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  • Gator- tastes like chicken, kind of tough and chewy, but come on, have you ever seen an alligator? Of course it was going to be chewy.

    Frog legs- pretty much a dead ringer for chicken wings if you didn't know what a wing was supposed to look like. Maybe just the tiniest hint of something fishy going on there.

    Escargot - an excellent excuse to eat a bunch of butter and garlic and for some reason it's fancy even though you're eating a garden pest

    Squirrel - kind of greasy, but not bad, darker meat than I expected. Not really enough meat on them to be worth it though, at least not the squirrels we have in my neck of the woods, I've seen some pretty big squirrels in other parts of the country though, so maybe they're a little more worthwhile. If you had a handful of squirrels I suspect they could make a pretty good soup or stew though.

    Rabbit- tastes like chicken, I've had it a few different ways, I don't know that I would know the difference if you swapped rabbit for chicken in any of them, but I had a rabbit pot pie at a restaurant a few years ago that has been my happy thought ever since, probably the tastiest thing I have ever eaten.

    Deer venison - very similar to beef, a bit gamey but I dig that.

    Quail - tiny chicken, that's pretty much all there is to it.

    Pigeon- much darker than chicken, a bit greasy, overall pretty tasty (these were country pigeons, I don't recommend eating city pigeons) a single pigeon breast is pretty much exactly the right size to make a pigeon nugget.

    Bison- lean beef, maybe a bit stronger tasting but overall pretty well within the beef spectrum. If you didn't tell me it was bison, I'd probably assume it was either really cheap or moderately expensive beef.

    Wild boar- pork but not, kind of hard to explain this one, and the way I had it prepared had a lot of spices and seasoning so I can't really give a straight appraisal of the meat itself.

    Kangaroo- it tastes like it evolved on a different continent than any other mammal you've ever eaten. It's still very much in the red meat family but there's something else going on there that's kind of hard to place, sort of gamey and stronger tasting.

    Goose- kind of like a mix of duck and turkey, leaning more duck-like, and yeah, that tracks, you could probably just about assume that from looking at a goose.

    I wouldn't really consider these to be exotic, but a surprising amount of people don't seem to have tried them, and they're some of my all-time favorite meats.

    Duck- its more like a red meat than chicken, can be kind of greasy/fatty but in a good way

    Lamb- red meat, kind of a strong gamey taste (that again, I personally really like) oddly somehow gamier than venison despite venison actually being a game meat and lamb being domesticated. You could probably serve me deer and tell me it was beef and slip it by me, but I don't think you could pull it off with lamb.

    Goat- lamb, but moreso.

    Liver- it's kind of hard to describe liver in any way but livery, but iron-y and minneral-y are probably the best adjectives I can come up with. I've had beef liver and chicken liver, beef is definitely a stronger flavor but both are recognizably livery. Chicken liver is probably mild enough that as long as it's prepared well most people could enjoy it, beef liver is definitely more of an acquired taste.

    Chicken hearts- stronger flavored and tougher than regular chicken, but still recognizably chicken, imagine dark meat but lean. Little bit of a irony/mineraly taste, but not in a livery way, can be a little tough/chewy, and if you're inclined to batter and fry them, they are the perfect size to make sort of a popcorn chicken thing with, or if you want to have little bits of meat for a stir fry or something and don't feel like chopping up the meat yourself. They are also dirt cheap, at least around me.

    Tripe- a bit chewy, honestly not too much going on flavor-wise, there's something going on that tastes/smells of a barnyard but in a very pleasant way, but it's almost more of a suggestion of a taste than an actual flavor.

    Beef tongue- recognizably beefy, but definitely has something going else on, not quite livery but leaning that direction. Definitely something you need to braise or sous vide or something for a long time because it will be damn near impossible to chew otherwise, and it has its own unique texture, it will probably make you think a lot about your own tongue while eating it.

    Chicken feet- look, there's really no meat worth speaking of on a chicken foot, it's basically all skin and connective tissue which is tasty and an interesting texture, but not worth it to me to eat themselves, some people do, but it's not for me. ut if you want to take you chicken stock to the next level, use some chicken feet.

    And these are probably the opposite of exotic, just weird or have bad press

    Pickled pigs feet- salty vinegary vaguely porky jello with bones in it. I like salty vinegary things, so that's not a bad thing in my book.

    Scrapple- local delicacy for those of us in the Delaware valley, if you've ever heard spam described as everything but the oink, well scrapple has some oink in it too. It's soft and mushy and fries up to a real nice crisp on the outside. Taste is sort of in a similar vein as a breakfast sausage, really nothing too wild about it.

    Pork roll (you north jersey folk calling it Taylor Ham are crazy, it says pork roll right on the package, you're wrong) is basically just spam with a better PR department, less salty, slightly different spices, doesn't come in a can.

    And on that note- spam, it's delicious but very salty. If you like ham you'll probably like spam.

  • Ate a platter of 3 different fried insects. I think it was wood worms, bees, and crickets. The bees were the best.

    None of them were horrible. Would do it again.

  • Reindeer in a restaurant in Helsinki. It was good, a lot like beef. The reindeer were farmed, so it wasn't too tough or gamey.

  • Alligator - oddly enough as fritters at a Margaritaville in New Orleans. Like most say, flaky like fish, tastes like chicken.

    Horseneat served and packaged like baloney in Sweden, eating with crisp bead and breakfast cheese. Was not a fan.

    Moose in Sweden. Like beef, only the "grains" of the meat were really large.

    Reindeer in Sweden. Like venison, but I am told "less gamey." I say I am told, because apparently I cannot taste the "gamey" in meat. That is, I have had gamey venison and non-gamey venison and can't taste whatever gameyness is.

    Cicada - tastes like weak shrimp.

  • I had some moose that was given to me by my friend who was present at his friends moose hunt. They had to break the animal down at the location and make multiple meat sack trips to the game warden for tagging. The warden said they hadn't seen someone do it like that for a century.

    • Fun facts, back in the day people would often move their entire camps to the site of a moose kill rather than trying to transport the body any distance, it was easier to pack up and move everyone than drag a moose through the forest and brush

      • I believe it. Once big work horses were more available, people stopped tearing down the moose on-location and just dragged it home. In more modern times, they'll use a 4x4. This particular area was extremely rutted so they couldn't get anything wheeled back there, and where do you even find a Clydesdale rental service this day and age?

  • Had bear once. Was smoked and actually delicious.

    • It is not recommended to eat a bear at all, no matter how properly it is cooked, there is always a risk of infection from it. In Russia (Siberia) I generally prefer not to touch, kill, etc. Is the meat disgusting in taste and texture same with wool and skin? It stinks like a dog and you can't get rid of it anywhere, Only young animals for the skin.... Well, or to sell Chinese, they are able to give special magic to various organs, bile, horns, hooves, etc.

  • I live in Vietnam. So, many things we eat would be unusual from the standpoint of someone on a North American or European diet. Mouse, alligator (called 'ugly fish'), frog, duck embryo, organ meats, and various insects are just 'normal food'. They're all quite good.

    I suppose weasel comes to mind? That's something I've had that's not common locally. It's boiled with ginger until it just tastes like... mostly bones with ginger and very little meat. Not impressed.

    A lot of people turn away from duck embryo, but it actually tastes pretty normal.

    We used to eat a fair amount of dog here, especially in the North, but the new generation considers this fairly old-fashioned. I've had what's called "fake dog dish", which is the same dish made with pork. It's good. I've never bothered with actual dog meat as I'm concerned it might not be fresh -- it's expensive and not common anymore. So I'm worried someone might try to sell me meat that's spoiled to recover losses or something.

    In neighboring Cambodia, you can get large roasted spiders. They look like black crabs, and people seem to eat them that way. It didn't look that good so I passed.

199 comments