Wild Frog in Cambodia is a Khmer delicacy, AKA weird food enjoyed throughout the Kingdom of Cambodia. We tried it, so you don’t have to.
My time in Cambodia has been quite the weird food odyssey, with me consuming bats (not bat soup mind), worms, and other bugs during my stay here.
One might ask why Cambodians eats so many bugs, and general weird shit, but if you look at the very recent history of Pol Pot and the famine wrought on the country by the Khmer Rouge, you really can understand why Cambodians even make the Chinese blush when it comes to “eating anything”.
And thus a Khmer friend asked me if I would like to try a fried frog! I replied nonchalantly that I had already had frogs legs with tamarind (quite nice), only for my friend to laugh heartily at me. These were “different.” Of course, the challenge was accepted!
Said frogs are found in the rice fields of Cambodia (there are a lot of rice fields in Cambodia) and are said to be easy to catch as they are so dumb they stop moving if you shine a light in their eyes. It would also appear aside from being dumb, and they are also rather small, something I was to learn when this Khmer delicacy was to arrive on my plate.
In fact, it did not arrive on a plate, but in a bag, a bag that must have had about 100 of these little fellows in them.
The frogs are fried to charcoal levels, and presented, and indeed eaten whole, from leg to head and just about everything in between. This was unlike any frog I had ever tried before, crunchy, salty, and whole.
I was thus informed that this was better known as the kind of beer snack you’d have with, well beers. In some respects, they are kind of like a weird packet of crisps!
So, not the weirdest food I have had, even this week, but certainly up there. Also, the frogs literally come whole and could be used as kid’s toy if you are bit povo.
