JAKARTA - In Japan, precisely in the Amami Islands, there is one type of extreme food that makes many people curious, namely venomous snakes that are fried and sold at a fairly high price.
It's called habu, a deadly snake that lives in the Okinawa region and the Ryukyu island chain. Although famous for its use, habu has also become food and liquor in the area.
Habu can be found in the wild, but it is also not uncommon to appear on the dining table, served in the form of boiled or fried foods, and even used as an infusion in alcoholic beverages. In Amami Oshima, one of the islands in the Ryukyu cluster, Japanese reporter Ikuna Kamezawa, was challenged by local residents, namely trying fried habu.
Going to Amami Islands, he finds a hidden restaurant selling fried habu for 2,000 yen or IDR 226,000. Mahal? Of course. But for rare foods like this, the price is considered comparable.
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With a bit of horror, Ikuna also tasted the crunchy fried habu meat.
"At first I thought it was a snake's head. But it turned out that the chest that was fried was dry," he said, quoted from the Soranews24 page.
What surprised him was not the strange or pungent taste, but rather the taste of Japanese fried chicken, karaage.
"I didn't expect it to feel that close to the chicken. Maybe it's because of the lack of meat, so my tongue only captures the taste of Karaage," he added.
Even so, the texture of habu is very different, the meat is chewy and seeing, and it sticks tightly to its bones. Not food that is easy to eat, but that's where the sensation is.
Kaldu from Habu bones is also thought to be a delicious dish if processed properly, even though it is not yet popular among culinary lovers. If habu fried food feels too extreme, there are still other options such as boiled habu which is more friendly to beginners.
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