5/30/2023 0 Comments Fugu and natto![]() ![]() The removed poisonous parts of fugu do not lie around on restaurant kitchen surfaces so that there is a chance they’ll accidently end up in someone’s soup or on a sashimi platter – nor are those parts put in general waste bins. ![]() I assume these chefs take their job very seriously and thus you probably wouldn’t find some bored of life character hanging over fugu holding a knife in one hand while fiddling with his balls with the other, and when I say ‘his balls’, I mean the fugu’s – after all, fugu testicles seem be on the menu in some restaurants for adrenalin junkies who prefer the more poisonous (and hence risky) parts of the fish. This means that if extremely carefully prepared, so that you remove the poisonous parts without allowing leaks of poison into the edible parts, the rest of the fish is safe to eat (in theory).īecause of the high stakes, chefs preparing fugu are required to undergo two to three years of training. I’ve understood that – depending on the type of blowfish – it is usually only the liver, reproductive organs and/or the eyes that are toxic. In fact, they don’t just eat it – it is considered a delicacy over here and people pay a lot of money to devour the rather risky fugu mouthfuls.Īs you might have guessed from the fact that Japanese eat fugu and the country having a healthy population of about 125 million, not all parts of fugu are toxic. ![]() The consumer of the poison, while still conscious, eventually suffocates from the paralysis of the diaphragm.Įven though I don’t know much about poisons, other than the very basics like: ‘You shouldn’t consume toilet bleach’, I know that cyanide sounds bad, which in turn means that something 1200 times more deadly sounds like something that under no circumstances should you eat.īut guess what! Japanese eat fugu – most commonly in a form or soup (nabe) or raw (sashimi). Apparently, its poison is 1200 times more lethal than cyanide, and thus poison from just one fugu can kill 30 human adults.Īnd it’s pretty horrific how fugu poison works: within minutes of consuming the poison, the consumer will get paralyzed, starting from extremities, the poison then working inwards. Instead, fugu is one of the most toxic vertebrates on the planet. In fact, it’s not just toxic like, say, toilet bleach. In addition to the festive appearance of fugu, the main difference between fugu and most other fish is that fugu is toxic. It is a fish that goes from looking…well….like a fish into looking like a fancy Christmas tree bauble whenever threatened.īlowfish is not quite like your salmons, cods and perches. Some of you might have heard of fugu – or blowfish/pufferfish as it is known outside Japan. I regretted that I had eaten the fish and in a state of panic stood up to get some medical help. I looked around to see where I was – was it a posh restaurant, or a dodgy looking restaurant, or someone’s home? -It was someone’s quite shabby and messy looking home. I was confused, but then I understood that the piece of fish that I had just eaten was fugu. ![]() The moment that I swallowed the fish, the room went quiet, people around me stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at me. I picked up my spoon, put a piece of fish in my mouth and swallowed it. In front of me was a bowl of soup and in it some fish. ![]()
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