A Spanish ham producer recently announced that it sold the most expensive piece of traditional Iberian ham to a Japanese buyer for the outrageous price of 12,000 euros ($14,100). Julio Revilla, president of Sierra Mayor Jabugo, an Iberian ham producer based in Corteconcepción, Spain’s Huelva region, said that the record-breaking piece of ham was prepared following the strict instructions of the buyer. They requested that the ham come from an Iberian pig at least two years old that had been grazing in the mountains of Sierra Mayor for at least 100 days. The animal had to gain at least 100 kilos during the time they spend grazing and that their diet consisted only of acorns and herbs. Finally, the curing period for the ham was five years, double the normal curing period for premium ham. Read More »

Eddie Lebeau & Richard Amon, the two halves of London-based food art studio Tattooed Bakers pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in the world of cake art, with their functional carousel cakes being by far the most impressive. From marine cakes that exotic destinations almost to perfection, to sweet architectural wonders and doll-like edible creations, we’ve featured our share of stunning cake art here on Oddity Central, but we haven’t seen anything quite like Tattooed Bakers’ carousel cakes. Not only are these treats incredibly beautiful, featuring rococo and baroque-inspired decorations, but they actually incorporate mechanisms that make the merry-go-round turn, for an added visual effect. Read More »

Hongeo is a bizarre South Korean dish with a pungent aroma that most people describe as a mix of dirty public toilet and wet laundry left untended for days. Made from skate, a bottom-dwelling ray fish, Hongeo is considered by far South Korea’s smelliest food. It’s so stinky that many South Koreans wouldn’t come near it, let alone put in their mouths. However, its many fans can’t get enough of the ammonia fumes it emanates and swear that once you get used to it, it’s impossible to replace with anything else. But feasting on this stinky delicacy comes with a social cost, as the smell tends to linger in the mouth as well as on clothes. In fact, hongeo-specialized restaurants advise customers to seal their jackets in plastic bags before eating, and spray them with deodorant before leaving. Read More »

Kek Lapis Sarawak is a traditional Malaysian cake famous both for its intricate kaleidoscopic appearance and the grueling process required to make it. Inspired by the spit cakes that Dutch colonists used to enjoy, Kek Lapis Sarawak was born in Malaysia’s Sarawak state, sometime in the 1970’s. It’s basically a much more complex version of the layered Kek Lapis Betawi, which Sarawakians pretty much elevated to an art form. While its beige or brown outer layers do a good job or concealing the complicated inner cake, slicing one of these treas reveals a kaleidoscope of colors and geometrical shapes that require both logical thinking and a rich imagination to create. Read More »

An amateur confectioner from Vietnam has been getting a lot of attention for her stunningly-realistic tangerine-shaped steamed buns. Le Thuy, a secondary school teacher from Ho Chi Minh city, is well known among the confectioner community of the Vietnamese capital, especially for her jelly and bean cakes. However, she recently managed to surprise her peers as well as thousands of social media users with her unique buns designed to resemble real tangerines down to the tiniest details. Her amazing creations look like fruits on the outside, but tear them apart and a soft, spongy interior is revealed. Read More »

A Thai family got the shock of their lives when they took home a box of sushi to eat only to see it glow bright blue in the dark after allegedly becoming infected with fluorescent bacteria. Last Tuesday, Arun Yolpaiboon, 58, and her son, 21-year-old Natthanai Kanchanawasa, had just returned home with some boxes of sushi, which they consume regularly, when they noticed that some of the pieces of shrimp glowed an unnatural blue in low-light areas of their home. Even after boiling the pieces of sushi, the unnatural glow remained, so the pair shot a video showcasing the bizarre blue color of the shrimp. Then then woman’s son ate one of the radioactive-looking pieces just for fun. Read More »

If you’re tired of growing or eating the same old green cucumbers, you’ll be pleased to hear that there is actually an alternative – albino cucumbers. As their name suggests, these heirloom cucumbers are a bright white, even though the stalks they grow on have a common dark green foliage. Albino cucumbers don’t simply occur as an anomaly, although that may have been the case with the first such specimen. They are actually a slowly developed variety of cucumber that dates back to the 1893, when the Burpee seed company featured it in its famous catalog for the first time. It had been sent in by a customer in 1890, and Burpee spent the next three years breeding and evaluating the plant before launching it commercially. Read More »

Seattle-based Lauren Ko is a self-taught baker who rose to fame thanks to the mathematical precision of her pie designs, most of which are inspired by complex geometric patterns. A former executive assistant in higher education, Lauren Ko got into baking completely by accident. She saw a picture of a really beautiful pie while surfing the internet and asked herself if she could do something like that. Little did she know that the seemingly unimportant self-challenge would change her life forever. After baking her first pie in 2016, Lauren never looked back, and soon after starting her Instagram in 2017, her mesmerizing pies were already a big hit on the popular social network. It wasn’t long before juggling her job and pie making got too difficult and she decided to focus her efforts exclusively on her passion. Read More »

From flamboyant wedding cakes shaped like fantasy castles, to edible optical illusions, we’ve featured some amazing cakes here on OC, but this collection of marine-themed treats definitely take the cake! The Covid-19 pandemic has made vacationing in a tropical island paradise a lot harder this year, but you can satisfy your craving for tropical destinations as well as your sweet tooth with some ultra-realistic paradise island cakes. We didn’t even know something like that even existed, but it turns out some cake masters are so skilled that they can recreate a tropical island setting using regular baking ingredients, food coloring and jelly. Read More »

Redefined Meat, an Israeli startup specializing in alternative meat, recently unveiled what it calls the world’s first 3D-printed plant-based steak called Alt-Steak. Using its own patent-pending 3D-printing technology, Redefine Meat has allegedly been able to create a meatless steak that features the appearance, texture, and, most importantly, the taste of the real thing. The company was apparently to achieve all this by working with expert butchers, chefs, food technologists and Swiss flavor company Givaudan. The revolutionary Alt-Steak is created by mixing Redefined Meat’s Alt-Muscle, Alt-Fat, and Alt-Blood plant-based formulations in several layers. The end result is a sustainable, high-protein, cholesterol-free steak that looks, cooks and tastes like real meat. Read More »

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade or so, you’ve probably seen pictures of Japan’s square watermelons doing the rounds online. I know I have, but what I never knew was that these weird-looking fruit are basically inedible. Perfectly sized and shaped fruits are big business in Japan, and it’s not uncommon for the rarest and most coveted varieties to sell for thousands of dollars a piece. Back in 2016, a supermarket owner made international news headlines after paying $11,000 for a bunch of Ruby Rose grapes, the world’s most expensive grape variety. But it’s not just grapes, specialty fruit shops charge hundreds, even thousands of dollars for fruits of all types, which may seem strange, but it is closely tied to Japanese culture. Rare and expensive fruits are traditionally offered as gifts to clients, business partners or relatives, and people will gladly spend a small fortune on a single fruit just to show their respect for someone. But while most of these expensive fruits can be savored by the recipient, there is one that has a purely decorative purpose – square watermelons. Read More »

Numazu Port, in central Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture, was more famous for its seafood dishes and arresting views of Suruga Bay, but ever since photos of a visually striking blue pudding started doing the rounds online the port town has become known for its gourmet desserts as well. The Numazu Deep Sea Pudding Factory (Numazu Shinkai Purin Kōbō), opened its gates in July of 2018 and managed to make a great first impression with the help of an inspired selection of gourmet sweets, that included puddings, ice cream and uniquely-flavored soda. Right from the start, the owners set out to create a product that captured the essence of Numazu, and the adjacent Suruga Bay proved to be the perfect inspiration. Famous for hosting the deepest ocean pits around Japan, Suruga Bay was perfectly represented by a whimsical blue dessert named Deep Sea Pudding. Read More »

Believe it or not, the Vietnamese province of An Giang, in the Mekong Delta, is less known for its breathtaking natural attractions than for the giant loaves of bread that went viral online a couple of years back. It all started in 2018, when lifestyle and entertainment website Brightside published a list of the world’s strangest foods, including a giant loaf of bread that was supposedly very popular in Vietnam’s An Giang province. There were those who claimed the accompanying photos of the bread were either photoshopped or shot from a certain angle to create the illusion that they were much larger than ordinary loaves, but then other photos and videos of the unusual bread started going viral online. Vietnamese media started giving the giant loaves a lot of attention, and soon the whole world knew about the now famous giant bread of An Giang. Read More »

I understand that the title reads a bit strange, but then again this is no ordinary cheese we’re talking about. It’s the hardest cheese in the world, and yes, it can be chewed like gum for up to two hours. Chhurpi or Durkha is a traditional Nepalese cheese that has been a means of survival or many remote communities for centuries. Made out of the milk of yaks, or chauri (the cross of a yak and a cow), chhurpi comes in two varieties – soft and hard. The soft stuff is usually consumed as a side dish with rice, as filling for traditional dumplings, or ever as a soup. But it’s the hard variety that makes chhurpi famous all over the world. You may think you’ve tried hard cheeses before, but trust me when I say that this Nepalese staple puts them all to shame. It’s as hard as a rock, so you can’t even bite into it for at least an hour or so. Read More »

When it comes to making bread that’s almost too good to eat, few bakers even come close to Hannah P, a North Carolina food artist who has taken Instagram by storm with her intricate bread designs. From loaves of bred decorated with plant-inspired designs hand-carved into the dough, to pastry creations adorned with colorful fruits and vegetables, Hannah P.’s works are nothing if not eye-catching. Using a razor blade attached to a kitchen utensil the name of which escapes me, the artist posting on Instagram under the name “Blondie + Rye” takes bread art to a level that I for one have not seen before. Sure, there are lost of talented bread artists showcasing their creations online these, days but Hannah is definitely one of the most talented ones, if not the best. Read More »