Raw Courage

(#13) Taste 25 Foods I've Never Tasted Before


1. Pattypan Squash
2. Beets
3. Eel
4.Wahoo
5.Lychee

6.Quinoa

7. Raw Oyster

Its true. It happened. Resist your impulse to gag and lets back up for a second.

I was on vacation in the Outer Banks last week. And when I take vacation I commit to it- I barely checked my phone and I certainly wasn't getting on the internet. But I was still working on my list.

Every year we go to Dirty Dicks (yes one of those cheesy beach places with the slogan "I got my crabs from Dirty Dicks"- see souvenir glass pictured below. But they have great crab.) 

And every year Ronnie and his dad order a plate of raw oysters. Never in my life, not even for a millisecond, have I even considered eating one of them. But this year when Ronnie's dad announced he was ordering oysters and looked around the table to see who wanted one, Ronnie gave me a look and I knew I had no choice. Twenty-five new foods. I HAD to do it.

I'm fairly certain I've never had oysters before, unless they were mixed in with other seafood. But I probably wouldn't have counted just regular oysters. I've had clams and mussels, and once you've tried one shellfish, you've tried them all. But RAW oysters- now that is worth blogging about.

They came on a tray of ice with the necessary accoutrements, looking like a grey blob of misery:

I let Ronnie fix mine up since he is the expert. He dressed it with Tabasco, cocktail sauce (made from the horseradish pictured above), and lemon. Then he "loosened it up" from the shell, though he encouraged me to double-check the loosening. 

To you reader I say this- always double-check the loosening. 

What was supposed to slide easily down my throat wound up being more of a struggle than I cared to participate in. I wound up pressing it out with my finger. 

Anyway, I cheersed shells with Ronnie's sister Julie and her two friends Arielle and Anna who (I believe for at least two of them) were also first time oyster slurpers, and down the hatch it went.

It wasn't nearly as slimy as I expected. In fact (aside from touching it with my finger) you could barely detect the texture at all. You don't chew it or anything, you just swallow it whole. All you can really taste is the lemon and the horseradish. And it did have that briny, savory flavor that people love about shellfish. 

Would I recommend it to you? Looking at that picture I almost want to chicken out all over again. But if you have a gracious significant other who is willing to do all the dirty work for you like I did, I would say definitely go for it. 

I also worked hard on list item #11 (get a tan) and of course did a lot of beach reading, so look out for those posts soon!