Are you a fan or not of eating pig fat or stinky tofu? If so, how did you first discover it for yourself?
P.S. Thanks for your answers! Personally, I could bear only stinky tofu if wasn’t smelly enough. There are plenty of affordable restaurants in Taiwan to try it with duck blood, etc. The key is to pick the place with long queues and a lack of smell. They’re top rated.
You can put me down as a hard no for both.
I first tried pig fat (in this way, at least) in China, when one of the students in my research group offered me a “pig fat cake” from her hometown and said it was “delicious” (it wasn’t, and that’s not a “cake” in my opinion). It tasted pretty rancid, and the reminder of it even put me off xiaolongbao for a few weeks.
I avoided stinky tofu for almost a decade until trying it for the first time here a couple of months back at a friend’s birthday dinner. Happy to finally have that crossed off the list, but I doubt I’ll be trying it again (I came quite close to throwing up).
I’ve never even heard of “pig fat” being a dish per se. I like 臭豆腐, although I do wonder exactly how it’s made (the historical recipes don’t sound appealing).
A big no for stinky tofu. I’ve been here for ages and I have tried just a small bite (I think too small to really know if I like it or not). I just can’t get over the smell.
Pig fat is okay if it’s that three layer cut of meat (skin, fat, then meat). Wrapped up in those white buns and with some cilantro, etc. is very tasty to me.
First weekend here my Masters course students took me to the night market, on a covert “gross the foreigner out” mission. I think they might have been confusing me with an American, but I’m from Scotland, where the dietary atrocities are less globalised.
“You must to try cho dofu, very traditional, very deeliciious” (snigger behind hand)
I had some idea what was going on, though I don’t THINK I’d had it at that point.
Mmm…ses I “That’s really quite good, though it would be better with beer”
How the little faces fell.
It can be quite good, though its usually better with beer.
Its deep fried, after all. What’s not to like?
I love all types of stinky tofu. Smell doesn’t phase me, more appetizing to me now. Only thing I don’t like is the duck blood they add in 麻辣臭豆腐。
Yes 刈包. Good stuff. But big chunks of fat on its own? No thanks. Or pig ear also gross.
How about the dish 五更腸旺？
Intestines and duck blood. That stuff is vile.
Anything made with pork belly has a large amount of pig fat in it.
So lōo-bah-pn̄g just chopped up the pork fat into tiny chunks, but khòng-bah-pn̄g would give you a huge hunk of pork fat, sometimes with some hair still on the skin.
No problem with that. We eat Black Pudding, after all. Transport cafe delicacy, when they used to have transport cafes.
The surface slick of chilli oil can be a bit more reminiscent of industrial waste than one might wish though.
What is it in Chinese? First time I heard about it. Crispy leftover from rendering lard?
They got me later though, twice, though I think one, maybe both, gotchas were accidental.
First Gotcha
“You must to try duck head” (Yeh, hence the nom de guerre). "very traditional, very deeliciious”
Now duck head is deep fried too, but its, well, a ducks head, and there is a limit to what even deep frying can achieve, palatability-wise.
It isn’t uber-disgusting (like, say, tripe) but its very tough and very boring. The beak, in particular, tastes just like what you’d expect a deep-fried beak to taste like.
Transformative culinary miracles tend not to be the rule in the night market, which is pretty much WYSIWYG
I chewed and I chewed, but my attention span wasnt up to it, and I swallowed prematurely.
“Yurch!” ses I.
"Hemurch! ses I, flailing
(The latter might have been an attempt to say Heimlich Manouvre, particularly difficult to annunciate when you need to, and maybe Chinese has its own term anyway)
“Tee hee!” ses students. “The foreigner is going to die”.
Eventually a passing old geezer hit me on the back and I spat it out.
Never had one again.
Fuck that vile “exotic” shit. I’m happy with fish and chips, thanks.
It aint exotic here…if anything fish and chips are 
I am not a fan of these 2 things ,but respect the fact people are creating dishes with all parts rather than wasting portions of an animals body.
Stinky tofu its intentionally rotting fresh produce. So…i can do if it smells better than the bathroom of the place it is served in. If the place has no bathroom, no frame of referrence and i always pass. Same thing though ,respect for those that like it. I get t he same looks for cheese so its fair game!
The fried sticky tofu is my fav/
Blasphemy
Agreed. And if by “pork fat” it means 爌肉, then I’m all in - that is a great way to prepare pork.
Tip for those who like 米血. Don’t miss this place in Tainan. It is not their signature dish but I’ve never had better.
Back in the days when I was allowed to go to the gym - oh, fun times! - the nearby stinky dofu shop provided my post-workout snack (fried, with pickle and chili).
Pork fat is one of those things here that runs a massive surplus, they are always trying to get rid of it. 1 in 2 people just can’t tolerate it [completely fabricated statistic]. There is a small eat near me where the 滷肉 is almost 95% bits of chopped up blubber, and 5% meat. Personally I’m okay with it, as long as I can’t see it. The butchers at the markets will offer to blend it into mince. Makes the filling in buns and dumplings more flavourful.
It’s also a very neutral tasting fat when rendered well, good as a replacement for butter in laminated pastries and stuff. I suspect margarine might be cheaper though, and is slowly replacing its use in pastry baking.
Googling tallow gave me a heading “Benefits for Face” which sounded like it might be a Big Chinese Thing, but it turns out they were just talking about makeup and lotions, not social status.
Shouldn’t be a problem getting rid, though, since you can make biodiesel with it, which should be in demand for a while yet. After that gets banned, there’s still aviation fuel.
If I was in the UK I might try it as a car rust proofing ingredient, though rancidity might be a bit of a problem. Maybe not enough rust in Taiwan to be worthwhile.
The other gotcha was, I think, accidental, since they’d completed the “Gross the Foreigner Out” mission with mixed results and were acting off duty.
“You must to try Shaving Ice” ses they “Very traditional, Very deeliciouss”
“Mmnn…OK”, ses I “But it can’t be just ice?”
“Yes, yes”…“Just Ice” ses they Very Cool, Very Refreshing, Very Traditional, Very Deeliciouss"
I don’t really believe this, assuming it must have some fruit or something to provide flavour, but I have some, AFAICT the same as they ordered.
Unlike Duck Head, shaving ice is not deep fried, which would be tricky, and is even more boring.
Its also VERY VERY uncomfortable, being very cold and very sharp.
A casual observer might have assumed my portion was enlivened by strawberry syrup or some such concession to Big Girls Blouse Foreigners, but they’d be wrong.
That was blood.
Very Defleshing.
So OK, I can sort of get that a culture formed in the tropics under Japanese colonialism when refrigeration was a novelty might bill ice as a treat, but where I come from ice is not food.
Ice is Weather.
And Bad Weather at that.
