Every food culture has dishes that delight locals and puzzle visitors. A sheep’s head on a Christmas plate, fermented herring that is opened outdoors, grasshoppers sold like peanuts at a football match: each one makes perfect sense once you know where it comes from, what it tastes like and why people started eating it.
Many of these foods grew out of necessity. Fermenting, salting, smoking and drying kept fish and meat safe long before refrigerators, while eating offal, blood and insects meant that nothing nutritious was wasted. Others are simply local tastes that never travelled, or modern fairground fun.
Below are 21 traditional and popular foods from around the world, grouped by region. Each photo comes with a short note on what the dish is, how it is prepared and where it fits in its home cuisine, so you can decide which ones you would like to try. A few involve raw meat or fish, which should always come from a reliable source.
Europe: preserved fish, raw meat and festive heads
Smalahove, Norway: salted and smoked sheep’s head
Smalahove is a traditional dish of Western Norway. The head is singed to remove the fleece, salted, often smoked and dried, then boiled or steamed for around three hours and served with mashed swede and potatoes, usually in the weeks before Christmas. It began as a thrifty meal for poorer families who wasted nothing from the animal, and fans traditionally start with the ear and the eye, the fattiest parts.
Zwiebelmettwurst, Germany: raw pork with onion
Mett is raw minced pork seasoned with salt and pepper; when chopped onion is mixed in it becomes Zwiebelmett, and a cured, spreadable sausage version is sold as Zwiebelmettwurst. It is classically spread on a bread roll (Mettbrötchen) and topped with more onion. Because the meat is raw, German hygiene rules allow loose mett to be sold only on the day it is made, so it is a dish best eaten from a trusted butcher.
Arroz de cabidela, Portugal: rice cooked with blood
This rich, dark rice dish from northern Portugal is usually made with chicken, sometimes with rabbit, and finished with the animal’s blood. The blood is mixed with vinegar when it is collected so that it does not clot, and it gives the rice its deep colour and slightly tangy flavour. Blood dishes like this are part of a long European tradition of using the whole animal.
Frog legs, France: cuisses de grenouille
Frog legs are a classic of French home and bistro cooking, typically sautéed in butter with garlic and parsley. The meat is mild and tender, which is why many first-timers compare it to chicken. Frog legs are also widely eaten in parts of Asia, and much of the supply sold in Europe is now imported.
Soused herring, Netherlands: “Hollandse Nieuwe”
Lightly brined herring is a Dutch street-food favourite, eaten with chopped raw onion and pickles or in a soft roll, and sometimes held by the tail and lowered into the mouth whole. The first young herring of the season is sold as Hollandse Nieuwe. The fish is not cooked, but it is frozen before sale to kill parasites, a standard food-safety step for raw fish in the EU.
Flæskesvær, Denmark: crunchy pork rinds
Flæskesvær are strips of pork skin that are cooked until puffed and very crisp, then salted. They are a popular snack in Denmark and close cousins of Mexican chicharrones and British pork scratchings. The texture is the whole point: crunchy, airy and very salty.
Surströmming, Sweden: fermented Baltic herring
Surströmming is Baltic herring fermented in a weak brine for at least six months, with just enough salt to stop it rotting. Fermentation produces acids and hydrogen sulphide, which explains the famously powerful smell and the bulging cans, so it is usually opened outdoors. In northern Sweden it is eaten on thin flatbread (tunnbröd) with potatoes and diced red onion, traditionally from late August.
Asia: street snacks, cured eggs and a famous fruit
Basashi, Japan: raw horse meat
Basashi is thinly sliced raw horse meat, served like sashimi with grated ginger or garlic, spring onion and soy sauce for dipping. It is especially associated with Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyushu. Diners prize the marbled cuts, which are visible on the plate in the photo.
Durian, Thailand: the “king of fruits”
Durian is a large, spiky tree fruit from Southeast Asia, thought to have originated in Borneo and Sumatra. Its creamy, custard-like flesh is loved by many, but its smell is so strong and lingering that some hotels and public transport systems in the region, including in Singapore and Bangkok, ban it. Thailand’s best-known variety is Mon Thong, valued for its mild sweetness and small seeds.
Balut, Philippines: a boiled fertilised duck egg
Balut is a fertilised duck egg incubated for roughly two to three weeks and then boiled or steamed, so the egg contains a partly developed embryo. In the Philippines it is a popular street snack, usually seasoned with salt or a chilli-garlic vinegar, and people often sip the broth first. It is also eaten in Vietnam and Cambodia, and food-safety agencies treat it as a perishable food that must be kept hot or chilled.
Butod, Malaysia: sago grubs
Butod is the name used in Sabah, on Malaysian Borneo, for sago grubs, the fat larvae of a palm weevil that feeds inside sago palms. They are eaten raw, fried or grilled, and are valued as a rich source of fat and protein. The photo shows them alongside a spread of other Malaysian dishes.
Century eggs, China: preserved eggs
Century eggs are duck, chicken or quail eggs cured in an alkaline mixture, traditionally a paste of clay, ash, quicklime and salt, for weeks or months. The process turns the white into an amber jelly and the yolk dark green and creamy. Despite a persistent myth, they are not soaked in horse urine, and they have been part of Chinese cooking since at least the 17th century.
Soondae, Korea: Korean blood sausage
Soondae (sundae) is a steamed sausage made by stuffing pig intestine with blood, glass noodles and sometimes rice and vegetables. It dates back centuries but became a cheap street food after the Korean War, when glass noodles replaced much of the meat. It is often served with steamed liver and lung and dipped in salt and pepper.
Africa and Jewish tradition: insects, offal and aspic
Mopane worm, southern Africa
The mopane worm is the caterpillar of the emperor moth Gonimbrasia belina, named after the mopane tree it usually feeds on. It is harvested in Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa, boiled and dried, then eaten as a crunchy snack or cooked in a tomato and onion stew. It is an important, inexpensive source of protein, and the trade is worth millions each year.
Kercha, Algeria: stuffed sheep’s stomach
In Algeria and its neighbours, cleaned sheep’s stomach and tripe are stuffed with seasoned meat, rice or chickpeas and simmered in a spiced sauce, as seen in the photo. Offal dishes like this are especially common around Eid al-Adha, when families who sacrifice a sheep make use of every part. Names and recipes vary from region to region.
P’tcha: calves’ foot jelly
P’tcha is a savoury jelly made by slowly cooking calves’ feet, usually with garlic, until the collagen sets into an aspic. It is a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish dish from Eastern Europe, once served on the Sabbath with chopped hard-boiled egg, so it is better described as a Jewish dish than a specifically Israeli one. Today it is rare even in Jewish delis and is often made only to order.
The Americas and Australia: from grasshoppers to Vegemite
Chapulines, Mexico: toasted grasshoppers
Chapulines are grasshoppers of the genus Sphenarium, not crickets as they are often described. They are collected between late spring and early autumn, toasted on a comal and seasoned with garlic, lime, chilli and salt. Oaxaca is the best-known home of the snack, which is also used as a filling in tlayudas and tacos; people with shellfish allergies should be cautious with edible insects.
Cuy asado, Ecuador: roast guinea pig
In the Andes of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, guinea pigs have been raised for food for thousands of years, long before they became pets elsewhere. Cuy is usually roasted or grilled whole and served on festive occasions, often with potatoes. A colonial-era painting of the Last Supper in Cusco Cathedral, Peru, famously shows a guinea pig on the table.
Sea egg, Barbados: white sea urchin
In Barbados the “sea egg” is the white sea urchin, whose orange-yellow roe is the part that is eaten. It can be eaten raw with lime, or steamed, fried or stewed, and is treated as a seasonal delicacy. Because overharvesting has repeatedly hit stocks, the island has at times closed the fishery to let urchins recover.
Vegemite, Australia: yeast extract spread
Vegemite is a dark, salty spread made from leftover brewer’s yeast extract, developed by chemist Cyril Callister in Melbourne in the early 1920s. It is rich in B vitamins and has a strong umami flavour from its natural glutamates. The rule for newcomers is to spread it very thinly on buttered toast, as in the photo, not thickly like chocolate spread.
Deep-fried Oreos, United States
Battered and deep-fried sandwich cookies are a classic of American state and county fairs, where frying almost anything has become a sport. The snack is usually credited to a Los Angeles fair vendor in the early 2000s. Frying softens the biscuit into something closer to cake while the cream filling melts.
Why some foods feel strange, and how to try them
Psychologists call the reluctance to try unfamiliar food “food neophobia”, and it is a normal human instinct that once protected people from eating something harmful. Familiarity is what usually overcomes it: the more often a flavour is tasted, the more acceptable it becomes. That is why Vegemite tastes like home to an Australian and like a salt bomb to a visitor.
It also helps to look past the surface. Many dishes here are versions of things most people already eat. Blood sausage exists across Europe and Asia, fermented fish sauce is a staple of Southeast Asian cooking, and pork rinds are sold in supermarkets around the world. Insects such as chapulines and mopane worms are an efficient source of protein that needs far less feed than beef.
If you want to be adventurous when travelling, start with a busy local stall or restaurant, ask how a dish is usually eaten and try a small portion first. Be careful with raw meat, raw fish and eggs if you are pregnant or have a weakened immune system, and if you have a shellfish allergy, treat edible insects with caution; when in doubt, talk to a doctor.
Sources: Smalahove; Mett; Surströmming; Durian; Balut; Century egg; Sundae (sausage); Gonimbrasia belina (mopane worm); P’tcha; Chapulines; Vegemite (all Wikipedia). Photos as originally collected from reader and social-media submissions.
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