Andrew Zimmern Reveals Why He Really Will Eat Anything - Exclusive
We have seen Andrew Zimmern eat just about everything and anything, as the globetrotting taste tester on the Travel Channel show, Bizarre Foods. Zimmern has traveled to all corners of the globe during the series' 22 seasons of production, and has eaten creatures that would make many of us shriek and jump atop the furniture. But whether it walks, slithers, crawls, or oozes, if it's been prepared and served to Zimmern, he'll give it a try. And Zimmern hasn't loved everything he's eaten — there's that legendary moment when he eats an Ethiopian dish called kocho that he has since called "the most horrific thing I've ever consumed."
Yet, Zimmern revealed that he'd actually give kocho another shot — and really isn't opposed to eating anything. In an exclusive interview with Mashed, Zimmern explained why he believes that when it comes to food, you always need to keep an open mind. "There's nothing I wouldn't try again, because you never know when even something that you didn't like is going to be made delicious by the person who's preparing it," he said.
With the right recipe, even larvae can be delicious
As the host of Bizarre Foods, Zimmern ate foods that were, well, bizarre! One of the most talked-about delicacies he ate was coconut grub, which is a type of larvae that just didn't sit well with Zimmern when he tried them in the Philippines. He'd almost ruled out this food, "until I finally ate them on the river in the Peruvian Amazon, where they cook them in a different way," Zimmern recalled. "And I had an epiphany. They were delicious. I couldn't stop eating them. The other places — it was more of an interesting experiment."
This was when Zimmern decided he would always give foods a second or even a third or fourth chance, even if he didn't enjoy them at first. "I realized that just like a pork chop, you can overcook a pork chop, or you could steam a pork chop. Some of these places were just eating to get it to be edible," he explained, referring to the coconut grubs. "But in this little town — [it] wasn't really a town, a village — there were these guys in this food market, and they took the stomachs out that was filled with rotten wood, and they soaked them in a bucket of sour orange juice, wild sour oranges. Then they skewered them with a piece of potato on the end, and grilled them until they were crispy, like chicken skin. And I probably ate eight of them that day." With the right ingredients and technique, even larvae can be delicious, Zimmern explained. "They were just fantastic-tasting," he said.
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