cooking foods with non-food ingredients

[torakris]

In a thread on cooking Korean style black beans, I posted a similar Japanese recipe for black beans and one of the ingredients is a nail!

Supposedly it adds gloss to the beans....

http://www.nsknet.or.jp/~chrkaji/yasuko/recipe/007_e.html

I have heard of this before but admit to never trying it, I have always made my beans with out it.

Has anyone ever run across a recipe that had one ingredient you just felt weird about adding?

Anyone regularly cook with non-food items?

[laurel]

The current issue of Saveur has recipes from Lucknow in India with gold and silver leaf:

http://www.saveur.com/issue.jsp?ID=200407

[Gifted Gourmet]

Has anyone ever run across a recipe that had one ingredient you just felt weird about adding?

Anyone regularly cook with non-food items?

←

Remember this one? We discussed it at length in a thread called "Food Superstitutions":

here .. scroll down to Katie Loeb's post

octopus cooked with wine corks recipe

.. honestly! several sites mention this as a way to tenderize the octopus ...

[chezcherie]

i know great mexican cooks who put a penny (or a peso) in the water for steaming tamales. the theory is that the penny jingles as the water boils--when the penny stops jingling, it's time to add more water.

or wait....does the penny start to jingle as the water level drops?

anyway....a penny.

[Mayhaw Man]

This recipe is one of my favorite. It comes out great every time and is cheap to make!

[pyrguy]

This recipe  is one of my favorite. It comes out great every time and is cheap to make!

←

Mayhaw you beat me to it. One of my and the grandkids favorites also.

[Episure]

The current issue of Saveur has recipes from Lucknow in India with gold and silver leaf:

http://www.saveur.com/issue.jsp?ID=200407

←

Ah yes, we do that sometimes, but they dont add anything to the taste, in fact it's like foil on the tongue.