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I’m sure most of you guys eat seafood once in a while and I’m sure that some of you even love it. Main dishes for seafood comes from trouts, catfishes, and salmon to raw seafood in sushi. What if eating seafood results in a high chance of killing you? No, I don’t mean having high cholesterol, but I do mean literally killing you. From the writer that brought you the deep-fried Mars Bar post, Bloggin-Ads.com brings you Fugu!

The Puffer fish seems like a normal fish that swims around, but did you know that they can actually kill you if you don’t have a licensed chef serve you this? Yes, I’m talking about the puff fish like Ms. Puff from the Spongebob Square Pants Nickelodeon show.

There are many names for this fish, which includes puffers, ballonfish, blowfish, bubblefish, globefish, swellfish, toadfish, and toadies. Some chefs tend to call this fish, fugu, which is a delicacy dish that is only served in Japan and Korea.

Now I’m not going to go all scientific on you, so I’m going to make everything simple and let you know the details below:

There was an old Japanese ritual where many sample the Fugu fish, and any foreigner (gaijin in Japanese) that survives the task actually receives more respect from the locals. It is a technique to gain social bonding, but many risked their life because of the poison that is within. The warrior leaders, Shogun, in Japan also used to eat this type of fish to show status. Now I just wonder if the evil John Chow will give this expensive dish a try and tell us about it.

Capturing the Fugu fish to make food dishes was banned until recently in 1958. Chefs are now allowed to prepare these dishes to people, but to prepare the Fugu, the chefs must learn about it for 2-3 years to earn the responsibility.

If not served right, the Fugu fish has a poison called Tetrodotoxin, which is a very potent neurotoxin. This results in a person’s nerves shutting down. The poison in the Fugu fish has the amount to poison up to 30 persons, which is a huge amount of loss. The most potent of this poison is mainly located in the ovaries and the liver of the Fugu. It spreads rapidly through the body unless these organs are removed when cleaning.

Although this dish is pretty much safe now and Fugu fish don’t carry as much poison as before, there are still 1-2 deaths caused from it. Since 1886, the poison in this fish has killed over 6,925 residents in Japan and Korea.

Pricing:

With chefs that need so much skills, this dish doesn’t come cheap. You’re expected to pay anywhere from $100-200 in a higher class restaurant, but $10-20 at some other ones. If I were you, I would suggest paying a little more to have things on the safe side.

A few Fugu dishes:

• Fugu-sashi
  Thinly sliced raw fugu. Served with ponzu dipping sauce (mixture of citrus juice and soy sauce).
• Fugu-chiri
  Vegetables and fugu are simmered in konbu dashi soup in a large pot. Served with ponzu dipping sauce.
• Fugu Kara-age
  Floured and deep fried.
• Fugu Hire-zake
  Grilled fin is put in hot sake drink.

Most of you can rest assured that if you go to Japan and test this dish, you should pretty much stay alive, but some chefs actually leave a hint of poison within the meat to give the taster a small poisonous feeling. I don’t know about you guys, but I really want to try this dish…and I’m surprised I didn’t see this advertised when I was in Japan. I wonder if Neil can give this a try and tell us all about it.