Summary: People like food. It fills you up, gives you a reason to leave your bed in the morning and tastes good… some of the time. For those other times, when the stuff you’re jamming into your greasy maw isn’t up to par but you’re determined to eat it anyway, there are condiments. Maybe you splash a half ton of ranch dressing on some crummy French fries or slather a diabetic coma-inducing level of ketchup your overdone burger. The point is, condiments can rescue an otherwise disastrous meal or jazz up an old favorite with just a little sugar or oil or spice. Then there’s these condiments. For those not content with a little butter, there is a wide variety of disgusting things you can put on your food that can make even the most ironclad stomach churn. And we’re not just talking about those freaks that put ketchup on their macaroni and cheese. 1. Miracle Whip (United States) The miracle is that they get away with selling it in the grocery store. Mayonnaise, like many condiments, is a “love it or hate it” affair. While ketchup and mustard have enjoyed fairly even popularity across the demographics of western culture, mayo has consistently been viewed as the red-headed stepchild of the mainstream condiment family. Considered a foodstuff for the extremely white or Canadian, the relatively simple concoction consists mostly of eggs, oil, some vinegar and spices. What’s missing from that recipe? Well if you said lots of high glucose corn syrup, you might prefer the “tangy zip” of miracle whip. The whiter-than-white stuff was invented in 1933 as a result of the Great Depression, which caused huge price increases in foods like eggs and oil. The good people a Kraft realized that all they had to do was invent a new “emulsifying machine” to blend mayo with cheap dressing and sugar to make an unholy goop that provided people with less calories at a marginally lower price. Sure it makes Miracle Whip, but it can also turn out 250 mood rings every hour! Well, that was the idea. Just because the ingredients cost less didn’t stop the price from creeping up over time. Also, according to the label, it’s technically a salad dressing. Try serving that one on romaine at your next dinner party. 2. Jeotgal (Korea) And this is only the part that goes on top of something else. Have you ever been tucking into a nice seafood dinner and thought: this is good, but is there a way I could get this fishy taste on everything? In semi-liquid from? Two months from now? As it turns out, the people of Korea have had their best people working on the problem for thousands of years. Whereas countries like America have many varieties of mustard or barbeque sauce, Korea has an entire range of fermented seafood sauces which vary based on what they let die in them and whether they bothered to cook it first. While often used as a pickling agent in the popular dish kimchi, Jeotgal is also found adorning other dishes as well as being used for dipping delicacies like pig’s feet or blood sausage. Some varieties of Jeotgal may also differ only by when the product was harvested. Apparently shrimp caught in May and shrimp caught in June taste completely different, even after you let them sit around in the sun until August. Other types of jeotgal use raw crab, oysters and fish eggs as bases. Curiously, there is no Fido Jeotgal, even though dog meat is a consistently popular dish in Korea. Although, now that I think about it... that looks pretty good. 3. Vegemite (Australia) ...please don’t be made of termites. With the exception of shrimp laden “barbies”, skin cancer or crocodiles and the men that hunt them, there’s nothing more stereotypically Australian than Vegemite. The salty, savoury paste is commonly consumed while spread over toast or on bread as part of a sandwich. “The Veg”, as nobody calls it, provides an incredibly rich source of B vitamins and fodder for comedy writers. It’s made by a process that involves spices, yeasty slush from beer making that would otherw[...]
