Most unhealthy thing you have seen or eaten
I was in Mexico City and a street vendor was selling chicharone quesadilla. This was composed of dried pork rind, wrapped in a fatty pastry and deep fried. I am certain that with some salt I would have enjoyed it. On the other hand, like smoking, it should be banned.
Deep fried Mars bars must be right up there as well. I have only had half of one. When I am terminally ill and do not have to worry about addiction I shall have a full one.
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I think I can top all with the ultimate combination of sugar, fat AND salt. I have no idea how (or why) my mother ever thought of this, but... Sugar Smacks covered in melted margarine (can you say trans fats?! butter was too expensive) and then heavily sprinkled with salt. Even though it's been 40+ years since I've had it, I can still taste it if I think about it hard enough - and weird thing is that it tastes good!
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Squeakycheese
Apr 4, 2009 05:46 PM
Deep fried pizza, hands down. I has it in Fortwilliam, Scotland. Cut into it and it erupted like a grease laden Vesuvius... to make matters worse it was awful... at least deep fried mars bars would ensure you shuffle off your mortal coil with a smile on your face!
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Brouillard
Apr 4, 2009 02:55 PM
I limit myself to a big plate of fried clams with bellies just once a year! Usually in the summer, either in Ipswich. MA or on Cape Cod. I am also crazy for poutine, but will not eat it outside of Quebec City. I just won't cross that line!
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Without a doubt, the chip butty. The chip butty has four basic ingredients:
white bread
french fries
butter
vinegarArguably, this is more the "least healthy" than it is the "most unhealthy" - by which I mean that it might not be as loaded with unhealthy things like cholesterol or carcinogens as, say, that gross bacon log thing that keeps popping up in the news, but, where the bacon log has some nutrients like protein, this sandwich has absolutely no nutritive value. It has a load of fat and a load of simple carbohydrates. Its ratio of unhealthy calories to nutritional value is gloriously close to infinite. I saw one gentleman in a pub really striving for that infinite ratio by adding some mayonnaise. Ketchup is a popular addition, but that comes dangerously close to adding things like vitamins.
A close second place is the bacon, egg, and cheese on a split glazed donut that the Dunkin Donuts employee refused to make for a certain friend of mine who was under the influence of a certain hunger inducing substance one. She made him get the bacon, egg, and cheese on a croissant, order the glazed donut seperately, and do the dirty work himself.›1 Reply-
re: danieljdwyer
Catskillgirl
Apr 2, 2009 01:01 PM
"I saw one gentleman in a pub really striving for that infinite ratio by adding some mayonnaise"
Thank you for the laugh.
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Veggo
Apr 1, 2009 03:00 PM
You didn't impose any limits, so here goes. After college (1974), my best buddy and I hitchhiked from San Diego to La Paz, about 980 miles in the hot sun. We were fiercely competitive and couldn't be one-upped, or so I thought. Somewhere around El Rosario I found a discarded cigar butt on the side of the road, and I dusted off the sand and fired it up. I was smokin' ;Vince wasn't. No comments were exchanged. Many miles later, around Santa Rosalia, Vince spotted a dead bird on the side of the road. Really dead. He picked it up and started gnawing on it. He was eating poultry; I wasn't. No comments were exchanged.
I never tried to one-up him again.›1 Reply -
Demented
Apr 1, 2009 01:52 PM
That would have to be an oki dog. A hot dog split lengthwise and grilled on the flat top, wrapped in a tortilla with grilled pastrami, chile, chopped onions and cheese.
Why stop at banning smoking? Eating red meat is bad for you, ban that. drinking is bad for you, ban that. Hell ban everything that's bad for you, or other people don't like!
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Near the end of a definitive Kobe beef dinner in Kobe, Japan, the chef took the fat that he’d trimmed from the edges of the meat earlier in the evening, cut it into neat little cubes, fried them tenderly on the grill and served them to us with a flourish. Petite translucent bite-sized chunks of pure fat. I was too appalled, and more to the point too stuffed, to do more than nibble on one of them. It was like butter – only better.
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switters
Mar 29, 2009 05:14 PM
i saw some crazy pizzas in japan, like stuffed crust pizza divided into four quadrants, each one topped with items such as chicken nuggets, hot dogs, deep fried pork, or perhaps canned tuna with an artful dollop of mayo. i lived in Nagoya, the ads called the pizza the "Nagoya combo."
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FoodChic
Mar 29, 2009 05:01 PM
Oh that's easy. There is a little breakfast place in the French Quarter that is across the street from the the hotel we usually freqent, and it has something called Hash Brown Heaven. Hash Brown Heaven is hash browns topped with ham, bacon, cheese, and sauasage gravy and a couple of fried eggs on the side. It is quite literally a heart attack on a plate, but it's wonderful after a night of tying one on.
A famous dish in St. Louis is the slinger. It consists of two sausage patties or two hamburger patties, topped with hash-fried potatoes, fried eggs, chili, cheese, and onions.
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re: FoodChic
OMG! I haven't thought about a slinger for years. I lived two hours away from STL most of my adult life and have eaten many a slinger - great hangover cure. Then in central Illinois there was the Horseshoe - no idea why it was called that. It was an open faced sandwich (usually a hamburger or ham) with french fries piled on top and then covered with cheese sause (aka CheezWhiz). Talk about a heart attack on a plate!
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WEll, I must admit in my younger days before I realized the importance of healthy eating I devoured (gulp) a deep fried twinkie covered in whipped cream and chocolate sauce. I am disgusted just thinking about it. On the gourmet side of the unhealthy spectrum I've also eaten Mizuna's lobster mac and cheese; basically Butter poached lobster in a buerre blanc marscapone cheese sauce over macaroni. Though in a food network challenge Mizuna's lobster mac won best mac and cheese in America, I'm not sure either of these horrifyingly unhealthy dishes were worth it.
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Sam Fujisaka
Mar 29, 2009 03:57 PM
Not being in the US all that much (the heartland of unhealthy), I don't see that many bizzare foods and people eating them. What I do see that absolutely freaks me out are people driving, walking, or working with their mouths attached to straws sticking up through domed lids sucking down HUGE HUGE amounts of cola in what seem to be one gallon cups!
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Passadumkeg
Mar 29, 2009 03:51 PM
Nearly 3 weeks of Spam 3 meals a day in Nam. More than a SNAFU, was really FUBAR!
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re: Nukedli
mcsheridan
Mar 29, 2009 03:27 PM
I'd stop in the middle of step #3. Refrigerate those golden brown and crispy chicken cracklings? Oh, the horror. I'd down 'em hot and tasty. :)
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I have some loquat seeds that have been steeping in Everclear for months. (I was making liqueur and forgot about it.) I was nervous enough about the loquat seeds (like a lot of seeds, they contain cyanide), which may be why I forgot about it in the first place. But now that it's been sitting so long I don't even know what to do with it. I don't want to put it down the kitchen sink.
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re: jlafler
Sal Vanilla
Mar 27, 2009 11:22 AM
First - gift comment is priceless.
But, never fear, you will not die. In fact I think they need a couple months (at least) to steep to get the flavor right. A friend in CA has a loquat tree and makes a liqueur from the seeds. It tastes sorta like amaretto.
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Sal Vanilla
Mar 26, 2009 08:01 PM
I ate some strange and questionable organ meat in Africa about a decade ago. Every time I got a hinky feeling in my head the thought that I had given myself some sort of freaky mad cow would run through my mind. Still when I see mystery diagnosis or House where the person got something from foreign food that nearly kills them... I go look in the mirror to see if there is anything weird crawling around under my skin or in my eyeballs.
I also ate a hot oyster in Mexico about 20 years ago. Luckily I upchucked it almost instantly. There is, sadly, very little I am unwilling to put down my gullet. Dangerous in Asia... and maybe Africa.
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purple goddess
Mar 26, 2009 07:26 PM
A whole turkey, marinated in Coke and then deep fried.
An American friend of mine swears she makes this every Thanksgiving. I suspect she's only saying it to disturb my poor little Antipodean mind, but she has posted pics of the apparatus used. (which looked oddly like my Granny's old washing copper)
Just think about it, even typing the words made me feel all boo-ack.
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re: purple goddess
Boccone Dolce
Mar 31, 2009 04:16 AM
I don't know about the coke part, but... fried turkey is wildly popular here. We've done it a few years for Thanksgiving. Tastes good (I prefer roasted) you're invited this November to taste test...
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re: Boccone Dolce
abduction51
Apr 1, 2009 12:46 PM
Popular enough for my father to fry a turkey every other month...it is to die for!
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re: purple goddess
I'm not sure that the Coke marinade is true, but even if it were that soda would hardly be a drop in the bucket considering the amount of fat and calories consumed on Thanksgiving. And with the myriad of butter-laden dishes consumed on this holiday, is there any significant difference between a roasted turkey and a deep-fried one?
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re: ScubaSteve
Paulustrious
Mar 27, 2009 05:10 AM
I think one of the items here seems to have the highest calorie count. But at $1000 a go it should do. I think I'd like to try it...
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re: Bob W
The Outback version is a Bloomin' Onion. Anything deep fried in pure lard is going to taste delicious. Potatoes, onions, iceberg lettuce, socks. I haven't been given the opportunity to finish a bloom 100% because there's always someone else at the table. But I certainly could eat the whole thing if I had the choice. And then I'd regret it.
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teamuse
Mar 25, 2009 11:14 AM
i've had my share of deep fried oreos (split with a group of people ) at the meadowland's fair each summer.
however, while in college (Rutgers University) the perfect sunday morning 'brunch' was dragging your hungover butt to the grease trucks across the street from Scott hall and getting yourself a fat sandwich. My favorite was the Fat Mojo- 8'' hoagie roll stuffed with french fries, chicken fingers, mozzerella sticks, slathered in honey mustard, topped with lettuce and tomato (to stay healthy of course). I haven't had one since I graduated a few years ago, and I do live nearby and it is tempting to go and get one for old times sake. :/
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SweetPhyl
Mar 25, 2009 10:41 AM
NC State Fair...deep fried banana pudding...Banana coated in crushed Vanilla wafers, deep fried and served in a bed of Vanilla pudding and rich whipped cream. I tasted it, delicious, but too "bad" to be truly enjoyed.
BTW, didn't a couple of Top Chef contestants attempt the infamous Krispy Kreme bread pudding on a "convenience store" challange?
Of course, when I'm in a truly indulgent mood, I can make a mean cream cheese stuffed raisen bread french toast. Once a year, at the most!
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tracylee
Mar 24, 2009 10:26 PM
At the Oregon State Fair lately, they've added a food both for deep fried Oreos, Twinkies, and batter-fried cheesecake. Nope, I've never tried them.
The closest I've gotten is Elephant Ears and Funnel Cakes - a recent addition to the Oregon food scene, via the Mount Angel Oktoberfest.
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re: tracylee
Bob W
Mar 26, 2009 12:42 PM
A local Japanese restaurant here in Northern Virginia featured a dessert of tempura-fried cheesecake. Normally the mere thought of that would make me sick, but I soldiered on and ordered it. So rich that four people could share one portion.
Elephant ears, when I was a kid, were gourmet french pastry. Now they are classic -- and delicious -- junk food.
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I think the worst thing I have seen (besides Paula's Krispy Kreme burger) was on Man vs Food. It was at a restaurant in Atlanta. I think it was called the double bypass burger. One large cheeseburger, topped with a fried egg and bacon. Here is the kicker. Instead of buns, it is sandwiched between 2 grilled cheese sandwiches. I am having chest pain thinking about it.
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Ever been to the Minnesota State Fair? Just for a start: Scotch Eggs (hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage and deep fried, served with ranch dressing), deep fried mac n cheese, deep fried candy bars, deep fried oreos, deep fried cheesecake, chocolate covered bacon, deep fried reuben, cream puffs, deep fried pizza, buckets of roughly 5 dozen cookies, the greasiest cheese curds I have ever seen, and top that off with a beer stand every 40 feet. That, my friends, is the most unhealthy thing I have ever seen. And I look forward to it every year!
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For my last birthday, a friend made huge ravioli with a cheese, sausage, bacon, and mushroom filling, coated it with panko batter, deep fried it and then sprinkled it with Parmesan cheese.
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I'll start where the OP does, with chicharon. But in this case, it was one of those big, flat fried slabs of pig skin (about the size of notebook paper) topped with pickled fatty pig skin, crema, salsa picante, and, just to be healthy, some lettuce. My husband ate it and enjoyed every last bite.
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re: Cachetes
I dream about those. They go by a lot of different names, but I could eat one every day.
To be fair, though, the shell is very often a bread product instead of a chicharron. Not sure if that's a net good or bad, because I'm sure the starchy ones absorb more fat than the skins, which actually end up being not all that incredibly horrid for you, strangely. And I'm a big believer that fat in its natural state (skin) is a lot better for you than something that has to be processed.
Still, it's a sliding scale. We aren't talking a cantaloupe half filled with low-fat cottage cheese, are we?
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I have eaten my share of very sinful desserts such as an entire praline souffle with carmel poured right into it. The most unhealthy would be breakfast at a friend's house many years ago. They lived on a farm and poured lard from a bucket onto a pan and then put pancake batter and bacon in it to cook and put it out for us to eat. Then when I was at a very famous chef's restaurant in France my tablemate ordered a pigs foot wrapped in bacon and loved it as I could not even look at it.
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re: aklein
mcsheridan
Mar 24, 2009 05:11 PM
That one gets my vote...
Runner-up: Paula Deen's Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding. Horrifyingly sweet and extra fatty.
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re: mcsheridan
kattyeyes
Mar 24, 2009 05:17 PM
Not unlike Miss Paula herself. Shhhh! Who said that???! Did I say that? ;) I couldn't help myself. Does she really make bread pudding out of KKs? That's just nasty.
Edit: Indeed, she does make such a thing. Here's the recipe--what a nightmare!
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/pa...Let's add raisins...and fruit cocktail. WTF? Why?! What is this, Sandra Lee? Just let the doughnuts swim in the sweetened condensed milk and leave it at that. Thank god there's rum in the recipe. Let's just do a shot of rum and forget that something like this exists. I have to stop thinking about this. I'm getting a stomachache!
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re: kattyeyes
mcsheridan
Mar 24, 2009 05:24 PM
Well, truth be told, she didn't originate it; but she featured it in an early episode, and later adapted it under her own name.
The original: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/pa...
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re: mcsheridan
kattyeyes
Mar 24, 2009 05:29 PM
Who is Bill Nicholson--her soul mate?! ;) Dig the butter rum sauce recipe--a stick of butter and a POUND of sugar! Holy cow!!! Obviously, she's trying to bridge those "bitter" notes from the sweetened condensed milk, KKs and fruit salad. I repeat: WHAT A NIGHTMARE!
I have eaten and will continue to eat some pretty naughty, but tasty things...that AIN'T one of 'em in my book. Whoa!
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re: kattyeyes
mcsheridan
Mar 24, 2009 05:46 PM
You couldn't get me Near that recipe with tow chains and a cattle prod. Like you, I've eaten some things that I'd never tell my doctor (or my dentist) about, but the line Must be drawn...somewhere.
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shaogo
Mar 24, 2009 11:50 AM
I love this thread. Back in the '80s, a friend opened a restaurant in Manhattan called "Oh Johnny's" on 14th Street. I helped out in the kitchen on Sundays for Sunday brunch, their busiest meal of the week. It was mayhem. One of the bartenders, a rather large woman named Katie Bull, would come down to the kitchen and sample, sample, sample. I made a mental note of what her favorite items were and created the "Katie Bull Gratinee:" Cut-up breakfast sausages tossed with well-cooked home fried potatoes, topped with two poached eggs and slathered in Hollandaise, topped with a sprinkle of grated cheese and run under the broiler until brown. Oy, veh!
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dinaofdoom
Mar 24, 2009 11:35 AM
this blog cracks me up, and everything is so unhealthy, it'll make you gain a few cholesterol points with just a look-see:
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re: bubbles4me
kattyeyes
Mar 24, 2009 01:27 PM
Much of that "why you're fat" blog had the very same effect on me. YUCK!
And to the OP: I've never had a deep-fried Mars bar, but am sure they're every bit as good as the deep-fried Oreos I've had over ice cream (2x indulgence only).
May we all live long, healthy lives...filled with the occasional deep-fried treat from time to time. I'm lucky--the deep-fried Oreo place is far from me, and it didn't mean enough to me to make a special road trip...but everything in moderation! :) And on that note, I'm going to get a dish of gelato. Not deep-fried, but very tasty. Cheers!
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re: cheesecake17
dinaofdoom
Mar 24, 2009 11:56 AM
there is a tex-mex dish here in austin that is very popular-- seasoned shredded chicken and chiles, stuffed in an avocado, coated with panko, deep fried, and then covered with melting cheese and a suiza sauce.
SO GOOD yet oh so bad...
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re: dinaofdoom
Paulustrious
Mar 25, 2009 03:51 AM
The Taco Town Taco on page 3 is just something else. I wonder if they could add another layer.
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re: Paulustrious
dinaofdoom
Mar 25, 2009 09:59 AM
i'm sure that the addition of some dipping sauces would definitely tip the scale even further...
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Insidious Rex
Mar 24, 2009 11:17 AM
I don’t see how the top prize doesn’t go to the infamous Mulligan’s Hamdog which is described as follows: The Hamdog is a hot dog wrapped in ground beef and deep fried. Its then smothered in chili, cheese and onions, topped with a fried egg and served on a hoagie bun with two fist fulls of fries. Mmmm... Can I get a diet coke with that!
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John Manzo
Mar 24, 2009 10:44 AM
Until the discovery of second-hand EATING, no food can be compared to the health costs of smoking.
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re: Davwud
Paulustrious
Mar 27, 2009 10:12 AM
No. It's when you have a hamburger that is so full of stuff that you need to use a second hand to stop the contents dropping on your lap.
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re: jacinthe
John Manzo
Mar 24, 2009 10:46 AM
I'll one up you with the lobster poutine with (cream-based) sauce Americaine and mascarpone cheese at Brava Bistro in Calgary.
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re: laliz
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re: laliz
Amuse Bouches
Mar 27, 2009 12:13 PM
Did you see the episode where she tops a slice of cheesecake with chocolate and then deep fries it?
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re: Amuse Bouches
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re: Wahooty
The craziest thing I ever saw her do was make a breakfast sandwich, where she made her own sausage, then proceeded to make the sandwich... out of two krispy kreme donuts. no joke. the donuts were the bread.
i love fatty foods but even i was horrified. i think i even squeaked out loud.
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re: Wahooty
Bat Guano
Apr 7, 2009 09:03 AM
I guess you could substitute margarine for the butter to make this more unhealthy; can't think of too many other ways to make it worse though. Lard? Crisco? Maybe add some sugar? or HFCS? Petroleum products? Maybe a dash of plutonium, for flavor? This has got to be close to the ultimate unhealthy dish.
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re: laliz
Paulustrious
Mar 24, 2009 11:45 AM
Did you ever catch a UK cookery program in the States called "Two Fat Ladies"? They really understood butter.
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re: cheesecake17
LA Buckeye Fan
Mar 24, 2009 01:40 PM
Didn't they cook a head of lettuce in butter? They also understood "proper bacon."
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mrbigshotno.1
Mar 24, 2009 09:20 AM
Years ago a good friend of mine's dad was an Oakie from the depression era he would have biscuits made with lard and dunk them it bacon grease, bread dough fried in lard and doused with molases. God bless him it was just the way those poor folks had to eat back then.
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re: juliewong
Paulustrious
Mar 25, 2009 03:41 AM
Oddly enough, biscuits made with lard are usually less fattening, not because their calorific values are less, but because people only eat one or two instead of demolishing half a packet.
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A great sportsbar here in Pittsburgh Jerome Bettis place. Great menu you can eat has good or bad as you like. On the dark side he has Itailian or meatball subs that are batter dipped and deep fried!
dc
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re: don515
hyacinthgirl
Mar 24, 2009 01:02 PM
I have yet to see a town commit so fully to deliciously bad for you food as Pittsburgh has. Where else will your typical dinner salad come with a handful of french fries on top?
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