10 Unusual Frozen Foods From Around The World

Most travelers wouldn't dream of eating frozen food in a foreign country, but if you want to eat as the locals do, then frozen food is definitely on the menu. You don't have to eat them, but it's worth taking a look at what they are, just for curiosity's sake. Sure, you'll probably find the usual pasta and peas, but you'll also discover some eyebrow-raising items that aren't native to your local grocery store's frozen section. Here are 10 unusual frozen foods from around the world. 

Upon first glance, akutaq, which is also called "Eskimo ice cream," looks like a fruity ice cream similar to Cherry Garcia. In fact, it's a combination of whipped fat and berries, with common additions of fish and sugar. The traditional version, made with reindeer, walrus, or seal fat, is high in omega-3 fatty acids, but nowadays, the fat used is commercially available vegetable shortening, which is heavy in trans fats. 

We're pretty familiar with alphabet soup and vaguely familiar with dinosaur chicken nuggets, but alphabet chicken nuggets? Whether you think that's YUM or EW, at least you can spell it out. 

Some Americans might shudder at the thought of putting snails in the freezer. However, in France, they're a delight for the last-minute party thrower — so long as he or she has the appropriate tongs to go with them. 

The most fragrant item in the frozen aisle, gulab jamun is a doughnut-like snack made of deep-fried milk solids served in a syrup of rosewater, saffron, and/or cardamom. They probably taste better fresh, but hey, if you can get your hands on some at the Indian grocery store, then you can skip the laborious process it takes to make them at home. 

The marsupial from down under is a popular enough meat that it's made its way to the frozen food aisles in London. Aussie restaurant owner Andrew Jordan told Esquire that it tastes like "sweet filet mignon," and it's a lean meat with almost no fat.  

This Inuit dish consists of little pieces of frozen whale skin or blubber. It is usually eaten raw, like sushi, although it's also enjoyed breaded and deep-fried. It is rich in vitamins C and D, but due to ocean pollution, it is also high in carcinogens. 

Seafood beanskin is processed by default; you just won't find tofu mixed with seafood and pounded into rectangular cakes in the wild. So buying it frozen is the way to go. It adds a nice, seafood-y flavor to noodle soups. 

At a glance, seasoned sliced squid looks similar to spaghetti in marinara sauce, but the texture and pungency of this frozen meal is very, very unlike a regular pasta dish. 

Welsh rarebit sounds like something you're more likely to find at a grocery store in the UK — and you probably will — but it's nice to know we can get our fix of bread in Cheddar cheese sauce here, too, in a frozen, convenient way. If you want to enliven things, add ham and watercress. 

These flavors of ice cream — tomato-cherry and carrot-orange (not cherry tomato and orange carrot) — are not sorbets, and neither are they very healthy. Nevertheless, they do make the freezer a tad more interesting.