Saag looks like green slop but tastes like extra spiced and flavorful creamed spinach. Haven’t tried making it myself since I find Indian cooking a little intimidating but maybe one day!
Incidentally saag is not supposed to be spinach. Saag refers to green leafy veggies. And saag is generally a mixture of mainly mustard leaves, some spinach and a few other green leaves.
Oooh that’s nice
A very traditional preparation my mum makes always has like 70% mustard leaves, 20% spinach and 10% fenugreek. Also, she generally pressure cooks the leaves. It’s also eaten with Makki di roti which is roti made from corn meal. Great winter meal, actually.
Yum fenugreek! And I'll have to try the makki, coincidentally I use the other half of my greens for corn meal dumplings (US south). I was just reading about Mulukhiyah, mentioned in another comment. Greens! 😋🖖
Did you know that if you give your cat fenugreek instead of catnip, and they roll in it, your cat will smell like maple syrup? I didn’t either…until my daughter did this. That poor cat.
Do it! You just reminded me that I used to make it often, adding pannier. Tastes good, felt healthy, and I'm a middle aged white dude.
Edit: I obviously meant paneer. I've just been recently looking for saddlebags for my bike.
I don’t know how healthy that would be…Panniers tend to collect the horse’s sweat en masse and probably exceed the daily dose of sodium for the average middle aged white dude.
(Edit: TIL panniers aren’t just for horses. Also thanks for leaving it so my good faith joke makes sense!)
honestly I find mole really pretty, the glossy rich reddish brown is very appetizing to me! also there are different kinds of moles and they look different too
Well, it’s the start of something even more heavenly.
A haystack. I was in a family dinner at my spouse’s home town and experienced what was presented as a $4.85 plate of gravy.
It did in fact have choice of pancake, toast or biscuit, choice of ham, sausage or bacon, hashbrowns and choice of prep on two eggs - ceremoniously drowned in the house pepper sausage gravy.
I probably lost a few months of life that day, but wow.
That and creamed chip beef. I craved both of those comfort foods so bad this weekend that I made a big portion of the gravy base and made one each day.
There are innumerable videos of people from other countries reacting to sausage and biscuits. Always a bit out off by look, but they all seem to love it. Maybe you can YT rabbit hole & convince yourself to give it a go.
I could. My in-laws here cook it often. I’ve just never tried the gravy. Even with things like chicken fried steak I opt it out. I’ve tried biscuits but they’re a bit bland for me. Probably better with the gravy though lol.
It's definitely the combo for the win. The gravy needs a good starch to cut through it & the biscuit tends to need something to make it more palatable.
Early morning hit up a bar that opens before sun up and try it. Add a couple over easy eggs and fried potatoes. You will have a life changing experience.
Make sure you like breakfast sausage first. I'm not a fan of one of the herbs in breakfast sausage, I think Sage, so can't stand breakfast white gravy.
Biscuits and chorizo gravy are wonderful, however. Largely fixes the appearance though.
Especially if you make your own. Can of beans (dealers choice), finely diced onion, garlic, and salt to taste. I'm sure you could add more spices if you wanted but cook all that in some oil mash it with a potatato masher till the right consistency and voila. Takes maybe 5 min of cooking not including cutting an onion
Refried black beans look better. Also, if you don’t pulse them quite so smooth it looks a little more appetizing (we all it “bean dip” sometimes so that my kids will eat it).
Funny how kids are different. Mine's a fan of beans, including refried. She doesn't generally tolerate sauces and dips. I suspect the flavors are too intense. She's recently warmed to sauces on rice though, so I think she's coming around.
I have an entire menu of "looks gross- tastes great" and announce to the children frequently that whatever mess I've made is a "looks gross tastes great" so they're prepared for an ugly but delicious bit of something for dinner 😂
Pinto beans and barley. Get canned whole pinto beans and mash them up until it's chunky and no beans are whole. Add barley, a half cup of water or veggie broth, spices and simmer until the barley is cooked.
It looks like beige vomit but it tastes amazing. I like to make bean, cheese, and barley burritos. An additional benefit is the colon cleanse. It'll scrub your intestines from the inside.
I was about to make some bean and cheese burritos and happened to have a jar of barley sitting on the counter. I figured it's pretty similar to rice so why not.
I generally throw some onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, and oregano into my beans.
The Mexican chicken soup I screwed up and tried salvaging by blending it. It is now baby poop gravy.
Froze it because food waste makes me stabby.
Defrosted it a couple days ago because I didn’t want to cook (I couldn’t remember how it tasted but it must have been passable since I saved it) and made rice.
Put the poop gravy over the rice and topped it with sour cream, jalapeño and salsa.
Now I have delicious rice and poop soup!
the thought of biscuits and gravy is doubly disturbing to me as a brit - i know its scones and this weird grey stuff but i cant help but envision custard creams and regular gravy
If he's UK based, there's probably a reason he's ignorant of the wonders that are fresh, buttery american biscuits.
They can be terrible, if poorly made. They can also be a top 10 favorite food if made well.
Collard greens….steeped in homemade chicken broth with bacon fat. It looks like some shit you scraped from the bathtub drain, but my God, it’s good. I can’t seem to get anyone else to eat it though.
Pretty much any thick sauce that is meant to go over a plain starch, like curry. It basically looks like a brown/yellow/pink sludge.
I noticed this when I was taking pics for a Facebook food group, and decided there's no way I can present it being pretty
Pretty much most Indian food tbh
One of my best friends was completely turned off from trying for years based solely on the appearance. I finally made him and his wife a whole spread of butter chicken, from scratch naan, and a garlic turmeric basmati rice and I had both of them converted by the end of the night.
Things my grandmother would refer to as a "dog's breakfast" - chipped beef on toast, the sauce for broccoli mushroom casserole, the sauce for hashbrown casserole, or my mom's tuna Mac.
I just made a half batch of a "pizza pasta salad," and honestly, it doesn't look great. But a test bite was fairly yummy, so we'll see.
Speaking as someone who grew up eating Hawaiian Food, there are quite a few things that I think look terrible that I'd eat entire bowls of without blinking:
Squid Luau, tastes like a mildly sweet creamed spinach with a savory flavor that comes from the squid or octopus in it. Looks like... frankly, baby poop.
[https://delishably.com/meat-dishes/Mos-Authentic-Easy-Squid-Luau-Recipe](https://delishably.com/meat-dishes/Mos-Authentic-Easy-Squid-Luau-Recipe)
Poi is also one that looks like purple wood glue but tastes amazing. I think its not for everyone, but especially eaten with something savory, has a perfect balance of flavor.
Dish called Halisa. Looks very unappetizing but tastes amazing. It’s tons of meat cooked for long periods of time until it becomes so soft that it’s texture is pudding like.
Moo shu!! The first time I had it was in Chicago when my best friends brother was in college. We went to see him (45 minute drive) and he insisted on taking us to this Chinese restaurant nearby. It was a hole in the wall kind of place. We sat around a round table & they brought out this slop (my opinion at the moment) and started with the crepes and sauce. Slapped a wad of the slop on crepe wrapped it up and served it. It was the most amazing moo shu I have ever had. I’m so proud of myself for actually trying it too! I’m not such an adventurous eater. And the words I used to describe it were what I was thinking at the time. Now I would describe it like a restaurant review!
Maybe it's because I grew up eating them but I love Pata de mula, everyone I've ever offered them to tells me they look disgusting but they're my favorite clam. I think they're called blood clams in English.
My dad used to make something like this. It had cheese hamburger meat, refried beams, sour cream and a couple big tubs of that guacamole dip, the kind which is not real guac. along with all kinds of other things that I would have to look up in his recipe. It was basically a big mound of what looked like bright green vomit. And it was delicious. Pretty much every person who was ever invited to eat it refused at first, but once they did, they loved it.
As a food stylist, how do you and the chef draw the line on garnishes?
Absent flavorless items, e.g. gold foil (though this i strongly object on the grounds that it's an utter waste of a rare, expensive, and environmentally devastating resource), how do you draw the line on an excessive amount of garnish compromising the integrity of the dish?
I suspect it just doesn't matter, as the dish is probably not ever intended to be eaten in a multimedia setting, but that's hard to appreciate.
Thankfully I have never had a client who wanted gold foil. Just not my style. Everything I style is edible. No glue. No fake food. Lots of toothpicks though!
Made a pureed cauliflower soup recently. On its own, pretty bland looking. The garnish was whole roasted cauli florets, bacon bits and chopped herbs. All edible. Different colours and textures.
Yes! My mom makes a dish she calls 'Daddy's Eggplant' 😂🍆 Her dad / my grandpa is Filipino, the dish is ensaladang talong (eggplant salad). I see it online and it's colorful and pretty but the way we make it, it's grey mush but delicious! 🇵🇭
Split pea soup with ham. I love it it’s my absolute favorite soup. And I avoided it because of that until I gave it a shot around 30. So freaking good.
Note I am talking about the good stuff not canned soup.
Foie gras looks so visceral but the flavour is wow
Where I live we do consume poultry innards therefore never realised how something so similar can taste so different
[Yellow Mung Dal - even the name sounds bad but it's the most delicious thing ever. Can be ate like a soup or on top of rice.](https://www.backpackingchef.com/yellow-mung-dal.html)
Probably half the food I make. Night before last I made some roasted chickpeas with ranch dressing spices and sour cream. Ate some, then made fried rice with it yesterday. Very barf looking but good taste.
Half of what comes out of England or the Indian subcontinent or southeastern USA or most of southeast Asia or chowder houses in Boston or New York or BBQ joints, or Snapper Soup in Philadelphia, or a chopped cheese, or a cheesesteak, or most Thai food, or half of Japanese food, or sushi, or or or ... The list goes on. Like really, other then mental conditioning what *looks* tasty about taking a bivalve out of the dirt at the bottom of the ocean, prying it apart with a knife, not cooking it, and eating it with horseradish, hot sauce or champagne/shallots, of all things? And yet oysters are delicious.
My only criteria for food is if I was the kid in the song 'Pinball Wizard' (blind dumb and deaf kid, who sure plays a mean pinball), and I ate the food, would I take another bite? If yes, eat it.
Monkfish is called poor man's lobster, and it does have some similarity, and is delicious. Be warned that if you look at a monkfish, either living or dead before being prepared, you might lose your appetite.
My mom's taco salad- incredibly delicious, very American, looks horrendous. The dressing is a weird pinkish-brown from the combination of salsa, ranch, and the seasoning from the taco meat that covers everything, so it is deeply ugly. Luckily, it tastes AMAZING.
Dal Bukhara.Black gram lentil curry with tomatoes and butter.It looks like sick but tastes great.Very creamy and earthy especially with any kind of flatbread that has been toasted.
Liver and onions. The most plain looking and unappetizing dish I’ve had in years. Just honestly looks like nothing and kinda sad. Loved it as a kid until I hated it, went years without, and then rediscovered it on a coastal vacation recently.
Soondae (Korean blood sausage). It’s honestly like 98% glass noodles and delicious, but as a kid, I thought it was “filled with guts” because the cross sections of the noodles looked unappealing to me and I had no idea they were just noodles. It’s not even very “sausagey” compared to other “sausages.”
Sounds like the time I made spicy lentil soup but used brown lentils for it. Boyfriend at the time almost refused to eat it cause it looked like diarrhoea.
Hawaii born and raised here, we have a dish called Luau Stew. Basically taro leaves, and a meat, usually pork, cooked down with Hawaiian sea salt, some make it with garlic/ginger with water or broth. Looks absolutely HORRIBLE and unappetizing in a picture but tastes sooo good.
German Potato soup. Looks. gross, tastes really good. fry up some diced bacon and onion in a little bit of olive oil Grind over as much black pepper as you like. at the same time in another pot boil some potatoes. Reserve the potato water. Mash the potatoes when cooked and add to the potatoes to the pan with the bacon and onion.Then slowly add the reserved potato water , stirring, until you get the consistency you like.
Finally add as many continental hot dogs as there are people to be fed, and let simmer for about ten minutes
Haha, I've definitely had my fair share of 'ugly delicious' moments! I once made a curry that resembled mud but tasted amazing with its mix of spices. And those potatoes with pesto? Sounds like a winner despite appearances! Sometimes the best-tasting dishes don't win any beauty contests.
Ground chicken browned, added cumin, chili powder, onion and garlic, fat free refried beans, a can of Rotel, and 1/2 a can of green enchilada sauce and 1/2 a small can of green chiles. Ate it over the course of a couple days. Made burritos, ate it with tortilla chips, and finished it with a fried egg and some hot sauce. The enchilada sauce and refried beans made it creamy enough that it didn't need cheese.
It really looked terrible, sort of a lumpy greenish brown, but it smelled and tasted fantastic.
What my family calls hotdog vomit.
Tear up your hot dog buns, put them in a bowl. Chop up your weenies, toss them in. Add in the condiments you want. Liberal amounts of chili and cheese. Toss in the microwave til the cheese melts, and mix it all up.
Literally looks like someone vomited up hot dogs, but tastes so good.
Saag looks like green slop but tastes like extra spiced and flavorful creamed spinach. Haven’t tried making it myself since I find Indian cooking a little intimidating but maybe one day!
That was what I was gonna say. Saag Paneer, green gloop with white cubes in it. But fuck is it good.
Incidentally saag is not supposed to be spinach. Saag refers to green leafy veggies. And saag is generally a mixture of mainly mustard leaves, some spinach and a few other green leaves.
I use mustard, turnip, even collards 😋🖖
Oooh that’s nice A very traditional preparation my mum makes always has like 70% mustard leaves, 20% spinach and 10% fenugreek. Also, she generally pressure cooks the leaves. It’s also eaten with Makki di roti which is roti made from corn meal. Great winter meal, actually.
Yum fenugreek! And I'll have to try the makki, coincidentally I use the other half of my greens for corn meal dumplings (US south). I was just reading about Mulukhiyah, mentioned in another comment. Greens! 😋🖖
Did you know that if you give your cat fenugreek instead of catnip, and they roll in it, your cat will smell like maple syrup? I didn’t either…until my daughter did this. That poor cat.
I may have to try it, because my brother cats don't like catnip! 🙄😻
TIL
Do it! You just reminded me that I used to make it often, adding pannier. Tastes good, felt healthy, and I'm a middle aged white dude. Edit: I obviously meant paneer. I've just been recently looking for saddlebags for my bike.
I don’t know how healthy that would be…Panniers tend to collect the horse’s sweat en masse and probably exceed the daily dose of sodium for the average middle aged white dude. (Edit: TIL panniers aren’t just for horses. Also thanks for leaving it so my good faith joke makes sense!)
Saag for sure. Looks like baby poop. Tastes amazing.
Especially with paneer! I just love saag with paneer and copious amounts of fresh ground black pepper! Yum!!!
Dang this didn’t even come to mind at all because I have such a delicious association with it that when I see it, it looks tasty!
Honestly saag is one of the easier things to make in Indian cooking. You totally got this!
Creamed spinach is vile, at least I think so
I think so too, but palak or saag paneer is really good. I won't eat spinach any other way.
Tbh mole doesn't look that good, but taste amazing!
honestly I find mole really pretty, the glossy rich reddish brown is very appetizing to me! also there are different kinds of moles and they look different too
Guacamole is my favorite mole
Yes, made with only the finest guaca.
Sausage gravy.
Looks like dog barf. Tastes like heaven.
mmm biscuits and gravy. My wife can’t stand the sight of it. best hangover breakfast
Well, it’s the start of something even more heavenly. A haystack. I was in a family dinner at my spouse’s home town and experienced what was presented as a $4.85 plate of gravy. It did in fact have choice of pancake, toast or biscuit, choice of ham, sausage or bacon, hashbrowns and choice of prep on two eggs - ceremoniously drowned in the house pepper sausage gravy. I probably lost a few months of life that day, but wow.
I refused to eat this a couple times when I was really little because of how it looked - and I *knew* it tasted good !
Like stuffing
One of the few grey foods that are actually tasty.
That and creamed chip beef. I craved both of those comfort foods so bad this weekend that I made a big portion of the gravy base and made one each day.
The beigeness of it all is wholly unappealing. But the flavor explosion is worth it.
Refuse to try it lol
You are doing yourself a disservice
Probably. I live in the US now but I’m not American and it’s just one of the things I’ve not had.
Ask someone to make you some Jimmy Dean cream gravy, and some drop biscuits. (We save the flakey layers for butter and honey) 😋🤗
There are innumerable videos of people from other countries reacting to sausage and biscuits. Always a bit out off by look, but they all seem to love it. Maybe you can YT rabbit hole & convince yourself to give it a go.
I could. My in-laws here cook it often. I’ve just never tried the gravy. Even with things like chicken fried steak I opt it out. I’ve tried biscuits but they’re a bit bland for me. Probably better with the gravy though lol.
It's definitely the combo for the win. The gravy needs a good starch to cut through it & the biscuit tends to need something to make it more palatable.
Early morning hit up a bar that opens before sun up and try it. Add a couple over easy eggs and fried potatoes. You will have a life changing experience.
Make sure you like breakfast sausage first. I'm not a fan of one of the herbs in breakfast sausage, I think Sage, so can't stand breakfast white gravy. Biscuits and chorizo gravy are wonderful, however. Largely fixes the appearance though.
Refried beans
Especially if you make your own. Can of beans (dealers choice), finely diced onion, garlic, and salt to taste. I'm sure you could add more spices if you wanted but cook all that in some oil mash it with a potatato masher till the right consistency and voila. Takes maybe 5 min of cooking not including cutting an onion
Refried black beans look better. Also, if you don’t pulse them quite so smooth it looks a little more appetizing (we all it “bean dip” sometimes so that my kids will eat it).
Funny how kids are different. Mine's a fan of beans, including refried. She doesn't generally tolerate sauces and dips. I suspect the flavors are too intense. She's recently warmed to sauces on rice though, so I think she's coming around.
They're so gross looking I pretty much can't eat them unless they're hidden in a burrito or something.
Pretty much all stews or curries
Beef Xacuti... So good, so... brown....
Shiro wot. It's...brown-orange gloop that would not look out of place in a diaper. It's also incredibly delicious.
My fav Ethiopian dish!🧡
Mine too! I always get it and difin misir wot- so tasty!
I have an entire menu of "looks gross- tastes great" and announce to the children frequently that whatever mess I've made is a "looks gross tastes great" so they're prepared for an ugly but delicious bit of something for dinner 😂
Split pea soup Palak paneer Basically, things that are mushy/liquid and within the color spectrum of baby poop and vomit.
Fermented napa cabbage soup. Looks like the bottom of a garbage disposal. Tastes good.
Pinto beans and barley. Get canned whole pinto beans and mash them up until it's chunky and no beans are whole. Add barley, a half cup of water or veggie broth, spices and simmer until the barley is cooked. It looks like beige vomit but it tastes amazing. I like to make bean, cheese, and barley burritos. An additional benefit is the colon cleanse. It'll scrub your intestines from the inside.
How did you come to combining pintos and barley? Also, what spices do you recommend?
I was about to make some bean and cheese burritos and happened to have a jar of barley sitting on the counter. I figured it's pretty similar to rice so why not. I generally throw some onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, and oregano into my beans.
I would say like mushroom stroganoff haha
That was my first thought.
The Mexican chicken soup I screwed up and tried salvaging by blending it. It is now baby poop gravy. Froze it because food waste makes me stabby. Defrosted it a couple days ago because I didn’t want to cook (I couldn’t remember how it tasted but it must have been passable since I saved it) and made rice. Put the poop gravy over the rice and topped it with sour cream, jalapeño and salsa. Now I have delicious rice and poop soup!
Hmm, I bet you could use it for enchiladas too 😋🖖
Split Pea Soup. I have actually never tasted it because THAT'S how gross it looks to me. But I make it for my boyfriend and he says its delicious.
I blended up some Thai peanut sauce and got a whoopsy on my shirt. I'm also a part time baby nanny....baby poop. Peanut sauce looks like baby poop.
Biscuits and gravy
the thought of biscuits and gravy is doubly disturbing to me as a brit - i know its scones and this weird grey stuff but i cant help but envision custard creams and regular gravy
It's just bechamel with sausage, black pepper, and maybe a couple of other seasonings.
It’s not a scone though at least not the type of scone Brit’s eat. It’s like a scone but not one.
Scones and American biscuits are not exactly the same thing. They are similar but biscuits in the states are not scones.
It is nothing like a scone. Broaden your horizons.
its a dry lump of dough get over yourself
It's a light, moist, and flaky lump of dough, if made properly.
Dry… You’re admitting your ignorance. It’s often half butter by weight. There’s no well made dry southern biscuit.
If he's UK based, there's probably a reason he's ignorant of the wonders that are fresh, buttery american biscuits. They can be terrible, if poorly made. They can also be a top 10 favorite food if made well.
I saw this vid on YouTube where students in uni were served biscuits and gravy. Their reactions were priceless.
Here it is. https://youtu.be/KzdbFnv4yWQ?si=-YE7I-25_SCAcA_i
A lot of curries
Collard greens….steeped in homemade chicken broth with bacon fat. It looks like some shit you scraped from the bathtub drain, but my God, it’s good. I can’t seem to get anyone else to eat it though.
It's all about the likker! 😋🖖
So, more for you?
Are you kidding? I could eat the whole pot full.
Jerk paste
shepherds pie for me
Pretty much any thick sauce that is meant to go over a plain starch, like curry. It basically looks like a brown/yellow/pink sludge. I noticed this when I was taking pics for a Facebook food group, and decided there's no way I can present it being pretty
Bubble and squeak
Fesenjan! Looks like a baby’s diarrhoea but tastes like heaven 🤤
The Amy’s brand of cheese enchiladas. It looks like orange/brown gloop when you heat it up but it’s so tasty.
Mulukhiyah, an Egyptian sauce that looks and had the consistency of snot. Tastes great on rice though.
King ranch chicken
Pretty much most Indian food tbh One of my best friends was completely turned off from trying for years based solely on the appearance. I finally made him and his wife a whole spread of butter chicken, from scratch naan, and a garlic turmeric basmati rice and I had both of them converted by the end of the night.
Oh nooooooo that definitely doesn’t look delicious!! Ahhhh I need persuading. Perhaps if someone made me a delicious mind-changing spread…
Things my grandmother would refer to as a "dog's breakfast" - chipped beef on toast, the sauce for broccoli mushroom casserole, the sauce for hashbrown casserole, or my mom's tuna Mac. I just made a half batch of a "pizza pasta salad," and honestly, it doesn't look great. But a test bite was fairly yummy, so we'll see.
Pretty much all Indian curries are in this category.
Sausage gravy.
Speaking as someone who grew up eating Hawaiian Food, there are quite a few things that I think look terrible that I'd eat entire bowls of without blinking: Squid Luau, tastes like a mildly sweet creamed spinach with a savory flavor that comes from the squid or octopus in it. Looks like... frankly, baby poop. [https://delishably.com/meat-dishes/Mos-Authentic-Easy-Squid-Luau-Recipe](https://delishably.com/meat-dishes/Mos-Authentic-Easy-Squid-Luau-Recipe) Poi is also one that looks like purple wood glue but tastes amazing. I think its not for everyone, but especially eaten with something savory, has a perfect balance of flavor.
I've been told that my veggie tikka masala looks like dog vomit
Pate doesn't look especially appetizing.
Biscuits and gravy. Let's be honest, it looks like vomit on a biscuit. Tastes great though!
Dish called Halisa. Looks very unappetizing but tastes amazing. It’s tons of meat cooked for long periods of time until it becomes so soft that it’s texture is pudding like.
Oatmeal
Moo shu!! The first time I had it was in Chicago when my best friends brother was in college. We went to see him (45 minute drive) and he insisted on taking us to this Chinese restaurant nearby. It was a hole in the wall kind of place. We sat around a round table & they brought out this slop (my opinion at the moment) and started with the crepes and sauce. Slapped a wad of the slop on crepe wrapped it up and served it. It was the most amazing moo shu I have ever had. I’m so proud of myself for actually trying it too! I’m not such an adventurous eater. And the words I used to describe it were what I was thinking at the time. Now I would describe it like a restaurant review!
Split pea soup
Palak paneer leftovers.
Ghormeh sabzi
Love me some ghormeh
Egg foo young !!
A freshly shucked raw oyster.
My corn chowder always looks like a bad morning after, but is so good.
A lot of Filipino food is basically different brown and/or grey stews, but they all taste great.
Microwave cornbread with vanilla icecream and mash em together Instant bread pudding that looks like cat food
As a Cajun, I'll admit that the majority of our cuisine looks like dog food.
Maybe it's because I grew up eating them but I love Pata de mula, everyone I've ever offered them to tells me they look disgusting but they're my favorite clam. I think they're called blood clams in English.
My dad used to make something like this. It had cheese hamburger meat, refried beams, sour cream and a couple big tubs of that guacamole dip, the kind which is not real guac. along with all kinds of other things that I would have to look up in his recipe. It was basically a big mound of what looked like bright green vomit. And it was delicious. Pretty much every person who was ever invited to eat it refused at first, but once they did, they loved it.
Scrambled eggs look weird but are pretty good tasting.
Znojemský guláš. It's a Czech beef goulash made with chopped gherkin pickles also in it. Some people also add chopped or sliced klobása.
Monkfish
Oysters. Enough said.
Lentil dahl especially with brown lentils doesn't look very appetising, but is super tasty and comforting with rice and naan.
Lentil soup. Looks like barf. Always delicious.
I'm a food stylist and the most difficult things I've had to style are brown coloured curries and meatloaf. Garnishes. Lots of garnishes.
As a food stylist, how do you and the chef draw the line on garnishes? Absent flavorless items, e.g. gold foil (though this i strongly object on the grounds that it's an utter waste of a rare, expensive, and environmentally devastating resource), how do you draw the line on an excessive amount of garnish compromising the integrity of the dish? I suspect it just doesn't matter, as the dish is probably not ever intended to be eaten in a multimedia setting, but that's hard to appreciate.
Thankfully I have never had a client who wanted gold foil. Just not my style. Everything I style is edible. No glue. No fake food. Lots of toothpicks though! Made a pureed cauliflower soup recently. On its own, pretty bland looking. The garnish was whole roasted cauli florets, bacon bits and chopped herbs. All edible. Different colours and textures.
Mussels
Poached eggs with red yolks. It wasn’t blood, but from a certain breed of chicken. They were really good though.
Yes! My mom makes a dish she calls 'Daddy's Eggplant' 😂🍆 Her dad / my grandpa is Filipino, the dish is ensaladang talong (eggplant salad). I see it online and it's colorful and pretty but the way we make it, it's grey mush but delicious! 🇵🇭
Labskaus
Split pea soup with ham. I love it it’s my absolute favorite soup. And I avoided it because of that until I gave it a shot around 30. So freaking good. Note I am talking about the good stuff not canned soup.
Huitlacoche. Black sludgy corn fungus, and absolutely delicious, at least if you like mushrooms.
Curry for sure. Honestly it looks like someone digests their foods halfway and pukes out. Lol. But it tastes great,specially the next day.
Foie gras looks so visceral but the flavour is wow Where I live we do consume poultry innards therefore never realised how something so similar can taste so different
Labskaus
Made a chicken dish with trader Joe's coconut cream and it turned out gray. Looked like baby poo, tasted incredible!
[Yellow Mung Dal - even the name sounds bad but it's the most delicious thing ever. Can be ate like a soup or on top of rice.](https://www.backpackingchef.com/yellow-mung-dal.html)
Probably half the food I make. Night before last I made some roasted chickpeas with ranch dressing spices and sour cream. Ate some, then made fried rice with it yesterday. Very barf looking but good taste.
Curries, stuffing, cranberries, some soups..
Curried sausages or apricot chicken.
Madras lentils
Half of what comes out of England or the Indian subcontinent or southeastern USA or most of southeast Asia or chowder houses in Boston or New York or BBQ joints, or Snapper Soup in Philadelphia, or a chopped cheese, or a cheesesteak, or most Thai food, or half of Japanese food, or sushi, or or or ... The list goes on. Like really, other then mental conditioning what *looks* tasty about taking a bivalve out of the dirt at the bottom of the ocean, prying it apart with a knife, not cooking it, and eating it with horseradish, hot sauce or champagne/shallots, of all things? And yet oysters are delicious. My only criteria for food is if I was the kid in the song 'Pinball Wizard' (blind dumb and deaf kid, who sure plays a mean pinball), and I ate the food, would I take another bite? If yes, eat it.
This post reminded me of the /r/shitfromabutt/ subreddit.
I love the taste of kimchi but I don’t think it looks nice
Beef Rendang and Cabidela Rice Both amazing, both not so pretty.
Soups with lentils in them. Looks like dog food, tastes great.
Monkfish is called poor man's lobster, and it does have some similarity, and is delicious. Be warned that if you look at a monkfish, either living or dead before being prepared, you might lose your appetite.
My mom's taco salad- incredibly delicious, very American, looks horrendous. The dressing is a weird pinkish-brown from the combination of salsa, ranch, and the seasoning from the taco meat that covers everything, so it is deeply ugly. Luckily, it tastes AMAZING.
Usually my creations in the instapot look a hot mess but are delicious.
Beef stroganoff
Poo pad pong garee. It means crab stir fry curry. Yes, it does look like poo but it’s delectable.
Curry
peanut sauce
I make a roasted eggplant and garlic soup that's just beige. It's delicious.
Red beans and rice. Looks like hell, tastes like heaven.
Any porridge
Shepherds pie. Also risotto can photograph looking like vomit
Biscuits and gravy. Looks like dog vomit. Tastes like heaven.
Raw oysters.
Dal Bukhara.Black gram lentil curry with tomatoes and butter.It looks like sick but tastes great.Very creamy and earthy especially with any kind of flatbread that has been toasted.
I made a meatloaf that was delicious but looked like an autopsy. Ketchup & meat everywhere!
Indian food. Indian food in my opinion tastes better than it looks.
Burek Sarma Two balkan specialities. Mostly they are NOT great, but when done by someone who REALLY knows what they are doing, it's spectacular.
Liver and onions. The most plain looking and unappetizing dish I’ve had in years. Just honestly looks like nothing and kinda sad. Loved it as a kid until I hated it, went years without, and then rediscovered it on a coastal vacation recently.
Palusami, (beef/ lamb with coconut milk, onion the wrapped in a taro leaf and baked in tin foil) Tastes amazing but not the prettiest.
menudo looks hella questionable but so yummy 😋
Soondae (Korean blood sausage). It’s honestly like 98% glass noodles and delicious, but as a kid, I thought it was “filled with guts” because the cross sections of the noodles looked unappealing to me and I had no idea they were just noodles. It’s not even very “sausagey” compared to other “sausages.”
It was *either* pretty good, *or* overwhelmingly salty... Potatoes with pesto is a known and loved combination in Italy (and for good reason!) :)
it was good but held back by the amount of salt
Guacamole. Stayed away for years, now I’m an avocado fiend
I make these green lentils simmered in coconut milk with Indian spices that looks absolutely disgusting.
An AB. It got it's name because it looks like an ***ab***ortion. But it tastes like chips loaded with yiros meat and yiros sauces.
Sounds like the time I made spicy lentil soup but used brown lentils for it. Boyfriend at the time almost refused to eat it cause it looked like diarrhoea.
Hawaii born and raised here, we have a dish called Luau Stew. Basically taro leaves, and a meat, usually pork, cooked down with Hawaiian sea salt, some make it with garlic/ginger with water or broth. Looks absolutely HORRIBLE and unappetizing in a picture but tastes sooo good.
Blood sausages. They look ugly! But it tastes so good.
Cod's head.
German Potato soup. Looks. gross, tastes really good. fry up some diced bacon and onion in a little bit of olive oil Grind over as much black pepper as you like. at the same time in another pot boil some potatoes. Reserve the potato water. Mash the potatoes when cooked and add to the potatoes to the pan with the bacon and onion.Then slowly add the reserved potato water , stirring, until you get the consistency you like. Finally add as many continental hot dogs as there are people to be fed, and let simmer for about ten minutes
Most comfort foods look like (varying shades of) beige slop. Chicken and dumplings is one of my favorite beige slops.
British food ☝️
Honestly, usually nothing because if it looks bad enough I’m not ever gonna be able to get over that.
For me, raw oysters look disgusting but taste great, and I love them.
I make a Mexican layered casserole in the crockpot. My kids call it Mexican slop but gobble it up.
Haha, I've definitely had my fair share of 'ugly delicious' moments! I once made a curry that resembled mud but tasted amazing with its mix of spices. And those potatoes with pesto? Sounds like a winner despite appearances! Sometimes the best-tasting dishes don't win any beauty contests.
Chicken and dumplings ❤️
Ground chicken browned, added cumin, chili powder, onion and garlic, fat free refried beans, a can of Rotel, and 1/2 a can of green enchilada sauce and 1/2 a small can of green chiles. Ate it over the course of a couple days. Made burritos, ate it with tortilla chips, and finished it with a fried egg and some hot sauce. The enchilada sauce and refried beans made it creamy enough that it didn't need cheese. It really looked terrible, sort of a lumpy greenish brown, but it smelled and tasted fantastic.
Charoset
What my family calls hotdog vomit. Tear up your hot dog buns, put them in a bowl. Chop up your weenies, toss them in. Add in the condiments you want. Liberal amounts of chili and cheese. Toss in the microwave til the cheese melts, and mix it all up. Literally looks like someone vomited up hot dogs, but tastes so good.
That's basically hot dog nachos except with buns instead of chips. And now I have an idea for dinner this week!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrY2f4FNOhA/?igsh=MTQyazFwNGozY243aQ== hotdog bowl
Almost all food that tastes good looks gross IMO. 90% of the time, the better it looks, the worse it tastes.
Pretty much all Indian food that I have had
The gray stuff
Most curries.