What is the most disgusting ingredient you've ever seen?

Some things just make you scratch your head and wonder...This is a photo of my garbage can. Beneath the dried cilantro is a huge tub of dry powdered sage that seems really old.

Casu marzu, a Mediterranean cheese containing live insect larvae (think maggots).

Suckling pig placenta for that snotty mucus-y viscosity we all seek in our soups (along w/umbilical cord for a certain crunch/air/crunch) in Japan.

Special mention to swordfish loin w/a 2' worm running the length of it. Most don't know how common it is, which is very. Put me off swordfish for the last 25 yrs.

Can't compete with live maggots, but when I was in Ecuador, I adored maracuya juice, and drank it as often as I could, in restaurants, cafes, etc. Toward the end of my stay, the family my son was staying with invited me to dinner. They offered to let me help make fresh maracuya juice. The maracuya, unlike the ones you see here, was the size of a fairly large eggplant. The top was cut off, and I was handed the fruit to scoop the innards into the blender. I doubled over in laughter and couldn't talk for a couple of minutes; the fruit was full of slimy seeds that reminded me of fish guts. Eventually I was able to tell my son what was so funny, and he translated. The final product, the innards mixed with water and sugar, run through the blender, and seeds then strained out, bore no resemblance to the innards of a fish, and tasted terrific.

fats other than cocoa butter in my "chocolate." bleech.

I second that swordfish. The first time I saw that in a restaurant I about gacked. Still have a hard time eating it.

The used condom dessert happy_stomach reported got close (I guess that's more of an element than an ingredient):





but then I saw this:





Whisky, recycled from the urine of diabetics. Slainte, folks.

Checkmate brother. You've won in my book w/this twofer. Can't imagine anyone topping it.

"Disgusting" might not be the right word for my transcultural reaction to this encounter by Andrew Zimmern:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-zi ... 19133.html

At the very least, it adds the word "foreskin" to the LTH index. When in Madagascar...

Hi,

Believe it or not, foreskin joined our index in 2004.

Regards,

Santander wrote:The used condom dessert happy_stomach reported got close (I guess that's more of an element than an ingredient):


...

This is what I love about LTH...I saw that photo and immediately thought, "I've eaten that dish!" Normally that would be no great surprise on a board like this, except for the fact that the pictured dish comes from a restaurant that's 7,806 miles from Chicago.

Edited to add: The dish is called Sex on the Beach and its purchase benefits an AIDS-related charity. The sand is made of cookie crumble and the condom is a strawberry gelatin filled with a white chocolate. While it was a good dish, there were many at Bo Innovation (HK's only molecular gastronomy restaurant) that were much better.

Urine Eggs. Also known as Virgin Boy Eggs. That'll be 24 cents, please.