Most Terrifying Foods To Eat If You’re A Vegetarian
Eating is a necessity that many – if not all – of us will have to undertake to survive. Over the course of time, many cultures and indeed people within those cultures have chosen to have their diets differ from those around them, sometimes defining themselves by their diet.
We have meat-eaters, vegetarians, vegans and many other diet types which have protracted names and various meanings. But the crux of the matter is this: there are many types of diet in which members of these various diets will not stray from a certain food set. A carnivore will not subsist on a diet of only vegetables, a fruitarian will continue to be insane and only eat fruit and many, many others will abstain from eating meat altogether.
There is one universal fact at the heart of everything: eating meat is awesome. It tastes nice, is human nature and is just generally a great way to spend your time. Meat is delicious. Delicious meat. However, some will argue that eating meat is not the natural order of things. Instead of listening to their rant and then entering into what will no doubt become a heated argument, you should shove these hilariously anti-vegetarian meals in their faces.
Head Cheese
Just as disgusting as it sounds (or maybe not quite as disgusting as it sounds, depending on your frame of mind), head cheese is not actually a cheese at all, but meat taken from the heads of various animals (such as sheep, cow, pig or calf) which is then encased in that weird meat jelly (which is actually called aspic) along with various seasonings like onions, salt and vinegar, black pepper and others.
The meat in head cheese (the name alone is unpleasant enough) isn’t limited to “head meat” but can also include meat from the heart, tongue and feet of the animal as well. So essentially, you have random bits of meat from slightly uncommon parts of animals, smooshed into that weird meat jelly stuff that’s generally really unappealing to behold and then seasoned with more traditional seasonings.
As you can see from the pictures, the head cheese itself is quite unusual to look at, having the appearance of a brick wall built by an amateur builder or some sort, who used jelly instead of cement.
Papaitan
A true nightmare of a dish, papaitan is from the Philippines and mainly consists of animal offal (tripe, liver, intestines, pancreas, kidney, heart…Anything, really) being mashed into a stew.
However, that’s not all, folks, as it’s then flavored with garlic, ginger, onion, salt, pepper and maybe some other, less disgusting-sounding ingredients. But perhaps the real coup de grace is that the stew is also flavored with bile (yes, BILE, the stuff that you can bring up when you vomit) to give it its characteristic bitterness (the word for bitter being “pait”, where the dish gets its name), but also imparting a sweetish aftertaste, allegedly.
Papaitan is traditionally made with goat offal and bile, but can also be made with ox or beef offal as well, depending on the particular tastes of whoever is brave enough to eat this arcane concoction of animal bits and juices. It’s mainly served during festive occasions and due to its highly-seasoned nature, goes well with various beers and gins, accompanied by some rice.
Because of the content and its stew-like nature, papaitan can also serve as a great source of warmth and energy. So remember next time when you’re a bit cold and worn down, you can perk yourself up again with a sumptuous onion-y stew made from animal guts and vomit constituent.
Black Pudding
Also known as blood sausage, it is basically a sausage made by cooking the blood of an animal (usually pig, cow, sheep or goat, with chicken and horse being used rarely) with filler until it reaches a thickness where it can easily congeal when cooled. Filler to be cooked along with the blood might consists of any number of things, but is typically ingredients like fat, meat, potato, bread, oatmeal, suet and various other agents that’ll help to thicken the blood but still proved some sort of taste or flavoring, as you can’t just go and put solid blood into a sausage now, can you? Oh wait, you can.
The blood sausage is generally served as part of a traditional breakfast in some areas of the United Kingdom and some Canadian provinces. Furthermore, the dish is also eaten all over Europe, with many regional variants coming into play. It is less common and even difficult to find in America and blood sausage-eating is usually confined to certain ethnic groups whose tradition calls for the eating of blood sausage.
Outside of North America, the blood sausage is surprisingly prevalent and popular, despite it really just being a sausage made from the cooked blood of a random animal.
Pacha
This terrifying abomination of a meal heralds from Iraq and consists of you eating boiled sheep’s head. That’s pretty much it. Oh, also, you might get some trotters and stomach thrown in there if you’ve been good.
The ingredients are all boiled slowly so that a sort of broth (read: distilled liquid nightmare) forms around the head, and whatever other body parts are being boiled. It is then seasoned to taste (most likely with the screams of children) and served with some bread soaking in the broth itself. If the stomach is being served as well, then that would most likely be filled with rice and lamb before being sewn shut to keep all that stomach-flavored goodness inside.
Perhaps the worst part of the dish is that once you get over the oddness of eating a boiled sheep’s head, all you’re really doing is eating sheep meat, until the terror reveals itself with each consecutive mouthful of boiled head meat. Piece by piece and scrap of flesh by scrap of flesh, you will slowly reveal the rictus grin of the sheep skull beneath. Depending on whether or not you opt to have the eyeballs removed or left in, by the time you finish your pacha, you’ll be left with a skull on a plate, its empty eye-sockets a hollow mockery of their former selves.
Dog Meat
Not the friendly dog companion from Fallout, but rather the meat from dogs, cooked to taste. These dogs that are to be served as food are raised in the same manner as other consumable animals, on farms to eventually be slaughtered. The attitudes of a culture towards dog meat vary greatly from country to country, however it is the general consensus amongst Westerners that eating dog meat is regarded as being taboo, but of course there are some for and some against the idea (and not just limited to those in the West, as some inhabitants of dog-eating cultures are also opposed to the idea), as with most ideas.
Amongst the cultures that do tend to opt for dog-flesh, it is usually only dogs reared specifically for eating that are consumed, as opposed to others that are raised to be pets. A dog can be prepared and cooked in a number of different ways, as with more commonplace meats, but can involve being boiled, skinned or even flash-burned to remove all the fur in one go. The dog meat itself is typically stewed with a thick gravy before serving. However, as with the majority of these things, the preparation and serving methods will vary greatly from region to region and culture to culture. Woof woof, nom nom.
Haggis
Whilst this dish is popularly thought of to be of Scottish origin, the first known recipes for the vile thing have been found in parts of North-West England. The meal – if it can be called as such – traditionally consists of the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep, mashed up with things like salt, onion, oatmeal, suet and other seasonings, all boiled inside the sheep’s stomach (although most commercial haggis these days is prepared in standard casing as opposed to an actual stomach).
Since its conception – which must have been purely by accident, perhaps after an entire sheep fell into some mashed up onions and stuff – haggis has become a traditional Scottish dish, immortalized in the Robert Burns poem “Address to a Haggis” and traditionally served with swede and potatoes, along with a glass of whiskey as part of a Burns supper.
December 22nd, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Well, I’ve been a veggie for 20 years, and if anything I’d say it’s made me less squeamish about blood’n’guts like these. If you’re going to kill something and eat it, what makes its intestines so much more “terrifying” than its liver?
But let me offer Natto, the cheesy, stringy, slimy fermented soybeans from Japan as a vegetarian challenge for all you big, tough, omnivores.
December 22nd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
What makes these meat delicacies any different from any others? They’re all dead animal.
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Ew….I was starving when I started reading this article..Now, I think it’ll be a while before I can look at any meat.
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I have had the head cheese when I visited France, and had blood saussage at a folk festival in yorkshire (UK). Both were actually quite plesent. The saussage kinda tastes like a dry burger and the head cheese is similar to your average patés.
I am still determined to have a haggis, it looks really tasty. I would also eat a dog if it was offered to me but the sheeps head looks absolutly horrific! and the Papaitan aint too appealing either
December 22nd, 2009 at 7:42 pm
ignorant BASTAAAAAAAAAAARD
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:39 am
I just finished a plate of haggis about 20 min ago. I also had black pudding yesterday for my lunch. The two of them are really tasty. Dont bash it until youve tried it!!
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 am
Haggis is not vile!
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:44 am
This makes me sick. I understand different cultures regard different things as ‘normal’, but it just makes me sick. Terrifying, really, as the title states.
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Haggis is actually not that bad. Head cheese is actually quite vile as it involves aspic jelly and reminds me of terrines. Bleh.
December 23rd, 2009 at 4:46 pm
fucking nasty. not just for vegetarians either. unsituated eats meat, and this is fucking nasty.
December 23rd, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Oh man. That picture of the pomeranian puppy with the toilet paper roll on it’s leg had me rolling in the aisles. WELL DONE, GOOD SIR!
December 25th, 2009 at 2:41 am
I have to say, the goat’s head thing doesn’t seem too bad to me. Having dissected a human head in anatomy class, I wouldn’t have much of a problem. Nothing else really appeals to me, and as a pet lover, the cooked dogs creep me out.
December 25th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
looks like my mother in law cooking
December 26th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Great article. Perhaps you’d like to add menudo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menudo_%28soup%29… (made with stomach tripe).
December 27th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Hmmm………..black pudding – an fried English breakfast is nothing without the king of blood related eatables. Yes, the whole concept sounds disgusting but the taste is fantastic.
I’d have to say tha,t knowing how good black pudding is (raw as well as cooked), it would be wrong for me to knock anything else you have presented, without first tasting it. You have given me something to aim for in 2010. Thanks!
December 27th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
I’m not a vegetarian, but… yuck.
December 27th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
vegans suck. horribly
December 28th, 2009 at 2:26 am
Jeeze, its not that bad. I would eat anything on this list, with the possible exception of dog, and wouldnt think twice about it. Toughen up.
December 28th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Why should a dog be different from other animals, especially for a vegetarian?
December 30th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
while studying abroad in the Philippines I developed quite a taste for balut — as unappetizing as it may appear those partially formed chicken embryos are very tasty (along with some san miguel, of course)
December 31st, 2009 at 12:45 am
Missing a couple here. Bolut (or bolot, spellings vary) from the Philippines is probably one of the nastiest things on the planet. The thousand year old eggs from china are up there as well, or the American classic pickled pigs feet. Or even some classics from Europe, as in horse meat from France, or steak tar-tar. Even carpaccio would be up there. Lest we forget traditional sushi (funazushi?) fermented fish and rice…delish!
December 31st, 2009 at 6:35 pm
i’ve eaten more than half of these, and would gladly eat the others. once i start getting full, the whole-head item gets a little dicey for me–the kind of inversion of my hunger and awareness causing my stomach to revolt a little as well–but not so with any of the others. in fact, i had head cheese for lunch yesterday at harrison ford’s son’s restaurant–head cheese and a bloody mary. nom nom NOM.
dwg
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Generally sausages of all cultures are made using the intestines. What is used as filling differs, but usually minced offal, skin, cartilege, meat and in many cases flour and/or blood. It is a much more economic way of using the animal than feeding the offal back to them (which increases the chances of them contracting diseases, for example, the mad cow disease). Those with strict vegan diets should remember that the dietary supplement pills are essentially made from offal.
January 3rd, 2010 at 7:24 am
I’ve had a few of these and they taste OK.
Compared to Balut Egg….Look it up!
January 3rd, 2010 at 1:27 pm
The head cheese, or “Hog’s head cheese” as it is known here in south Louisiana is a traditional cajun delicacy and is very delicious. Although the version you buy in the local stores are not made using the pig’s head, but rather other bone parts with meat fragments boiled down with seasonings and then mixed with the gelatin and cooled overnight. The blood boudin (like sausage with rice) is traditional also, but not sold in stores due to health board laws concerning blood.
January 4th, 2010 at 12:40 am
As a die-hard meat eater, I must admit that the consumption of animal tissue of any kind in an indiscriminate manner is rather disgusting. I prefer to think that we carefully select particularly appealing “cuts” of animals such as as cattle (that at least appear to have the cranial capacity and physical attributes for little else besides occupying a singular link in the food chain) for a reason. The consumption of a goat’s head in its entirety or a stuffed sheep’s stomach is more likely driven by the need to survive initially and then passed down through the subsequent generations of certain cultures. Otherwise, the only distinction we can draw from to delineate the human race from common scavengers is the fact that we use salt and pepper!
January 12th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
What about peeling each layer off of the living creature you are about to eat, right down to its heart, then chopping all the pieces up regardless of function, dousing it in oil eating it raw!
You “meat is gross” people are just too emotional to get past the fact that things have faces. Veggies don’t want to be uprooted and consumed but they just don’t have the visual cues that a goat head does so you don’t get the emotional response that makes you say that “meat is murder”. Slaughter and harvest are the ending of a life just the same and to weigh one life higher than the other simply because of its physical appearance is…racist. 🙂 Your body doesn’t care if the things has a face as long as it is nutritious and it all goes to the same place after all, and usually looks the same when it gets there regardless of what it started out looking like.
And yes, that’s right, I called all the meat is murder veggies racists.
January 12th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Oh and the grotesque murder I was describing was a salad.
January 17th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
the papaitan sounds gross (bile? really?) but the rest I would definitely try, with the exception of dog. Intellectually I understand that dogs are like any other animal, but emotionally I know I couldn’t separate it from my babies at home!!!
January 18th, 2010 at 4:15 am
I would be open to try these.. I lived abroad, and sometimes didn’t know what I was really eating. Another thing that should have been posted are deep fried whole swallows from Vietnam. They ate them on Top Gear.
January 19th, 2010 at 1:12 am
were you aware that you’re a completely ignorant fuck ?
these things are no more disgusting than eating beef – or the bullshit that you eat in a hot dog. this is purely xenophobic.
January 19th, 2010 at 6:56 pm
I am Italian, as you know here we eat very well, but among many dishes I remember a few dishes curious. For example, the tripe is the stomach of cow properly washed and bleached and made into soup vegetables. Not everyone likes. We eat in the Milan area
January 25th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
If you did not know what I was going serve you for breakfast, and you like Jimmy Dean Sausage and the like. You would ALL love Black pudding, especially the Irish variety. Great stuff, well done is best.
February 5th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
I think I threw up a little.
February 14th, 2010 at 7:53 am
I’m from Spain and the blood sausage is a very widespread meal here. The taste is nothing special, in fact, at no moment it tastes even remotely similar to blood or intestines. It’s more like a dry burger, as someone already said. Haggis don’t look that terrifying, either. I’d like to try some.
As for the rest…
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:22 am
This is terrifying to any OMNIVORE!! Sick, sick, sick.
March 3rd, 2010 at 6:49 pm
I’ve really wanted to try dog for a long time now. I can’t seem to find it served anywhere in the U.S. I’d be willing to fly somewhere domestic if I could try some. Does anyone have any ideas of a place I can find dog meat raised for consumption?
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:57 pm
If you find eating dog to be immoral, then the only reason to not also apply that to sheep, cows, poultry, and especially pigs is cultural assumptions you have had your entire life. Nearly every person you know and ever have known have seen absolutely no problem with industrial raising and slaughtering of these animals, and have found the idea of eating dog to be wrong. So I do not blame or damn you for believing the same. However, if you evaluate the situation objectively, the hypocrisy of these viewpoints are revealed. Pigs are among the most intelligent animals alive, and have generally been shown to be more intelligent than dogs. All of the animals listed above are self-aware, capable of feeling terrible pain and of having emotion. And yes, humans have eaten meat in the past, but a hunter-gatherer is different from a global machine of trucks, forklifts, automated stalls, tractors, automated executioners and blood-drainers. We have made a system where living, breathing, thinking, feeling, conscious beings are born on the track of a monolithic assembly line, being dragged ever on toward there doom. Along the way they are artificially caused to bring their own children into this environment, and are injected, poked, prodded, and contained in miserably confined and unhygienic pens, kept alive only by the massive doses of antibiotics and steroids that are fed to them.
As a vegetarian I have empathy for their situation, and believe it should no longer exist. What do you believe? That fulfilling your own physical desires is more important than the horrific suffering caused by them? And it makes one so hopeful for the future that you believe that instead of listening to me (why would you, its just a “rant”) and engaging in argument, it would be better to simply ignore me and “shove” these things into my face. So beautiful, so elegant. What a wonderful way to live you life.
March 4th, 2010 at 6:20 am
I’ve had Haggis and really enjoy it. I also like head cheese sandwiches. I also have no problems with raw oysters and that icks some people out. I tried blood sausage before and just wasn’t all that impressed. Haven’t done boiled sheep heads and probably never will but I have had BBQed pig head (actually a whole hog split right down the middle and cooked low and slow — pretty much all of it edible). Another dish that some have issues with is traditional kimchee which I managed to try once and survived.
March 18th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
To the meat eaters who have the luxury of choosing which part of the animal they wish to eat they should think about what they are eating when they are chomping down on their big macs which have been proven in the past to contain human feces. i suggest everyone watches the films food.inc (2008) and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286537/ fast food nation (2006) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460792/ bon appetit!
March 24th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww im vegetarian and imk about to cry and throw up uuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh
April 2nd, 2010 at 10:26 pm
This stuff is groooooosssssss!!!!!!!!!! Whoever thought of cooking dogs as a meal should definitely get themselves checked out. I’m a vegetarian and this makes me so sad. 🙁
May 18th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Way to sit back and make unfair judgments of other cultures! Asshole.
July 14th, 2010 at 10:46 am
i’ve had all of these things – they’re all quite tasty.
i have no idea why you’de be “afraid” of them, it’s just plain food.
hot-dogs are made of worse stuff that this, and yet are a staple of most north american diets.
ground beef is also made of the parts you wish you had no idea (think cow penis).
it’s funny that you’re all so “holier than thou” about this – it’s a cultural difference. Just because you think it’s gross, there are plenty of things YOU eat that the rest of the world thinks is gross.
July 31st, 2010 at 10:15 am
This look a great feast for me, I love haggis and black pudding, and so im going to try these other dishes on your menu… thanks for sharing!
September 15th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
This is disgusting. I think traditions are important but come one there is a righ and wrong. I think people that kill dogs, cats or any type of animal to be consumed by us, humans that really do not appreciate the existence of animals at all, is selfish and just plain wrong. It is a horrid way to kill animals, I believe it should be stopped, yet it is a big world so it will not be stopped just like that. Instead of killing such animals in such gruesome ways they should invent a way in which they do not feel pain at all.
November 15th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Hey,
I was strumbling the net and cam up to your collection of what you call terrifying food.
I’m not a vegetarian at all, but hav a great respect for all kind of life. As we kill animals to feed ourselves, we should eat all of it, just out of respect to the life we took.
It is a shame to just eat the “best” parts, and though away the rest.
A good cook should know how to prepare all the parts of an animal, and makt them tasty.
Where/when meat is/was rare or expensive, nothing is repulsive.
October 3rd, 2011 at 4:39 am
..all good ..i suggest you try pinikpikan from the igorots of the cordilleras in the phillipines….
April 4th, 2012 at 7:21 am
Salicylic plaque created by sugar is without a doubt something different which can be crucial.
September 14th, 2012 at 4:27 am
What about Virgin Boy Eggs from China? Eggs are soaked and repeatedly boiled in young boy’s urine for days and sold by street vendors.
December 5th, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Yum Yum kids, here’s a treat! Yea right like anyone would ever want to end up with one of these on christmas day!
April 6th, 2013 at 8:43 am
You know, I’d rather someone has the balls to see what they’re REALLY eating and be fully aware an animal’s lost its life for them, rather than those squeamish carnivores who pretend their neatly packaged steak’s not ACTUALLY from an animal. Plus, it’s good to see the whole animal used, not wasted – from an ex-veggo who only eats leftover meat (not sheep heads though, but haggis and blood sausage are quite tasty).
May 31st, 2013 at 9:54 am
For your very interesting disgusting foods list allow me to nominate American burgers, hot dogs, and pizza as most obeisity maker toxic disgusting food. According to popular media these foods factually changed at least one nation in the west very disgusting fat people who eventually fallen into deep fat economic trouble and ruins. Just very interesting foods and their eater people fact. Thanks! 😉
December 25th, 2013 at 3:01 pm
You’re completely glossing over the fact that pacha is a regional ethnic dish. Simply stated, MOST people do not eat the Lamb’s head. I have been eating pacha throughout childhood and have never dealt with that interpretation of the dish. Most of the time it’s just ground meat and rice stuffed into the entrails, kind of like a simpler, dumbed-down Haggis. I have had both and I must say that they are quite similar. Hailing from Iraq. Thank You.
September 29th, 2014 at 6:59 am
DONT eat dogs, they taste like my nans bra, and smell like my grandads boxers
September 29th, 2014 at 6:59 am
willy bum bum
June 10th, 2015 at 6:49 pm
I don’t know of anyone who actually uses bile in papaitan. Filipinos often use powder made from kamias (cucumber tree fruit) and tamarind to get the sour taste. But for those who do (who are probably poor or isolated), are they really worse for not wasting parts of the likely free-range animal they killed out of caloric necessity than the Westerners who don’t use every part of the non-freerange animal but kill just because “it tastes good” ?
For those not so inclined to judge other cultures who would like to try papaitan, the tripe often used can be replaced with snow fungus (available in Asian grocery stores) and the beef/pork with wheat gluten or crispy fried, thin tofu. 🙂
June 10th, 2015 at 7:10 pm
Also, a vegan Filipino version of black pudding can be made using this recipe: http://www.astigvegan.com/vegan-dinuguan-recipe/