Couple examples from personal experience:
Spicy Food
I didn’t like spicy food for a (relatively) long time until I was 25.
2/4 of my roommates did. We’d order two pizzas, one spicy and one not. But the asshats who liked spicy would eat half the non-spicy pizza first knowing the other one was safe from us.
Well… we’d see about that!
I bought a jar of pickled little yellow banana peppers. At first all I could manage was a tiny little bit of one. But I had that tiny little bite every evening, every day. Eventually my tolerance grew until I was eating a whole one, then multiples. In a few weeks I realized I was crunching through them and loving it. (Didn’t love the first time I overindulged and found out what goes in can still burn going out, oof, lol.)
Beer
First time I had beer I did the movie-style stereotypical spit-take. Tasted like something I’d never want again. I drank when I was 18-19yrs old but it was usually Smirnoff Ice or some other “bitch-pop” as was said at the time by those around me.
When I was in my early 20s I supervised for a company that had us do a lot of traveling. Particularly three months of the year I was in a hotel more than at home.
There was a consistent crew of people who lived in a town nearby that I saw fairly frequently for those three months but not too often elsewise. As I said I was in my early 20s, 21-23ish. And they were in their late 20s to mid thirties.
They were inveterate drinkers, and they loved beer. And they undertook a self-imposed mission to teach me to love beer too. Them being older and me being impressionable, I went with it.
Every evening after work we’d hit up the local pub and I’d order three beers, based off their recommendations. One was an inveterate drinker as mentioned, the other a mid-thirties redheaded British woman I grew rather fond of and who was rather fond of me, along with some other crew. Basically, people who knew beer and in the case of the brit, someone who I would’ve listened to for a few reasons.
Didn’t take too long but I certainly “acquired” a taste for it. Eventually acquiring my own preferences to the point I was recommending them ideas.
Wine. I’ve never been much of a wine person, and I prefer beer with my food, but at some restaurants and events, the food is usually paired well with a wine. Because of this I tried to actually like it, and I am now at the point where I can enjoy white wine that isn’t too sweet.
I couldn’t stomach the taste of whiskey for years but I had friends who were really into craft stuff and I felt like I was missing out so I found something that was basically vanilla extract and learned how to enjoy other whiskeys from there. Now I’m a big fan
I’ve never been a fan of mushrooms. I did attempt to tolerate them though.
Turns out, canned mushrooms are the problem. Those are basically large boogers and not fit for human consumption. Fresh mushrooms don’t have much flavor and I’m relatively indifferent to those. They are now just something I chop up with onion and garlic sometimes now.
Yes. I tried mangoes every year untill I liked them, avocado too. Raw tomatoes I keep trying, can tolerate, can’t like.
Last year I made a deal with my coworker, who is a wine person but such a picky eater he went to Japan and just ate chicken tenders, same in the middle east. I told him if he honestly tried eating new foods I would try wines. He found some foods he likes, and I found I like dry elegant white wines (nothing sweet) and most wines made of Nebbiolo grapes, like instead of just sort of holding my nose and tolerating them, I can affirmatively like them .
I truly believe a wide palate is a positive quality, I gave my kids lots of different tasting foods when they were little and that helped them to enjoy more flavors. I think technically I’m picky (have strong likes and dislikes) but like so, so many foods it’s not limiting. And yes, I do try to like some of the foods I don’t.
Olives. I’ve really learned to like the ones at the local Portuguese restaurant that they cure themselves, and serve with crusty bread that you dip in olive oil and vinegar. My friend also marinated olives herself with this insanely good olive oil and herb mix.
Yes, those squishy store bought olives in oil are not nice. It’s a bad taste bomb for me. But I loooove the firm and salty olives in Spain and Greece.
Bud Ice. It’s $1 a can of 5.5% beer and I’m in poverty. Gotta drink something, so I made myself tolerate the cheapest.
Gotta drink something
Nah
you know there’s sites that track abv/$ cost for the real alcoholics out there, right?
if the purpose is to get drunk then abv/cost is the only thing that matters
Yes, with just about everything I eat and now I’m ok with most everything.
As a kid, I thought nearly everything tasted bad: cucumbers, mustard, relish, mushrooms, onions, peppers, different types of cheese, stewed tomatoes, roasted carrots, roasted potatoes, etc etc etc.
As a young adult, I tried some things for the first time and hated them at first brush (for instance, avocado, which was so rich tasting to me at first that it almost triggered my gag reflex). I kept going and got over it.
Nowadays, everything I order I do so without having the chef hold a damned thing.
I’ve learned that in isolation, many things taste pretty overpowering, but with proper preparation and seasoning most things can be part of a delicious dish.
Honestly, I always believed that if people like something, it’s “like-able” for anyone. It’s just a matter of understanding why and putting yourself in the shoes of the people that do like it.
So many many things that I at first didn’t understand or like, I tried hard to understand better and like as well.
From music, to food, to movies etc.
“Taste” is something that you build. It’s critically engaging with everything, and trying to understand it as best you can.
I liked coffee, beer and spicy food right from the first time I tried them.
Anchovies were a personal challenge that I undertook - putanesca pasta was fine but the first time I tried them on pizza I thought they were unbearable. Over the decades I might get one anchovie pizza a year and each time I found them more palatable, but it was a bit of an exercise in willpower. Recently, it has paid off and I’ve found that I love them. Many pizzeria’s don’t offer them because they are so unpopular but if I get the chance I’ll eat them; has displaced peperoni as my favourite topping.
I worked very hard to like beer when I was in high school. It didn’t help that I was “borrowing” warm Old Milwaukee from my dad’s case in the basement.
Quite a few!
- Spicy food: didn’t grow up in a spicy-loving part of the world but tried a lot of Indian food in college and decided to just upping the spice level. I can handle some pretty extreme stuff, which always comes as a surprise when I meet Southern Chinese ppl
- Coffee: turns out it was less of an issue with my tolerance and just that I needed a good setup and locally-roasted beans
- Beer: surprisingly easy to get into, similar to coffee I just needed high-quality beer. I prefer the fruity ones over blondes/browns/pils though
- K-pop: unwillingly, because I play a “K-pop” game… I think I’m starting to get the appeal now though
I find that a lot of ‘acquired’ tastes have a lot to do with one of two time based things:
Time itself, ages your palate and allows you to enjoy more nuanced tastes as it ages and changes.
As well as
Your palate being able to take food over time and the human brain numbs that which offends so you can enjoy what’s left.
Coffee and beer, my two favorite drinks
Coffee. I really wanted to be able to enjoy black coffee, cuz it smells so deceptively good, is cheap as fuck, and basically zero calorie. Except it tastes like concentrated dirt. Bitter. Acrid. None of the appeal promised by the smell makes its way to the taste.
Unless I acquire the taste!
Typically my coffee has a similar cream and sugar content to a milkshake, so I actually measured it out to get a baseline, then over the course of about two months phased down to just black coffee. …and over the course of two months, my coffee phased more and more into tasting like shit. But I tolerated it - eyes on the prize. After that, I spent another month drinking it black. At the end of that month, I finally accepted that black coffee tasted just as much like shit as it did on day one.
My coffee is back to resembling a milkshake… fuck.
I tried.
New hypothesis: there’s some kind of generic factor at play like there is with cilantro. That shit is delicious to some and absolutely vile to others, and no amount of trying to acquire it will flip that switch. I drew the short straw on that horrid plant, too.
What kind of coffee are you drinking? See if there’s a local brand or cafe to try. Some coffee brands are usually much worse when they don’t have additives to hide the flavor (ex, Starbucks)
Starbucks is among the worst. I tried grounds from a good variety of brands, all prepared with a normal coffee maker which another poster suggested is not actually a good way to brew coffee. They all fell somewhere on a spectrum between bad and REALLY bad. Didn’t go for the crazy fancy stuff - my favorite ended up being a hazelnut flavored whole bean from the bulk section of WinCo. Which is still my favorite, I just milkshake-ify now.
The quadfecta of disgusting foods that are commonly enjoyed are coffee, raw tomatos, peanut butter and pickles. For coffee, the smell is so gross. I’d rather be in a barn than a coffee shop. But l love tomato sauce and peanuts. Well peanuts by themselves and not mixed in anything like ice cream or candy bars.
I had a similar journey… adding a splash of coffee to my cream and sugar slurry 😂
What did it for me was experimenting with different beans, brewing methods, and grinding fineness/coarseness before finding a combo that tasted rather sweet on its own.
My new problem is that I don’t enjoy coffee made elsewhere clownface.jpg
Bitterness in coffee comes from overextraction, acidity in coffee often comes from underextraction.
On top of that darker roasts tend to be more bitter, and lighter roasts tend to be more acidic.
The main problem is usually the wrong grind size and brew method.
Grinding the coffee too coarsely makes it hard to extract flavours, leading to underextraction (sourness). Grinding too finely makes it easier to extract flavours (both desirable and undesirable) leading to overextraction (bitterness)
Regular coffee makers, pour over, and espresso are all percolation brews. That means that the water flows through the coffee and extracts flavours while it does these kinds of brews can develop channels while the water flows through, which causes the water to overextract the coffee where the channel is, but underextract the rest of the coffee, which can lead to a brew that is at the same time sour (underextracted) and bitter (overextracted)
The other general method of brewing is immersion brewing. This is where the coffee and the water hangs around for a while during the brew, and is then strained away from each other. Good examples are French press, aeropress, siphon, and cold brew. Since these methods can’t really develop channels, you don’t have the same problem with over and underextraction, and therefore these methods are also much easier to “get right”.
So if you want an easy method too get better tasting coffee, try a French press, and be careful grinding too finely. If there’s a layer of silt at the bottom of your cup you are grinding too finely. Pregroud coffee is usually too fine for French press.
Try doing lattes then americano’s with cream, then drop the cream. If you can do americano’s it’s a baby step above black coffee, and when you get a black coffee just accept that it’s shittier than an Americano, but OK more or less.
I was having a crazy busy day of work and didn’t have time to cream or sugar a coffee and developed a taste for it black right on the spot. It’s just so earthy. I still drink things like a mocha (with extra shots) now and then but black drip is my go to.
I’ve tried so hard with celery and onions. Turns out I like the flavors just fine, it’s the textures I can’t handle. So I just have to chop them up into the tiniest pieces so they don’t squeak when I bite down. Food shouldn’t squeak when I bite down.
The cheese curds in poutine must squeek when you bite down.
I prefer them melty from the fries / gravy. I hate when it’s just a hunk of unmelted ass cheese.
Some melted, some hunk of unmelted ass cheese is the way to go.
I still barely fuck with raw onions, but grilled onions are great, and were the gateway drug to my appreciation for Onions in general. When I was a kid, I’d pick them out of everything. Had a burger unknowingly with grilled onions. Shit changed my life. Started to appreciate the flavor and even incorporate it into my cooking. Now, most things I cook have onions in them in some way, shape or form.
Onions can have all kinds of textures and tastes depending on the type, condition and cooking method you use. Try raw red onions in a salad or caramelized for half an hour to put on a burger. Also I suggest removing the first layer (after the skin) as it’s often tougher than the rest.
