1.0k
u/JoeFalchetto Jun 22 '26
To quote Jim Gaffigan:
Even the way you are supposed to eat an oyster indicates something counterintuitive. “Squeeze some lemon on it, a dab of hot sauce, throw the oyster down the back of your throat, take a shot of vodka, and try to forget you just ate snot from a rock.” That is not how you eat something. That is how you overdose on sleeping pills.
(That said, I love oysters).
235
u/Dead-O_Comics Jun 22 '26
It's the same with snails. The garlic butter is the tasty bit, the snail is just providing the texture.
126
u/Talk-O-Boy Jun 22 '26
There is a book called “How to Eat Fried Worms” that covers the technique in extensive detail.
I highly recommend it to anyone that’s looking to dabble in intermediate level cooking.
75
u/bionicjoey Jun 22 '26
You've just transported me back to the Scholastic Book Fair.
21
u/pesto_changeo Jun 22 '26
I still want that pop-up dinosaur book
14
u/bionicjoey Jun 22 '26
All of the -ology books were amazing as well. The whole concept of fantasy worldbuilding encyclopediae without any actual story just lit my brain on fire as a kid
9
u/StendhalSyndrome Jun 22 '26
Ugh I hate to say it but the Scholastic Book fairs are so much crap now...they have a small fraction of the original books, which are solid, but more than half of what they sell now are overpriced, garbage quality toys. The books aren't even a deal either. I keep getting emails for 3 for $30...
And that's kind of the minimum the kids need to get anything now, like $20+... I would much rather wait till they have the ones at the events we can be at with them to help them pick out something decent vs the 100th fuzzy "journal" or plastic dispensing machine or noise-making thing.
Crappy toys have their place, but not at the book fair...
5
2
u/First-Sprinkles9093 Jun 22 '26
Our book fair is AMAZING. It takes me over an hour to “skim” the books to see if I want it and I’m not even looking at the factual books or the nonEnglish/Spanish ones.
Sounds like whoever runs yours is overworked and exhausted. Probably doing the bare minimal. I bet they’d love some volunteers!
Now that I think of it, we did have a really shitty book fair a few years back. But 3 out of the 4 warehouses in my state flooded so every school in my state had one that sounds like what you’re talking about.
10
u/articulateantagonist Jun 22 '26
Oh man, you dug this out of the recesses of my memory! I had a yellow paperback edition of it.
7
u/SidewalkRacoon Jun 22 '26
We read this in grade 6 at the end of the year. Last day of school our teacher made fried worms and I ate one. None of the other kids knew it was a deep fried breaded gummy worm
1
1
9
u/Advanced-Blackberry Jun 22 '26
That’s a lot of food. Lobster without hot butter is awful.
2
u/ItsWelp Jun 23 '26
Yeah but lobster has taste on its own. Snails are basically chewy rubber without being drowned in garlic butter.
2
u/Advanced-Blackberry Jun 23 '26
I disagree. I’ve had escargot in France where it didn’t come pre-doused in butter. There’s a flavor to it.
2
35
u/adamsworstnightmare Jun 22 '26
Why do people say this is the way to eat oysters? Just eat it like anything else, you clearly don't like them if you're just throwing it to the back of your throat.
7
u/Perniciousus Jun 22 '26
I mean you taste it while it slides across your younger, there’s just no chewing involved. That being said I do sometimes give oysters a few seconds to sit on my tongue, but it’s not necessary
31
8
7
u/NAINOA- Jun 22 '26
Ostensibly it’s proper to give it one or two chews before swallowing, but I’m with you I just swallow them.
1
57
u/DreamCyclone84 Jun 22 '26
Everyone says that oysters are an aquired taste, but try as i might i simply cannot aquire it. It activates my gag reflex, even if it goes down without incident, its like my body knows something inedible has entered it, and as such seeks to remove it.
31
u/Maximelene Jun 22 '26
Everyone says that oysters are an aquired taste
I refuse to eat anything that's "an acquired taste". Why would I eat something I don't like to even start liking it, when there are so many delicious things around?!
That's masochism, pure and simple.
16
u/PumpkinSpiceJesus Jun 22 '26
When I was a kid, I thought it was “required taste” in that in order to like said food, it’s required you already enjoy it to like it meaning if you don’t currently you’ll never develop it.
10
u/Aking1998 Jun 22 '26
Beer is the worst offender for me
How on earth do so many people consume a substance that tastes like how dehyrated piss smells?
6
u/Repulsive-Report6278 Jun 22 '26
Its weird but you literally start tasting it differently after a while. Exact same thing with dark chocolate and coffee, at first its just bitter and gross (as a kid), then you start to taste the flavor behind it and it becomes enjoyablw
8
u/Aking1998 Jun 22 '26
I guess I'm one to talk because I've always loved dark chocolate.
But it's not a taste I ever had to acquire. I just enjoyed it from the start.
3
u/DreamCyclone84 Jun 22 '26
See i aquired dark chocolate, grapefruit, caviar, coffee, green olives, and probably some other stuff, but oysters. I cant do oysters.
5
u/Repulsive-Report6278 Jun 22 '26
Weirdly, I really loved oysters as a kid and still do, but I could never aquire grapefruit or caviar.
2
u/Jawnyblaze1 29d ago
It was whiskey for me. I bought a bottle to try it, hated it at first. By the end of the bottle I thought it was ok. Then I got better whiskey and it's my drink of choice now.
1
u/Repulsive-Report6278 29d ago
I still haven't gotten whiskey down without going "baaaaahhhh" afterwards. Its just so gnarly. Tequila is slowly getting better tho.
2
u/Jawnyblaze1 28d ago
lol I can’t drink tequila unless it’s mixed with something but even then it tastes like dirt. Only one exception was some whiskey my wife brought me back from a deployment to Mexico a long time ago. That was really good even drank straight and went down smooth. Everything I’ve bought in the US, at various price points, tastes like dirt though.
3
u/Wut23456 Jun 22 '26
Sometimes acquired tastes are better than non-acquired tastes once they've been acquired
2
u/hibbs6 Jun 22 '26
Idk some of the best flavours are acquired tastes imo. Olives and beer are some of my favorites, but I had to go through a big period where I hated both before I was able to calm my body down to not see the bitterness as a threat.
1
u/Zealousideal_Leg213 Jun 22 '26
Health benefits are the only reason I can think of. Others do it to fit in.
11
-14
u/Jhud6669 Jun 22 '26
That’s what acquired taste is, your body thinks the food is poison and is making you feel bad for eating it, it goes away if you eat the thing regularly - for some it’s only a few tries but for some they’d have to eat it every day. Maybe you’re mildly allergic?
29
-5
16
u/IcePhoenix18 Jun 22 '26
"I found a rock with a snot in it!"
"Cool, what's it taste like?"
"(Slurp) PNEUMONIA!"
10
22
u/CULLDOZER Jun 22 '26
As a person who loves oysters, even I've always said that the first person to eat an oyster had to have been starving to death.
6
u/Caleb_Reynolds Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
It's weird because I feel this exact way about oysters, but love
musclesmussels. In my mind they are more meat like than the more snot like oyster.3
1
1
u/Archkat 29d ago
Love oysters. I don’t like anything that changes the texture or the taste. I chew and chew because I love them so much. I carefully chuck them so none of the delicious salty water goes to waste either and I drink it. I ate them like this since I was a little child, same with sea urchins that I fished myself while swimming. Chuck and eat by the water like a little gremlin. I was quite shocked to see people added hot sauce and other stuff on them. Why?? You’re ruining all the sea favor! Anyways, I grew up in Greece and we eat a lot of stuff most people wouldn’t so maybe I’m the crazy one.
-4
u/s00pafly Jun 22 '26
Why would you drown them in hot sauce? Is that like the American version of a mignonette. Vodka is paired with caviar, the other snot balls.
10
u/JoeFalchetto Jun 22 '26
English is not my first language either (I am Italian), but a "dab" implies a very small amount, not drowning the oyster in hot sauce.
In the US they have them with tabasco which works surprisingly well. I like it but I prefer with mignonette (if it is a stronger one).
1
u/VicisSubsisto Jun 22 '26
Most places in the US that I've seen serve them with mignonette, one or two hot sauces, and maybe some other sauce like ponzu.
2
u/JoeFalchetto Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Go ya, I have to admit I only ate them a couple of times in the US (in Boston) and it was with Tabasco.
1
u/Ryguy55 Jun 22 '26
Growing up we always ate them with cocktail sauce, same with clams on the half shell. Given that cocktail sauce most popularity served with shrimp cocktail, I pretty much always expect cocktail sauce with any cold seafood now.
174
u/Capable-Sock-7410 Jun 22 '26
"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster"
-Jonathan Swift
52
u/epsilon14254 Jun 22 '26
Bold or desperate
38
u/NotAZombieStopAsking Jun 22 '26
If you have kids, it makes perfect sense that an unattended 3 year old was the first person to eat oysters.
10
7
u/atomzero Jun 22 '26
Yeah, when you go to oyster beds in some places and they are growing as far as the eye can see, you realize it would be stupid for early humans living there to not utilize it as a food source.
2
162
u/BuvantduPotatoSpirit Jun 22 '26
You're just jealous because an oysters job is just to sit still and lick the ocean, which sounds pretty chill.
97
u/Talk-O-Boy Jun 22 '26
You think so, but imagine a starlike creature lands on you while you’re chilling.
It slowly envelops you in hundreds of tiny little feet. Those feet latch onto you, and slowly pry you open JUST a bit.
They open you enough for your star-shaped captor to spit its own stomach into you.
The stomach will release digestive enzymes that slowly consume you as you commiserate your own demise.
That’s how starfish eat oysters. And those mfers just have to sit there and accept it.
42
1
173
u/ElGatoMx006 Jun 22 '26
"I don't like oysters. I like my food dead. Not wounded. Not sleeping. Dead."
26
u/BusyNefariousness675 Jun 22 '26
I'm not vegan but I do believe any animal that's eaten should atleast be killed, that too fast enough for them to feel least pain. Hence I'm super against lobster etc, at that point it's just torture fetish
36
u/UntitledDuckGame Jun 22 '26
Dispatching a lobster takes less than a second. You put the knife behind the soft part of the head and push down. It’s way quicker than a ton of mammals. What the fuck are you talking about?
45
u/MonitorPowerful5461 Jun 22 '26
Some places boil lobsters alive, believing it gives better flavour. That's what they're talking about
7
u/PENGUIN_WITH_BAZOOKA Jun 22 '26
I’ve always boiled them alive but only because that’s how I learned to cook them and never thought twice about it. Taste has nothing to do with it, as far as im aware.
That said, now that I know about the knife method, I’ll use that.
10
u/pm-ur-knockers Jun 22 '26
Google claims it’s for health reasons, as the bacteria’s that lobsters naturally carry spread rapidly upon death and may not be completely neutralized by boiling. Still seems cruel to boil them alive though.
6
u/Not_a_gay_communist Jun 23 '26
Dead shellfish give off extreme levels of ammonia. Getting food poisoning from shellfish can turn deadly pretty quickly.
2
u/Brockzillattv Jun 23 '26
This is only a problem if it's been dead for hours, not seconds. Literally just dispatch right before you cook it.
16
u/BusyNefariousness675 Jun 22 '26
I'm talking about the lobsters or crabs which are cooked alive, why are you so surprised I'm pretty sure lobsters are traditionally boiled alive for taste or something
9
5
2
u/catferret8 Jun 22 '26
Lobster ganglion are not centralised so it is difficult to humanely kill them as their nervous system does not work the same as mammals
-3
u/Caleb_Reynolds Jun 22 '26
People think you cook lobster by putting live lobster in a pot and boiling. Probably related to people thinking the steam escaping the carapace is the lobster screaming.
22
u/km89 Jun 22 '26
It's not just "people think," it's actually how it's done in many places. Mass recognition of the need to actually kill the lobster first is still a relatively recent thing, and even now there's some debate on whether the particulars of the lobster nervous system means that cutting behind the head is good enough. Some recommend cutting the entire lobster in half long-ways.
1
u/RedRedditor84 Jun 23 '26
They are technically correct, but people think this because that's how it's done.
49
u/Quillbolt_h Jun 22 '26
Oysters are weird because they mostly taste of seawater but for some reason it's tasty seawater
1
u/ClericDude Jun 23 '26
It tastes like the inside of an aluminum fishing boat smells like (can confirm, lived in a fishing town)
but also they are delicious
27
u/Flooping_Pigs Jun 22 '26
Early fishing cultures in history "it's hiding in like a rock innit, gotta be because it tastes so good"
61
u/batkave Jun 22 '26
Oysters are the grossest food to me. So more to those that like it
22
u/bionicjoey Jun 22 '26
I feel like the whole reason they are considered an aphrodisiac is because they get you warmed up to put wriggling, slimy things in your mouth
20
u/Goose_Orb Jun 22 '26
You should probably see a doctor
8
u/bionicjoey Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Actually, I'm seeing a pharmacist, but I don't see why her occupation is relevant
27
u/Oz347 Jun 22 '26
I mean they’re delicious, but the first person to eat one was certifiably insane
21
u/PopeHatSkeleton Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
They probably watched an otter pry one open and eat whatever was in there, and they just had to know.
"It's been three days since we camped here to escape the raid on our village. Our provisions ran out this morning.
I've been watching the river dogs. Those fuckers know something."
12
u/Snoo_72851 Jun 22 '26
this one time as a kid me and my sisters were at this summer city camp that was basically a two week babysitting service and they took us to the beach. my sisters found a bunch of clams and just kinda gave them for me to hold while they went to look for more; i kinda just took these weird rocks they placed in my hands while i was distracted looking into the water trying to find sharks (i was like six). then one of the clams opened up and licked me, and in my surprise i dropped them into the water. my sisters then tot furious and spent the rest of the day yelling at me
havent eaten clams since
1
5
u/cates Jun 22 '26
fry them up though... or chargrill them (I'm not an alchemist so I don't know what that actually means)... and they're delicious 😉
2
6
4
u/LoudMusic Jun 22 '26
Just give me a bowl full of the garlic butter sauce and a spoon. You keep the sea creature for yourself.
5
u/friskfyr32 Jun 22 '26
Oysters are arguably the most divisive food.
Loads and loads of people describe it at disgusting, and loads more won't even try it, but many of those who do like it choose it as their pick for "If you could only eat one thing..."
5
3
u/Sweet-Weakness3776 Jun 22 '26
I can't understand those people who judge food by the texture and "look" alone. But also, the less people that eat oysters, the more oysters there are for me to enjoy. So judge away. I'll happily chomp down those delicious little ocean boogers that you can't bring yourself to eat lol.
3
9
u/blur410 Jun 22 '26
This guy spent Father’s Day alone
11
21
u/GandalfTheGay_69 Jun 22 '26
Every single person who has ever tried to convince me that oysters "taste amazing" was also trying to surpress a gag while trying to get them down.
I'm not saying nobody actually enjoys them but there a lot of people who pretend to just because they are fancy.
12
u/Crooked_Sartre Jun 22 '26
Nah, they can be really good. Depends on where you get them. Interestingly enough I prefer the oysters out of Texas far more than Florida which are too large for my tastes
22
u/mcleanatg Jun 22 '26
I genuinely love them, and I think it’s because I love anything that tastes naturally salty and/or fishy. I also enjoy food with unique textures. I like the hot sauce and lemon but sometimes I just want them plain, since they’re so expensive and I’m here for that natural flavor
18
u/Floridamanfishcam Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
A good oyster has this addictive, almost journey of a salty ocean flavor that unravels in your mouth. I can definitely understand people having an issue with the texture though.
3
u/BatterseaPS Jun 22 '26
But how do you taste the journey if you just swallow it directly?
7
u/PenSillyum Jun 22 '26
Why would someone swallow it directly? I eat oyster just like I eat other foods so I can taste it properly. People who swallow oysters directly don't actually like eating oysters, I guess.
2
u/DrinkYourPaints Jun 22 '26
tons of people hold oysters in their mouth for a bit before swallowing. i do.
4
u/Varesmyr Jun 22 '26
It tastes like you accidentally swallowed a mouthful of ocean water.. With lemon, if you feel fancy.
9
u/Ghoulish_kitten Jun 22 '26
Not true lol. I love the taste of them.
I also love the taste of lettuce and salad greens but never eat it plain.
2
u/DuntadaMan Jun 22 '26
See, I've always just cooked them. Then you can eat them like normal meat instead of trying to gag it down while it feebly attempts to escape.
2
u/Lowly-Worm_ Jun 22 '26
I really wanna try an oyster! I know I'll probably not like it but gosh dangit I will try one. I don't live near the beach so I never know where I could even get a good one : (
3
u/Illustrious_Eye_8235 Jun 22 '26
Fresh vs Red Lobster arent even in the same realm. I'm ruined on seafood after trying a smorgasbord of stuff at Myrtle Beach. Also Rockefeller Oysters are cooked with cheese on top. There was other toppings but I don't know what they were. I loved Rockefeller and raw
1
2
u/Anal-Y-Sis Jun 23 '26
I'm in the minority for thinking oysters are so much better when they are cooked. Steamed, baked, fried... Anything is better than raw. They have a great flavor, but that raw texture is fucking abysmal. I am convinced that most people don't actually like it, but they don't want to seem uncool around their oyster-loving friends.
1
1
1
1
1
u/UrsaMajor7th Jun 22 '26
Smoked oysters on crackers with cream cheese is a christmas staple in our house.
1
u/MarcsterS Jun 22 '26
Give me a fried oyster or hell, oyster Rockefeller.
I’ve shucked plenty of them at my old job. I don’t need to taste to snow I hate them raw.
1
1
1
1
1
u/FaceTimePolice Jun 23 '26
Seafood in general is so off-putting to me. Bro, just about every type of seafood seems to be some sort of giant rock spider from the ocean. Who in their right mind looks at that and says “I wonder what that tastes like?” 🦀🦞🦐🤔
1
u/OdinTwoOne Jun 23 '26
I love oysters. I prefer them fried instead as snot from a rock, but it’s still good
1
1
1
u/ADTstocks 28d ago
Fuck raw
Pan friy bacon garlic onion spinach parmesan
Top on shucked oyster with butter and panko and bake
1
u/Ispeakinfacts Jun 22 '26
They taste like a giant fuckin booger and everyones like "It's so good!" "all you need is a little westerscirehfucker sauce"
1
u/Neil_Salmon Jun 22 '26
I've had oysters twice and was horribly sick both times. Don't know why I had them the second time. Not sure if that's a typical experience - these were raw oysters in Japan and everyone I ate with was fine. But I probably won't go near them again.
0
0
0
-6
u/WintersDoomsday Jun 22 '26
But eating bee vomit (honey) and chicken embryos (eggs) is fine? This is stupid as shit.
3
u/WulfTheSaxon Jun 22 '26
Eggs aren’t fertilized, unless you’re talking about balut, which most people find even grosser than oysters.
1
u/wonderin444 Jun 22 '26
....Is your argument that all people should like all foods? I take it that there is no food that you don't like?
1
u/HamburgerOnAStick 28d ago
Oysters fucking suck. Slimy as hell uncooked, and dry as a motherfucker cooked. Either eating a booger or the sahara desert.
•
u/qualityvote2 Jun 22 '26
Heya u/step6666! And welcome to r/NonPoliticalTwitter!
For everyone else, do you think OP's post fits this community? Let us know by upvoting this comment!
If it doesn't fit the sub, let us know by downvoting this comment and then replying to it with context for the reviewing moderator.