Featured Image Credit: Channel 4
Topics: Gordon Ramsay, TV, TV and Film
Michael Slavin
Gordon Ramsay has over the years tried all manner of bizarre food, whether it be snake hearts, fried tarantulas, or rotten sharks – but perhaps his most bizarre was a famous cheese.
Ramsay, while filming his TV show The F Word, tried Casu marzu, the world’s most dangerous cheese.
The maggot-filled food is a delicacy to many, but was deemed the world’s most dangerous cheese by the Guinness World Records in 2009.
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The maggot-y cheese is so controversial that it is actually banned for commercial sale, but has been being eaten in Sardinia for years, where it is made.
As is explained to Ramsay in The F Word, the cheese is filled with maggots because the crust is left open, allowing cheese skipper flies to lay eggs in the cracks within the cheese.
These eggs then develop into maggots.
Ramsay meets up with Tom Parker-Bowles, a British food writer, who has brought back some Casu marzu from Sardinia for the celebrity chef to try.
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When discussing the cheese Ramsay asks how long it is after eating before you get a ‘clean bill of health’.
Whilst Parker-Bowles is unable to answer, this topic is actually a hotly debated one.
Some consider the cheese to be safe to eat, and even consider it an aphrodisiac, whilst others point to the potential for it to cause vomiting, cramps, or diarrhoea.
Parker-Bowles suggests that the long-term effects won’t be known until a year after you eat it due to the fact that the most high-risk potential issues are to do with maggots laying eggs after being ingested.
The food writer defends the cheese to Ramsay, saying: “It’s caused huge amounts of controversy, but it’s caviar, it’s a huge delicacy.”
The celebrity chef and food writer then proceed to tuck in, trying the maggot-filled cheese.
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His face tells the story as he appears stunned by the sensation, quickly taking a drink of water to wash down the maggots.
Ramsay goes on to simply say: “Woah, f*ck, it’s sour.”
Parker-Bowles suggested that the after-taste stayed for ‘hours’, before saying: “I would defend this to the death. I wouldn’t eat this every day, I wouldn’t eat this again on the whole, but I understand its place.”
The moment got a big reaction out of fans (for understandable reasons), with one YouTube comment pointing out a hilarious detail about Ramsay’s food habits.
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They said: “I love how he spits out food on Kitchen Nightmares and Hell's Kitchen but is able to eat cheese with maggots.”
It really makes you question how bad the food on those shows must be if it’s less edible than maggoty cheese.