it's time to add the other ingredients. Those include onion, malt, and celery extract which offer good sources of vitamins. Don't worry vegans, there are no animal products in this Australian staple. The uses of vegemite are in the eye of the beholder. Instead of toast, you can add it to soups, meat pies, or whatever concoction you feel like trying out. 

Country Of Origin: Scotland

What Even Is It? Scotland's national dish haggis is a type of meat pudding that also contains oats, onions, and an assortment of spices and salt. The sausage-like food can include a mishmash of meats like lamb, pork, beef, and venison, but is usually made of sheep offal. 

How Is It Made? Haggis is typically cooked inside animal stomachs - particularly sheep. It's not a short process, either. One version of cooking haggis requires it to simmer in water for hours, while other options include baked casseroles or even microwaving it (though traditionalists will judge you for that).  

Country Of Origin: Peru

What Even Is It? If you ever had a pet guinea pig, you might want to skip this section. Before they became household pets, Indigenous populations in the Andes raised the critters for food - a tradition that still exists today. 

How Is It Made? The process of cooking cuy and the potatoes served along with it doesn't end with the physical steps and tools. There's a spiritual component to the thousands years-old tradition that's meant to honor the Earth goddess called Pachamama - the deity the Pachamanca process is named after. The dish is cooked by steaming the ingredients in layers of hot rocks. You can also fry or roast cuy. 

Country Of Origin: Armenia

What Even Is It? In simplest terms, khash is cow foot soup. Oddly enough, the winter dish is often considered a great hangover cure. The cow feet are also known as “gelatinous beef trotters” and are comprised solely of skin, tendons, and cartilage.

How Is It Made? Soup may sound simple to cook, but this particular dish isn't. One of the more grim components of creating the soup comes from the process of removing hair and other unwanted materials followed by a boiling bath. They are feet, after all. To add to its magical hangover cure qualities, you can add lemon, salt, vinegar, and raw garlic. Don't forget the bread, either. 

Country Of Origin: Southeast Asia

What Even Is It? As the name suggests, bird's nest soup is made of, well, a bird's nest - AKA “caviar of the East.” The edible nests come from birds called swiftlets. The different versions of the soup hail from three different types of the birds: red, black, and white. The delicacy has a whopping price tag of $5,000 to $10,000 per kilogram, with the red on the highest end of the spectrum. Despite the staggering price, the gelatinous soup lacks taste, making it more of a status symbol with alleged health benefits than a delicious meal.

How Is It Made? Bird's nest soup can be made with one of two secret ingredients: warm milk or rock sugar. You have to cook bird's nest soup with a slow, warm steam after giving it a gentle water bath. Any other way of cooking it will likely lead to the loss of what little taste it has along with eliminating the heavy nutrition the meal otherwise contains. Ingredients-wise, it's pretty simple, but just imagine screwing up a 10k meal. 

Country Of Origin: Japan

What Even Is It? Well, humans didn't coin the phrase “live fast die young” for nothin'. We love to eat foods that can kill us. In the case of fugu, the Japanese blowfish delicacy requires perfect preparation to avoid poisoning. 

How Is It Made? We'll skip the gory details of stripping the fish. However, the chef needs to be mindful of the ovaries, liver, and intestines, which are the most poisonous parts of the fish. While people say that the dish is deadlier than cyanide, most fatalities happen when non-professionals try to prepare it - and there has been about one death a year since 2000. From there, you just need to slice, dice, and boil.