Oriental Delicacies: Frog legs and the like

Frog legs

Now now, don’t be afraid. You must have apprehensions, just like everybody else, about even beginning to try something so disgusting sounding. I’m with you.

Chilli frog legs in claypot,
with dong po pork on the side

But it cannot be denied that when in Asia, you are the tiniest bit inclined to do as the Asians do, be it crunching cockroaches in China or munching bheja fry in India.

So we are talking delicacies. And from the very first day I landed in Singapore, I kept seeing ‘frog legs’ this and ‘frog legs’ that everywhere. They like it as a porridge (congee), they like it fried, they like it with chilli. Singaporeans like their frog legs.

I knew I had to try it, but how to get the image of a frikkin frog out of your head? Well that’s the answer really. You have the kick the image out of your head, else the average Indian would rather take sanyas.

Once I got the image out of the head, I was able to taste it just like any other dish. We ordered chilli frog legs; it sure came loaded with chilli. So the flavour was strong, in case I didn’t want to taste just the meat.

The meat was pretty soft. It was akin to a very soft chicken or a slightly hard fish. We could break pieces easily, and there was plenty of meat to go around. In fact the chilli flavour was so overbearing that I could hardly notice what kind of meat I was picking off. If you weren’t told it was frog, you may not figure it out yourself either! As you can see from the picture, it looks totally unsuspicious :)

So go ahead and try it my friend. It’s a decent dish, something that’s very popular in Singapore, so you should try it at least once! The chilli frog legs usually come in a big claypot, so make sure you go with your friends - cringe and binge together :) Cheers!