Underrated foods from your culture/homeland

[BubbleC]

There's a lot of foods out there that aren't widely known/appreciated by others outside of the locals that eat them. Most cultures are often known for a single dish internationally (ex. German = wurst, Chinese = dumpling, India = curry). This overshadows many of the great dishes that belong to the culture, providing only a superficial understanding of its rich culinary history.

What dishes in your culture do you think are the most underrated/unknown to the world? What would you recommend a naive tourist visiting your country/town to try out?

Spoiler: Here's mine: Chinese Sweet Soup!

My family is from Hong Kong, and a staple dessert type from southern China is tong sui or sweet soup. It's not really a specific dish so much as it is a genre of food. Basically, anything that's somewhat liquidy, sweet, and comes in a bowl is tong sui.

There are all kinds of tong sui, from sweet potato sweet soup to tapioca pearls in coconut milk, but my favorite is tofu pudding or Dou fu fa (豆腐花). It's a very simplistic dessert consisting of some extremely soft, silken tofu and sugar, but a great bowl is good enough to pass out for (dying for it might be too dramatic).

If you ever go to Hong Kong and come across a street store selling some, I'd recommend you give it a try!

 

[bananapink]

spicy crab in coconut milk...

 

[Sabruness]

well, vegemite is well know but under-appreciated because people cant comprehend how to eat it properly.

as for not well known and underappreciated foods: kangaroo, emu and crocodile meat. all of which are generally healthier on most parts than normal red meats (beef, lamb etc)/

 

[BubbleC]

well, vegemite is well know but under-appreciated because people cant comprehend how to eat it properly.

as for not well known and underappreciated foods: kangaroo, emu and crocodile meat. all of which are generally healthier on most parts than normal red meats (beef, lamb etc)/

Y-You can eat kangaroo? For some reason, that feels morally wrong. Australians (?) really are built different.

 

[Jemini]

From Itally, fish. Everyone knows Itally for pasta, but the fish meals are something rather extravagant,

On the subject of pasta though, garlic and olive oil. Only that. No other ingredients in the sauce. Effectively no sauce in fact. If you know how to saute your garlic just right, it's the tastiest thing you can possibly put on pasta. Far better than red sauce or white sauce, and WAY better than *shudders* just melting butter onto it.

(Also, please tell me you people know what a cannoli is. I was with some friends of mine at an Italian restaurantd once and was shocked to discover none of them had ever even heard of a cannoli before. An injustice which I quickly rectified.)

 

[Sylvie]

well, vegemite is well know but under-appreciated because people cant comprehend how to eat it properly.

as for not well known and underappreciated foods: kangaroo, emu and crocodile meat. all of which are generally healthier on most parts than normal red meats (beef, lamb etc)/

I've never eaten them so I can't say much about the taste because they might taste amazing for all I know.

 

[LinMeili]

Ube. People don't even know what it is. Ube jam, ube cake, ube halaya, ube ice cream, etc.

 

[owotrucked]

The mystery spinach from the university restaurant

 

[Jemini]

Another underrated Italian food item is our Christmas Cookies.

Where do I even begin? There is a HUGE variety of several different kinds of cookies in traditional Italian cooking, and there was this one year my mom decided to make ALL of them. I was 10 at the time, and there were so many cookies I actually wound up hating her for it for how sick it made me.

All of them were totally delicious though.

 

[Leti]

Meat Jelly. Maybe.

 

[Hathnuz]

Spoiler: Seblak

Street food from Indonesia (where Bali is located), more precisely from my city. It's basically prawn crackers covered with spicy sauce. All kinds of toppings can be added like chicken feet, noodles, eggs, macaronis, and/or many more. Very recommended.

 

[Sylvie]

Ube. People don't even know what it is. Ube jam, ube cake, ube halaya, ube ice cream, etc.

Purple yam huh? Is it sweeter than regular yam because in my country yam is used more for spicier food rather than sweet. Well I've never seen the purple kind in my country even in bigger supermarkets so I guess it's not famous here.

Meat Jelly. Maybe.

Is meat jelly actually good? I've seen it once in my life and was too wimpy to try it.

 

[Leti]

Spoiler: Seblak

Seblak is overrated. You guys even have seblak-flavoured instant noodles:

Spoiler: The Noodle

Is meat jelly actually good? I've seen it once in my life and was too wimpy to try it.

It's decent. I guess.

 

[Sabruness]

Y-You can eat kangaroo? For some reason, that feels morally wrong. Australians (?) really are built different.

Yeah. kangaroo meat is a historic prime staple source of protein for aboriginals. Yeah, most people in the world would indeed think "you eat the animals on your coat of arms?" and be shocked but you'd be surprised.

Honestly they don't sound like great things to eat considering both kangaroo and emu are considerably endangered, not to mention that with how much they probably cost, they can't ever become as famous as the more economic dishes. Then again, I've never eaten them so I can't say much about the taste because they might taste amazing for all I know.

Your info is a little off. Emus are so common that they are rated as "of least concern" by international conservation authorities.
Kangaroos are more of a mixed bag. there are more than 70 extant kangaroo species in Australia and New Guinea.
The 4 main ones (Eastern Grey, Western Grey, common Wallaroo and Red Kangaroo) are the only ones harvested. They are in such great numbers that they are rated the same as emus and are harvested very sustainably (only about 3-4% of the population per year and the pop is north of 47 million). Where things get tricky is the really small species of kangaroos but those suffer mostly due to feral foxes and cats.

Cost wise, Emu is pretty expensive but it isnt very common either. Kangaroo is much more common and usually costs roughly the same as regular beef. Kangaroo tastes like very lean beef but a bit stronger flavour. cant say about emu though.

 

[someguysomeone]

Curry usaully taste like shit. i personally hate it.
The actual good foods are
samosha.
gulab jamun.
These are great.

 

[Tori_the_Birb]

I can list a lot, mainly:
*Sinigang (there are a variety of this which is called "Sinigang na Hipon", "Sinigang na Bangus", etc.)
*Balot at Penoy
*Chicharon
*Bulalo
*Lechon Baboy (Lechon De Leche)

Well there's more but I'm lazy to mention them.

 

[CupcakeNinja]

There's a lot of foods out there that aren't widely known/appreciated by others outside of the locals that eat them. Most cultures are often known for a single dish internationally (ex. German = wurst, Chinese = dumpling, India = curry). This overshadows many of the great dishes that belong to the culture, providing only a superficial understanding of its rich culinary history.

What dishes in your culture do you think are the most underrated/unknown to the world? What would you recommend a naive tourist visiting your country/town to try out?

Spoiler: Here's mine: Chinese Sweet Soup!

My family is from Hong Kong, and a staple dessert type from southern China is tong sui or sweet soup. It's not really a specific dish so much as it is a genre of food. Basically, anything that's somewhat liquidy, sweet, and comes in a bowl is tong sui.

There are all kinds of tong sui, from sweet potato sweet soup to tapioca pearls in coconut milk, but my favorite is tofu pudding or Dou fu fa (豆腐花). It's a very simplistic dessert consisting of some extremely soft, silken tofu and sugar, but a great bowl is good enough to pass out for (dying for it might be too dramatic).

If you ever go to Hong Kong and come across a street store selling some, I'd recommend you give it a try!

So we have a soup called Menudo in my culture that you may know of. It's a pretty well known soup in Mexico. Anyway, an ingredient that goes into that soup, beef tripe, is seriously under rated. Tripe is essentially stomach lining

Its chewy and tough unless you boil it a long time. But if you do boil it, make it soft, and then add some seasonings to it, and fry it up? Oh man gawd bro. It's delicious.

Apparently eating it that way used to be popular in places like Britain...or was it Scotland? I dunno, think Britain. But anyway yeah. Beef tripe tastes amazing. It shouldn't be confined to soups. Fry that bitch up, dip it in your choice of sauce, and pig out yo.
Edit:

 

[Deleted member 25151]

Morons
Adidas
Helmet
Kamaro/ Kamaru
Walkmans
Angel's Burger

You might think I'm joking but I'm not. The majority of these are exotic foods so yeah eat at your own risk. Either way, I've only tasted three delicacies here and so far I hate it. Except for morons.

 

[EternalSunset0]

I think it's quite common food now, but I just love the fried food from Taiwan, may it be chicken chops, pork bits, or squid rings. I know people often correlate Chinese food with dimsum and noodles so there's that.

However, if we're talking about actual main courses and not just street food-esque ones, I also love roastings. Roast duck, soyed chicken, suckling pig, those types. They don't get featured as much imo, but I could be wrong.

Also, the mandatory milk tea, but a lot of other Asian countries also have it already.

 

[Deleted member 53101]

Ube. People don't even know what it is.

In my country, they're called Ubi.

Street food from Indonesia (where Bali is located), more precisely from my city. It's basically prawn crackers covered with spicy sauce. All kinds of toppings can be added like chicken feet, noodles, eggs, macaronis, and/or many more. Very recommended.

I love prawn crackers and the undur-undur(I don't know the English equivalent, back-back? That sounds so dumb.) cracker ...

Seblak is overrated. You guys even have seblak-flavoured instant noodles:

But really, aside from Rendang and Nasi Goreng(which for somehow or another dubbed as Indonesian specialty dish despite it comes from China. Ah, I'm talking about the fried rice, ofc.) I don't think the dishes from Indonesia is that famous. If you're asking some foreigners and tourists, they might just give those two dishes up in the above.