A Moogle  🏳️‍🌈 💻 🎮 🎶 🇸🇪

Hi, Twitter! Let's talk about surströmming: The Swedish "delicacy" which is often maligned by the Internet, and often listed towards the top of the world's most disgusting foods. First, full disclosure: I have not tried it, as I haven't yet had the opportunity. Would i? You bet.

Surströmming is, for those not in the know, tinned fermented herring. It's placed in cans partly through the fermentation process, and the gases created by the fermentation tend to make the cans bloat. It being banned on flights? Yeah, that's a thing, to an extent.

Other than that, if your only encounter with surströmming is videos on YouTube of people just stabbing a can open and going to town on it, by all means feel free to downvote those videos - the people involved are morons of the highest order.

For starters, you're supposed to open the stupid thing in a sink full of water. What this accomplishes is twofold: First, the water filters the majority of the awful smell. Second, you're supposed to rinse the fish to get all of the gunk off.

More importantly - perhaps most importantly - you don't just eat it straight up. It's supposed to be eaten on crisp bread, paired with things that have other strong flavours: diced onions, a strong cheese, a strong mustard, that sort of thing.

If you're not the type who likes things with strong flavors, it's probably not up your alley. That's okay. Even the majority of Swedes I've talked to are of the opinion that it's pretty vile.

However, I look forward to eventually trying it in the proper way. Will I enjoy it? No idea. My goal here was not to convince everyone to go out and try it. But if you've made it this far in the thread, I hope I've managed to provide some context and balance. God jul, everyone!