My worse meal, baked heart..YUCK NEVER AGAIN!

Guess you've never bit into chitterlings,huh?

I feel the same way about liver, which is odd, because I CRAVED the nasty stuff when I was pregnant with my son!!

what are chitterlings?

Tried to fool ex with chopped chicken liver stroganoff!

Didn't work!

My ex used to take the chitterlings out in his parents front yard, attach a hose and clean them.

Then cause his mother would not cook them, take to neighbor to cook for his daddy.

Never pass me a chitterling.

Here is some info for you. No, I've never had them.

Let us consider what chitlins are - they are hog intestines or guts. Some people turn up their noses at the mention of chitlins; other leave the house while they are cooking, driven away by their odor. However, the volume sold for New Year's dinners, with Christmas and Thanksgiving not far behind, attests to chitlins popularity in the United States. Chitterlings is the more formal name, but most people call them chitlins. They are usually part of a larger meal that includes collard greens, fried chicken, and other traditional Southern foods. Chitlins are not for the faint of palate or smell, which is why traditionally they were cooked outdoors at backyard hog killings in winter. They are a food that you either love or hate!

Chitlins take a lot of time and effort to clean. They are partially cleaned when they are sold, but require additional hand cleaning before they are ready to eat. The secret to good and safe chitlins is in the cleaning, not in the cooking. they are available in supermarkets in African-American neighborhoods, especially during the holiday season. they can also be ordered from a butcher, but be prepared to buy 10 pounds of chitlins to get 5 pounds to cook.

Animal innards have long been treasured foods around the world. Scotland's national dish is haggis (sheep's stomach stuffed with the animal's minced heart, liver, and lungs). Throughout Europe, tripe (cow or ox stomach) is popular, and French chefs in upscale restaurants serve dishes based on cow's brains and kidneys.

Thanks for the info, JoAnn
Never had them and don't care to!

I skipped the haggis in Scotland this summer!

Sausage is stuffed into hog casings, which are chitlins, so if you've eaten any kind of sausage... well, don't knock chitlins.

My dad always bought them in a 1 or 2 lb tub, all cleaned and ready to stuff or fry after he rinsed off the salt they were packed in. They were readily available in any grocery store, perhaps still are.

Sherry

Ever tried head cheese...my neighbour used to make it, but after reading the preparation instructions I just couldn't even try it....it's just so ~~~~ummm ~~~~ wrong!

Here's the preparation instructions: To make head cheese, the split or quartered head is then simmered in a large stockpot until the meat is so tender that it falls off the bone. The skull is removed from the cooking liquid and allowed to cool enough so that it can be handled. The meat is then picked off the skull and chopped.

I experienced head cheese ONCE!

Never ever again!

My mother was a very frugal shopper - she could stretch a few dollar grocery budget a very long way. There's a whole story behind that but in answer to the question I have two worst meals ever -
1. Giant platter of sauerkraut topped with 3 weiners.
2. Macaroni noodles with stewed tomatoes.
I swear, to this day, I will not allow either sauerkraut or stewed tomatoes in my house.
In her defense, she made the most amazing crockpot spaghetti and made a pot roast to die for.
Suzan J

I think this thread could be used as a diet tool!!! YUCK! My worst meal doesn't sound 1/2 bad now!!

Mountain oysters anyone?

Maybe the liver turned you off because of the preparation. I can imagine that was a pretty mess.

After reading this thread, I am very glad I am a vegetarian.

Some octopus I had at a Spanish restaurant in Miami I forget wheat they called it it had ink too

Anything involving oysters.....haven't eaten them for many years but can still feel that slime exploding in my mouth.

We love liver but don't eat it very often.

My family has a variation of head cheese. We called it Grut Wurst. It begins by boiling a pigs head and picking off the meat. Other ingredients include barley and prunes. It has this gruel like consistency and is pressed into a cake pan. Mom would fry slabs of it for breakfast in the Winter. Delicious!!
But, then I like liver and onions and sauerkraut, too. I was raised to eat what was put in front of you. If you didn't like something, too bad; better luck next meal.
But, I draw the line at Rocky Mountain oysters!

Ron

Yes, we were raised to eat what was put in front of us as well, it was the times. But there were sure a lot of meals that took FOREVER to get through, and of course we weren't allowed to leave the table until we cleaned our plates, cold and congealed or not!
I remember as a kid of 5 or 6 coming up with what I thought was an ingenious way to get out of eating porridge - I snuck a jar to the table and hid it between my legs under the table cloth. When the cook wasn't looking I spooned porridge into the jar so I would have less of the nasty stuff to eat.
Sadly, my brother was 7 or 8 and just at that stage where it was really fun to rat on one's sister - the jar was discovered and the contents were eaten - I think I spent the better part of the morning there trying to force that stuff down.
Suzan J

Mom served me hog brains and scrambled eggs when I was little. I remember them being very salty.

The smell was so tempting, but once you got to the school cafeteria and saw what it was, arghhhhh!

A weiner on top of mashed potatoes with red gravy

Thank the gods that my Mom belived in having us try food but never forced us to sit and eat something... well, once and I'm not certain which one of us it was --- but they outwaited the parental figures... Lima Beans was the food at issue...
Girl Scouts 3 bite try was then installed...

I think so Mom didn't spend all evening in the kitchen watching us try to force down what ever it was that they 'loved' and couldn't figure out why we didn't..
I think they also figured out that there was more for them if we weren't interested in it.

ok, some of you have beat my worst meal! LOL
I had 14 siblings, I'm sure mom put many of the items mentioned here on our plates. I do remember her calling liver...steak! I think of the many times I told my friends and school mates how often we had steak in our poor house. I was way up in my teenage years before I knew that liver was being passed over as steak.
DH gets a big laugh out of it too, when we are talking about rough times of our childhood days. LOL

And people make fun of Lutefisk!

The worst meal I ever had was in school and the whole 12 grades hated it too. It was fish chowder! The garbage cans were full of it. I know because my Mother was a cook at my school for many years. They never tried that again. I think the reason they tried it was the government had given them a big supply of some kind of fish. It was the home ec. teacher that planned the meals and recipes at that time. Never again, horrible. I have eaten brains, don't care for it, I like liver and onions. Have eaten goat, rabbit, squirrels, frog legs, turtle and raccoon. I sure don't eat them now. But when you don't have much to eat, you eat what you have.

Sue

I would never make fun of lutefisk. There's *nothing* funny about it. Mmmm, bleached fish. If I want lye, I'll take it straight. Give me a chunk of laundry soap and get it over with. They taste the same, going down or coming back up. Gah!

OTOH, I love beef liver -- if it's cooked slowly and is still a little pink inside. Cook it too long, over high heat, and you have shoeleather.

I don't like calamari or fried clams -- or the dog's rubber chew toys either. Don't generally like odd parts of animals, like the intestines, ears, head or feet. Oxtail soup is good though.

I made some sort of a tamale pie without a recipe once....it was horrid. I used creamed corn, which I hate.
Our kids were out of town and when they called to wish DH Happy Birthday his only comment about the dinner was "Be glad you are at camp."

Chorizo! When we first moved here,Larry wanted me to try it.We bought some and I couldn't even make it through cooking it.I can't stand the smell of it!I told him if he wanted that stinkin' stuff,he'd have to cook it and cook it outside! LOL! Sometimes the girls at work cook it for breakfast,I stay in my office and light a candle.The whole place stinks of Chorizo all day then.....

My mom used to make US 4 kids eat liver...blech
Cheryl .. I 'd make it for my DH cause he loved it. But there is certainly no LAW that says you OR I have to eat it also! I'd be making ME something else and let him enjoy his liver. blech! lol

Beef Tongue...it was like a cat licking the inside of your mouth...

Hmmm. Worst meal of 2009?

Has to be anything I tried to make using tempeh. BLECH. I could boil that stuff for an hour, then marinate it for two days and it would still be vile.

I made this one...kind of.
It was a container full of mix and match leftovers, and canned dog food mixed. DH came home for lunch when I was out one day, and had it for his meal. Even said it was good! I about peed my pants laughing at him.

He didn't think it was that funny.....

Trin

First time I ever tried to cook, I caught the kitchen on fire.

Was gonna surprise my sister and college roommate with breakfast.

Cooking bacon, grease caught fire.
Went to kitchen sink to extinguish it, caught the curtains on fire.

It was a white kitchen.

My parents were not happy!

My DH loves liver and onions - he eats it at a local restaurant, LOL. I don't like it at all, and I don't want the smell in the house.

He also loves steak and kidney pie. After years of making this for his birthday, I put my foot down, and now I make steak and mushroom pie. He misses the kidney, but too bad - it makes me gag as I cook it.

He loves sausage of all kinds, and I'm happy to cook and eat that on occasion, but I usually have a back up meal in the freezer for me.

My Grandmother used to eat Pickled Pigs Feet. I once ate beef tongue, it was like French-kissing a cow! ecause I have kidney failure, I've been told not to eat any organ meat.

As of the time of writing this thread ... the total number of meals for the year was ... 6.

As of this time ... it's been 9.

I suspect that I had some dog in soup on one occasion many years ago: I'd had some rather different-appearing meat in that soup, which was tasty, for lunch - and later saw an empty dog hide being carried across the yard.

ole joyful

As a kid when we butchered a cow we always ate the tongue first. Dad and Mom thought it was a delicacy. Cold tongue sandwiches; it must be an acquired taste.

Ron

Cold seafood platter in France: raw oysters, mussels, etc...bleck!

We once stopped at a franchise called "The Little Chef" when we got lost between self-catering places in England. I figured they couldn't do much to ruin scrambled eggs. Wrong. I think they used powdered eggs and powdered milk. They refused to serve me a cup of tea, saying, "We don't DO 'teas'." (I wasn't asking for a meal, just a cuppa!)