Grab Your Fork: The 10 Most Eccentric Thai Dishes

Thai cuisine is now internationally famous and most people are familiar with tom yum gung, duck curry and pineapple fried rice. Thai food has the special feature of combining, within every dish, spicy, sweet, sour and salty tastes.

So, each dish will usually contain lime juice, sugar, chili pepper and fish sauce as basic ingredients, to which coconut milk, lemon grass and all kinds of herbs and spices can be added. This makes the cuisine quite healthy.

Yet, visitors to Thailand can actually find a much wider range of dishes to sample. Some of them are quite surprising - and some appear quite unpleasant. Still, everything is worth trying once.

1. Deep Fried Insects:

   
   
   
   
   A delicacy from the northeast of the country, different kinds of insects are deep fried and flavored with garlic and chili. Crunchy and good with beer.

2. Ant Egg Soup:

   
   
   Ants themselves can be eaten but a real delicacy is to find their eggs, which range up to the size of large peas, and adding them to tamarind-flavored soup. Healthy, delicious.

3. Flowers:

   
   
   In the north around Chiang Mai, some flowers can be eaten raw with noodle soup, while elsewhere flowers are deep-fried in batter to give a delicate and colorful feast

4. Duck Beaks:

   
   
   Waste not, want not - fry up the duck beaks and enjoy the chewy meat that sticks to them. Good texture.

5. Stir-fried Shark:

   
   
   Shark meat is sautéed with peppercorns, onions and chilies, along with some other spicy ingredients.

6. Larb and Sticky Rice:

   
   
   Larb is minced meat (pork or duck are most common) mixed with dry-roasted rice, chilies and other spices and eaten with small balls of sticky rice and fresh vegetables and herbs. Very healthy.

7. Frogs:

   
   
   Frogs are a delicacy in the central parts of the country where seafood is not available but the little hoppers are. They are best stir fried with vegetables and spicy sauce.

8. Pork Floss and Pork Scratchings:

   
   
   
   
   Pork skin is dried and sliced into tiny fluffy pieces (floss) or else long strips are fried (scratchings). Not terribly healthy but the Thai diet generally contains so little fat that it is possible to get away with the occasional treat. Scratchings are eaten with highly spiced chili sauce and floss on sandwiches or as a topping for rice.

9. Blood Noodles:

   
   
   Add some body, so to speak, to a soup of rice noodles by adding pig's blood. The color becomes rich and enticing and the taste much more hearty.

10. Chili Paste and Condiments:

    
    
    Pound with a mortar and pestle numerous strong chili peppers with garlic, salt, lime juice, palm sugar and other ingredients to make a lump and spicy paste. Dip raw vegetables and herbs, strips of plan omelet or steamed fresh water fish into the paste and enjoy throughout the day.

Visit Amazing Thailand and look out for some of these unusual treats or ask your local Thai restaurant if they can give you a taste of something a little bit out of the ordinary.