WTFood (weird but good food combos, bad tastes, etc)

kicks down door i was prompted by several likes to make this thread

SO I USED TO GO TO CULINARY SCHOOL and im technically allowed to work in a kitchen until 2018 (i got my license in 2013)

it taught me a stupid amount of food combos that dont sound appealing but taste ok (as well as me confirming: fuck blue cheese).

so this is half a general "weird recipes" thread and half a discussion of food people ABSOLUTELY CANNOT HAVE IT TASTES BAD/FEELS WEIRD etc you know :0

I'll start with weird recipes/combos and why they work!

Parmesan Ice Cream

I mentioned parmesan cheese ice cream! It's actually an old, 16-18th century savory ice cream flavor (the people back then liked to fuck around with ice cream flavors) that basically is a surprising sort of good. It pairs well with basil or fruit-flavored balsamic vinegar (coughs strawberries cough)! While you can just grate some damn 'san on your ice cream, you could also just straight up make a flavored ice cream at home.

here's an article+video tutorial on how to make it.
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Balsamic Strawberries

This is something my mom made in my late teens, but she very rarely bought ice cream and so I hardly got to eat this, but! Balsamic strawberries are some of my favorite dessert toppings. The reason it works is the vinegar pulls the sugars from the strawberries and makes for a very sweet syrup!

this recipe calls for pepper but i personally wouldn't. it's up to you (if you make this) on if you want to add or not! It pairs very well with french vanilla ice cream!
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Olive Oil on Ice Cream

There's no recipe for this one, just dribble a little extra virgin olive oil on some vanilla ice cream and it tastes good? obviously don't use too much but just enough to make it a topping.
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Dark Chocolate+Avocado

I hate avocado so your mileage may vary, but I heard this is a really good combo? Googling it brings me a bunch of pudding recipes and sometimes brownies. I guess if you want to ruin perfectly good brownies introduce some avocado to the batter. you animals.
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Jalapeno Apple Jelly

I made this during class once because I was fucking around, so I wish I could tell you the recipe but my dumb ass never wrote it down. It's mostly apple with a couple jalapenos to give it that spicy bite at the end (think medium salsa bordering hot). I'm almost positive there are a couple online recipes, though, so if you have a candy thermometer and/or know how to make jelly, it's fun to experiment with. YMMV with the online recipes, I only used a few apples and two or three jalapenos but I'm seeing a lot of "use five different peppers and seven kinds of apples" etc. its just a mess.
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As for foods I personally cant eat or dislike? Besides avocado (it tastes awful and has a terrible texture imo), I can't stand the slimey goop inside a tomato but i won't NOT eat one if its sliced on a burger. I like mushrooms but i cant eat one on its own! idk why.

Olives are so icky, too, with that gross metallic, rubbery taste. 8(

 

I once had chicken with blackberry-habanero sauce and it was more delicious than it had a right to be.

Also RIDICULOUSLY SPICY. But delicious.

 

OH YOU JUST REMINDED ME

Coca-cola chicken.

And also root beer pulled pork

 

One of my mom's cookbooks has a recipe for chicken with a ketchup-and-grape-jelly glaze. It's better than it sounds. (Little me had a completely irrational hatred of ketchup that was more about being able to say I Didn't Like Thing than any actual reaction to the taste, though, so I threw a tantrum when I found out what was in it.)

 

Before I married a Floridian and moved to Florida, the very concept of savory mixed with sweet was alien to me.

Then I had my first monte cristo sandwich. HOLY AMAZEBALLS. Ham and cheese sandwich, which I'm usually meh on, becomes apparently mind blowing when fried and dusted with powdered sugar and dipped in jam.

 

oh guys! if you enjoy fishy flavors and chicken texture: eat frog

im serious, frog legs taste like chicken fish. They live in an aquatic environment (the fish taste) but use the muscles like a normal land animal (chicken texture).

Abalone (a type of sea snail) is VERY good. It's a bland seafood, like calamari/squid, so it takes on the flavor it's cooked with. I really like it smoked.

 

[1:08:54 PM] twenty-two pilots: also I like how you have a thread for weird food and the "weirdest" ive ever done was just dip my French fries in my milkshakes and put ketchup on my white rice
[1:09:12 PM] Carpool Tunnel: first isnt weird, its salt+sweet = good
[1:09:16 PM] Carpool Tunnel: second is an affront to god

 

salted fruit is the grossest thing ever. people would try to convince me to put salt on apples instead of caramel sauce, probably because they hated happiness or were possessed by demons or something

on the other hand, when I was younger I used to drink liquid coffee creamer straight. tasted awesome, tbh. and I've only had it a few times, but I love escargot

 

i absolutely do not understand the appeal of putting salt on fruit like watermelon.

"just enough so it tastes sweeter!"

either i put on so little salt i cant taste the salt or i put on enough salt that it tastes like i put fukken salt on some watermelon

do i have to count every grain to make it accurate and get that mysterious sweeter fruit flavor??

 

also, 95% of hotdogs are the worst thing ever, they're very upsetting. even the thought is grossing me out, glad it's not summer anymore

 

I like salt and lime with sweeter fruits like mango, pomegranate, pineapple, etc. * shrug emoji *

 

I can understand tart/salt for the sake of enhancing/accenting the flavor! I do that too!

I just. I cant tell how it's meant to make said fruit sweeter?

If I'm missing the point of your post and youre merely stating thats a weird thing you like I'm sorry im brain bad and context miss today.

 

I don't think it really makes it sweeter? (That feels like a weird justification a person might use if they're embarrassed about their strange tastes!) But I could totally be wrong. I just like the combo of things being salty and sour and sweet at the same time. My bro-in-law likes to add chili powder to the whole situation, but I haven't quite gotten to that level yet.

 

Exactly everyone who tells me to put salt on watermelon is because it'll make said watermelon sweeter.

"don't put too much or it'll taste salty" is what they say.

And yet...

 

Does apples and cheese count as weird or is that one too well-known?

 

there's a food place just off campus that only sells waffles. some of them are normal sweet waffles and some are, like, spicy fried chicken and coleslaw and pickles on a waffle. very tasty if you don't mind eating 700 calories in a sitting (i do, but it's still tasty). roommate runs cross country, i lift big heavy things. it's our cheat day meal when we're too lazy to go way off campus.

weird food combos from the motherland: vodka + half-sour pickles + black rye bread, also beer + these fish, cold beet soup + black rye bread with butter and garlic. i'm fine with the first and third and i'm fine with dried fish, but i cannot for the life of me get behind russian beer. i'm a race traitor.

e: my dad reminds me of the yearly war over whether latkes are better with sour cream (no) or applesauce (yes). potato pancakes and applesauce.

 

@LadyNighteyes Personally I'd count it as weird but widely accepted. It'd be in the same category as dipping fries in a milkshake, where you'll get ppl going "WHAT HWY" on their internet article of "top 10 WEIRDEST FOODS" but in reality it's more accepted than you think.

@hanka dude applesauce all the way. sour cream is good but god damn its perfect with applesauce.

 

I've never had latkes with sour cream but they are definitely tasty with applesauce.

...From what I remember, considering I've had them, like, twice.

 

Cheese (usually cheddar or a Red Leicester) and jam sandwiches were a regular feature in my childhood. Sometimes Dad would switch it up and make cheese and condensed milk sandwiches.

My friend and I used to eat salt-and-vinegar crisps dipped in melted milk chocolate, which apparently people generally don't do idk

Blue Stilton goes surprisingly well on a dark chocolate digestive.

Wensleydale cheese is great with fruit cake, very traditional. You can also crumble it into an apple cake before baking to make the cake slightly sour and zesty.

I tend to add a small square of very dark chocolate to any dish using beef. It intensifies the flavour of the meat.