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What is one food item that you absolutely hated initially but it slowly grew on you?
For me, I had never tasted the salt and vinegar potato chips until I moved to America.
The first I had it, I almost spit it out, but after a few months I bought it myself and felt it wasn’t ‘that bad’.
From that point, I went to picking it up every time I now get a sandwich.
Definitely raw tomatoes. I loathe American grocery store tomatoes, it doesn't matter what season it is. Some particularly grainy ones can trigger my gag reflex. I'm not so picky that I won't eat them, and cooked tomatoes are obviously a different story, but I definitely avoided raw tomatoes for most of my life.
Now that my husband grows fresh tomatoes for me in our garden, I practically eat nothing but BLTs and snack on raw tomatoes for the entire tomato season. I also have had the privilege of enjoying tomatoes in Bulgaria, which are even better than homegrown ones.
So raw tomatoes have gone from my most hated ingredient to my most beloved ingredient. I look forward to tomato season all year long and compile plans/recipes to use our garden tomatoes in the most delicious ways possible.
Look for Sweetelle grape tomatoes. They're sold by various different growers, so you'll usually have to hunt for the fine print. Many packages don't advertise a variety at all, but for grocery store tomatoes they have a fairly distinctive shape so you'll come to recognize them. Costco sells them in Canada.
They're infinitely superior to every other grocery store tomato. Can't compete with home grown of course, but they're a B+ whereas other grocery store tomatoes top out at something like a C if you're lucky.
Thanks, I love this kind of tip! I will keep an eye out for them, it sucks not being able to enjoy tomatoes for the majority of the year.
I'm in Minnesota, maybe my "pretend Canadian" status will make availability of these tomatoes a little more likely for me, especially since I have a Costco membership. (Mostly joking, obviously Costco has different product availability for Minnesota vs. Canada, but a girl can hope)
Glad to help! This is a good photo of what they look like. They're quite distinctive.
Kenji's TikTok pasta video on YouTube goes into why grocery store cherry tomatoes are always better, and these are far and away the best cherry/grape tomatoes one can find in a grocery store. Good luck!
You're definitely not crazy for this. I've also noticed that chain grocery store tomatoes taste weird outside of cherry tomatoes. The majority of the tomatoes I have bought over the last few years have been grown by local farms that sell to the coops here, and they taste WAY better than grocery store tomatoes. My wife bought some from save-a-lot a couple weeks ago for blts and they tasted...fishy? I plan on sticking to the tomatoes I grow this year and ones from the coop.
Much of America's produce is picked under ripe and ripens as it ships this produces lower quality produce than things that are harvested and consumed when fully ripe.
I agree, cherry tomatoes are actually the only raw tomatoes I'm willing to buy from grocery stores. They are definitely good enough year round, even raw in a salad. Not amazing, but suitable.
Ironically, I don't like cherry tomatoes from the garden, because their skins tend to be thicker than grocery store cherry tomatoes. I guess I'm just really picky about tomatoes! But I do love them.
Between garden tomatoes and off-season cherry tomatoes from the store, I've managed to cope on a schedule, haha. Maybe I should add co-op tomatoes into the mix, then I'd have the full set of good tomato sources.
I definitely recommend the coop, or even farmer's markets, especially if they have giant heirloom tomatoes like purple cherokee tomatoes.
I like tomatoes, and yeah the average/basic grocery store variety can be so gross. Flavorless, mushy and watery, or somehow extremely grainy (but still lacking flavor, so it's all just weird texture).
My mom gave me one of her tomato plants, cannot wait for this thing to start producing. The flowers just started to bloom! There's a stunning array of tomato seeds on various websites that you'll never see offered in your average grocery store, if I had the space I'd be growing so many more varieties.
This is so true. We do a CSA box for about 7 months out of the year, and the tomatoes (specifically the heirloom tomatoes) are what I look forward to the most. They're beautiful shapes and red, purple, yellow, orange, etc. and so juicy.
Mushrooms.
When I was a kid, just the concept of mushrooms was gross. I avoided them until freshman year of college when a friend made us portobello burgers. I thought I was being brave, trying mushrooms for the first time. But I couldn't finish the burger because...there was no burger. The portabello cap was the "burger" part. The sudden unexpected texture (taste wasn't that bad, actually - he was a great cook if poor communicator) put me off so much that, to this day, I still haven't tried portabello again. But I learned years later from veggie pizzas that I love mushrooms in general. I keep a stock of chopped baby bella mushrooms in the freezer to add to pasta and pizza as needed.
In defense of your friend, portobello burgers are a fairly common thing at least in my area, so I understand why he didn't clarify that "portobello burger" means the mushroom literally is the burger. I also understand why you were surprised, since beef burgers are commonly topped with mushrooms!
If you ever work up the courage/curiosity, here's a good recipe for portobello burgers. And in case it helps quell your distaste, baby bella mushrooms are just portobellos picked earlier so they're small. They're literally "baby" portobellos. So I think you would like the portobello recipe if you tried it sometime.
It might be a good idea to prepare them as portobello "steaks" rather than a burger, so you won't be thinking of that surprise mushroom burger in college when you eat it. Also, as a vegan, I think sometimes it's better to enjoy a plant-based ingredient on its own, not in a burger, at least at first. That way you're not distracted by the fact that it tastes nothing like a beef burger, and can instead appreciate what flavors and textures the mushroom brings on its own.
Wow, I have a lot of thoughts about portobello mushrooms, apparently.
I didn't know this! I do really like baby bella mushrooms over other kinds, so I think you gave me the kick I needed to try portabello again. Thank you for the recipe!
Your standard store button mushrooms are also the same as baby bella/cremini, just picked earlier.
You might enjoy this video - the title is a bit of an exaggeration, but they go over several varieties and discuss flavors, textures, and cooking methods.
The texture of mushrooms is awful, but that's easy to hide by running them through a food processor.
Minced mushrooms add a wonderful meaty flavor to foods.
Came here to say mushrooms too. Hated them as a kid, now I have them with every meal they make sense with. I started enjoying them as a side with steaks or pork chops a while ago. Then my father had some health issues that required an improved diet, no more high sodium processed packaged foods, so I've learned to cook. Turns out the internet is also an infinite recipe book! Now I can make an excellent mushroom gravy from scratch (optionally with drippings of whatever meat we're having, pork beef chicken etc). The first thing I do when making most dinners is get some onions and mushrooms going to slowly caramelize. The other day I made a pseudo beef Stroganoff (pseudo because I used ground beef and elbow macaroni, not sliced beef and egg noodles) with tons of mushrooms and a little finely diced jalapeno in it that was really fantastic. The downside of learning to cook? Quick n easy frozen meals taste like crap now lol.
I used to pick the mushrooms out of my meals, now I rarely cook dinner without em. Creminis are my fav.
Spaghetti aglio e olio (well, oil and garlic spaghetti). Turns out that mom liked her garlic a bit burnt, so I spent a good few years thinking this is how it was supposed to taste.
Then one day I only had pasta, olive oil, garlic and some sauces left, and decided "eh, why not", only to realise that it was not all that bad. I slowly honed onto the recipe that I ultimately ended up enjoying over a few months, and that's one of my go-to recipes now
There's so many people who have that happen, they grow up thinking they didn't like something but it turns out their parents just cooked it weird. Like my husband thought he hated green beans, but had no idea you could buy green beans that weren't from a can. Bought some fresh ones and roasted them up, and tada, he likes green beans.
This is me. My mom only cooked canned green beans and they were always mushy and gross. My husband convinced me to try fresh green beans and they are completely different! Especially when cooked with brown butter and breadcrumbs.
Interesting.
I also like burnt garlic, but I've never really heard anyone criticize this dish.
It's better with a mix of butter and olive oil. Also, plenty of quality parm, pepper, and red pepper.
Also add the garlic incrementally. I want some burnt, some roasted, and some mostly raw. The garlic is what does this dish for me. Two heads per pound of angel hair...at least.
Chocolate. Probably a story a lot of folks who grew up in the USA know: cheap, plain milk chocolate there isn't great. It's not terrible, but I always gravitated toward fruit-flavored candy as a kid. Late into my twenties, at a cookout, a friend brought wine and some nice dark chocolate. I figured I'd give it a whirl...and bow howdy am I thankful he opened my eyes to how nice a main course and chocolate taste when linked together by a glass of wine or two.
Good chocolate should have cocoa powder as the first or second ingredient.
The cheap stuff uses cocoa butter or liquor which is a byproduct of making cocoa. It really doesn't taste the same.
Beets are one of those things that I hated as a kid, and well into adulthood. I tried them again in. My 40’s and that earthy flavor is something that I really love now. Try them with some good olive oil and a nice balsamic. I also chop up the white parts of celery very finely, and add that as well. Salt and cracked pepper to taste!
Also don’t freak out if your poop is red, lol.
Beets and goat cheese salad is one of my favorites. Golden beets are good too if you can get them. They're sweeter and milder.
Or a beet and potato salad if you don't mind something a little more labor intensive.
There were a lot of foods that I didn't like as a kid, and I think that at least partially it was because I came from a white middle class family that boiled vegetables. That's good for some things - I love a good boiled potato, for example - but other things are just gross when you boil them.
The most obnoxious example, to me anyways, is Brussels Sprouts. When I was a kid, we had them at every big get together, and my aunts would always say, "You have to take them and have them!" and would give me a hard time if I didn't, but when I took them they were bitter, tough, evil little turds that I despised. They were so poorly done that for years and years, even after I had changed from a picky eater kid to a full-on-eat-anything-at-least-once adult, I maintained that I hated Brussels Sprouts.
A few years ago at a smaller christmas get-together (no aunts, just me and my siblings' families at my parents' house), my mom made some Brussels Sprouts, and everyone was raving about them, so I tried them. They were braised with bacon, and they were incredible; they were soft and succulent and not bitter, and generally amazing. I did a 180 on them. Now, it's also probably true that Brussels Sprouts just are better now and it's not just personal taste adjustments over time - they're just better veggies now than 30 years ago. But I was still blown away by them.
Since then, I've cooked them a bunch of times, and tried out some Brussels Sprout kimchi, and they are definitely a more frequent veggie around here, but it's definitely the veggie I thought was the most vile that I've come around on.
You may enjoy this excellent video by America's Test Kitchen: How Science Can Make Brussels Sprouts Taste Good | Brussels Sprouts | What's Eating Dan?
I watched it and found it elucidating about how to cook Brussel sprouts. It nicely explains why sliced and chopped Brussel sprouts taste way better than whole ones: the compounds that produce the desirable flavor compounds of Brussel sprouts are contained within the vegetable's cell walls, which need to be damaged in order them to be released and commingle.
And how sliced Brussel sprouts have more flat surface area to make contact with a pan, resulting in better browning / Maillardization.
These concepts apply to other vegetables too. Steaming whole vegetables is the most disappointing way to cook vegetables, and generations of children have been misled astray by awful cooking from the truth about how delicious vegetables are!
Thanks - I do love this video, and have generally adopted this method for fast sprouts, though I'll admit I don't start with a cold skillet because my brain rebelled too much at that. But loads of oil, and I usually salt them fairly well after washing and before cooking.
I wouldn't necessarily call them “better” now. They're just different. I personally liked them better when I was young because I liked the bitter taste. These days they don't really have much taste at all. I guess it just comes down to personal preference.
I feel like a lot of vegetables used to have a lot more taste (and smell) to them in general, not just the sprouts. Cauliflower is another example of that. I remember my mother preparing them and the whole house would stink of cauliflower, when I boil one today there's hardly any smell. This translates to the taste as well, they just taste mostly like water.
I think part of it depends on how the food is grown. Pesticides, fertilizer, and other farming methods (like only growing one crop in a patch of land) can deplete the soil and make food less nutritious. Plus plants and animals are pushed to grow bigger and faster, which tends to come at the expense of taste.
Like apples for example. The big pretty ones at the supermarket taste OK, but they've got nothing on the smaller ones from the farmer's market that might have a few bug holes. The best turkey I ever had weighed a whopping 8 pounds. It was from a local farmer that let them run around outside, eat bugs, and grow slow.
That probably has a lot to do with it but from what I've read it's mostly down to breeding. Many vegetables with “difficult” tastes have been bred to be appealing to a broader audience so they sell better.
You are correct. In the mid 90s Dutch scientists and farmers bred the bitterness out of Brussels sprouts.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/do-brussels-sprouts-taste-better-now-yes-here-s-why-01ghed9q8dr8
Various types of cheese. I grew up with American (processed cheese food), cheddar, and colby in our house (also Philly cream cheese but does that really count?). Very little exposure to the more "exotic" cheeses like blue, brie, gouda, etc., and the few times I would run across them I couldn't understand why anyone would like them. Eventually I came around, and love trying the abundant cheese varieties that show up at our local farmers market.
Also, coffee and beer. I can't say I love either even now, but I've acquired the taste for both and will drink when available.
What on Earth was your mother doing to mashed potatoes? I don't understand how you could go so far wrong!
Not OP, but as a kid I felt that my mother used to make just the worst mashed potatoes. Dry, apparently no butter or milk, she didn't add pepper, it was tasteless mush. I felt like it stuck in my throat. She'd use the uneaten mash to make potato cakes though, and I liked those.
Oh! That sounds unpleasant to say the least! How do you even mash successfully without any lubrication, so to speak? I mean...why go to all that effort just to fail? You could just roast the things or fry them, so odd!
My grandmother used to make potato cakes too, and they were delightful! I should make some for my family sometime, thanks for jogging my memory!
E: I wonder if some of these moms were trying to stretch food out for longer and maybe that was why. I could have come across as insensitive there.
Yeah, maybe that because it was a struggle and both my parents worked long hours. In recent years she's given me some good potato recipes, like wedges roasted in the oven with herbs and oil, and other tips on classic dishes. Being charitable, I was a fussy eater so the mash was probably fine. My youngest kid is a fussy eater too, so I've had a taste of my own medicine there.
I was a picky eater as a kid and would refuse to add gravy to my mashed potatoes which, like... it's definitely putting it on hard mode for the cook! Luckily I was a bland little child and enjoyed them with salt and a pat of butter on top, but without that I can totally see them being tough to get through.
My parents never made real mashed potatoes. Only the instant boxes. The only time I ate real potatoes was when they were cooked on the grill. They always acted like they were the only thing we could eat.
Broccoli.
(does this need more explaining?)
Yes? Unless your experience is the most common one - being raised by boomers who steam/boil the heck out of the broccoli until it's a mushy yellow-green mess that smells of farts, and then you grew up and realized you can easily make delicious, bright green broccoli by quickly roasting or sauteing it.
If that's your experience, no need to elaborate. I'm painfully aware. But if you have a different broccoli journey to share, I'm genuinely curious.
My relationship with broccoli changed completely the day I decided to try it raw with a bit of ranch. It tasted great and then I thought, “wait… why is this tasty, but boiling it tastes nasty?”
Overcooked broccoli blows. And it’s practically all I’d been served all my life. Same with asparagus.
Experiment with the cooking times and you might find yourself enjoying it way more! Try different seasonings, under a broiler with tiny bits of oil and chili flakes, garlic powder, a squeeze of lime once it’s on the table. Good stuff!
Raw broccoli with hummus is one of my favorites as well, highly recommend.
We've started roasting broccoli with a bit of olive oil on top with some salt and pepper. Surprisingly delicious! I didn't even know roasting broccoli was a thing you could do..
Your assumption is spot on and very similar to the experiences of other people commenting here with regards to boiled vegetables. The broccoli served back home was cooked to death and reduced to a grimy pile of tasteless drab. Brussels sprouts, leeks and chicory too, but somehow broccoli was the worst thing you could put on my plate back then. After realizing broccoli should be a bit crunchy it turned into one of my favorite foods.
Mine was broccoli too. Primarily because my mother boiled it whenever she served it to us. I didn't know I liked broccoli until I became an adult and had it served to me in a different way.
tomatoes.
The texture was too gross, combined with being forced to eat tomato soup as a kid made me hate them for years.
Hummus
This might be a bit niche to you anericans, but here in the middle east it's served as a side or even main dish with everything!
For over 20 years I hated it, but a couple of years ago I had some good fresh hummus and now I love it!
Even for to the point I don't mind eating the shitty store bought types.
To anyone reading this, make your own hummus, it's really easy and cheap. There are plenty of great ways to do it.
You have a favorite recipe that you would like to share? I love hummus and would like to make it myself someday.
It's honestly dead simple
Buy canned chickpeas or dried ones. If dry, let them hydrate for a few hours until soft.
Boil them for a bit in a pot of boiling water, just to make them warm and a bit softer
Blend with some tahini, salt, *garlic and a bit of lemon.
The rations of the different ingredients as well as the final consistency is really up to personal preference, so I'd recommend playing with it until you find what you enjoy the most. It's so inexpensive and easy to make, if you mess up a batch it's only a few $ and maybe 10 minutes lost.
From here on out it's down to personal preference, you could so many different things as added flavours and toppings.
I'd add a bit of freshly gound tomatoes and olive oil, paprika (smoked and spicy).
For toppings most traditional is boiled chickpeas and hard boiled eggs
I really really like sauteed mushrooms or caramelized onions.
A tip for pros trying to reduce calories is to use a fresh onion to dip on the hummus.
Another very traditional favour would be a hot green pepper puree, with spicy green pepper, jalapeno, garlic and lime juice.
*Edit
I’m not sure if you forgot it or you prefer without but for anyone else looking at this recipe, hummus also has garlic. Fresh if you like that strong garlicky bite, or roasted if you want it more mellow :)
You are totally right!
I actually wanted to write a whole thing about how I always put too much garlic, but then decided I was too off point so I deleted it
I always do the same! I always think “1 clove is never enough” and add more and forget how strong raw garlic is, and then all I can taste for the rest of the day is garlic. I should use roasted but I’m too lazy, if I’m honest.
Like other people tomatoes were a big one for me. I remember gagging when I was forced to eat a cherry tomato in my salad as a young kid. I didn't even like blt's because of the tomato. If I had one. It was about 1 slice of tomato for every 6 pieces of bacon. But sometime after COVID, I all of a sudden LOVED tomatoes. I really really enjoy blt's now. And tomatoes in salad, as a side dish. Whatever.
The other one for me was pickles. I also gagged every time McDonald's forgot to take off the pickles from a burger. I was a baby when it came to pickles. If one has even touched the burger I hated them. But sometime in highschool, I started making a quick and easy snack after school. Tuna salad. Really just tuna, garlic, mayo, dill. But a fried recommended little dill pickles, so one day he made it for me to try. And man, I loved pickles now. When I make tuna it's about half pickles half tuna now. And now, I love everything vinegar. For my birthday I have sauerbraten and absolutely love it.
I am so happy about your pickle journey.
Have you tried pickles from the grocery store in the refrigerated section, rather than the typical unrefrigerated jars? Both types are good, but the refrigerated kinds are really delicious, especially crunchy and fresher flavors. Grillo's is probably the largest brand of that type of pickle, I'd recommend those to start with.
Thank you for the recommendation! I'll check out that area next time I'm in my store. I pretty much just eat Mt. Olive small pickles. But my favorite jarred is Milwaukee brand.
Oh same for me! I was constantly taking pickles out of my Mcdonald's cheeseburgers as a kid :)) And now I love them! If it's not in my burger I add it in!
Olives! I hated them, then I tried them again and I loved them!
For cheese i only liked mild cheeses, then I started working in a cafe, trying out different dishes with different cheeses, and now I enjoy pretty much all cheeses!
I have no idea how this changed, but I used to hate sparkling water (flavored, unflavored- all the "unsweetened" ones). Tasted bitter, salty, gross.
Now, I love it. Something flipped after I tried it a few times and I acquired a love for the taste. I still love my sweet, artificially-sweetened sodas (Pepsi Zero Sugar til I die), but I now also love sparkling water, even unflavored options. Topo Chico is a treat!
Some people see 'acquired tastes' as a negative thing "why would I suffer to just get used to something, that's not enjoying it"... but I see it as a super power. We can change how we perceive certain tastes and make them from bad into incredibly good? I think that's an awesome power that more people should take advantage of!
I sat down with a pack of line seltzer and forced myself to drink it lol. Trying to not drink so much soda was hard and this helped a lot. As soon as I trained myself to not think of it as sprite my switch flipped.
Now it's basically that or coffee are the only drinks I have
Artificial sweetener technology has made leaps and bounds in the last 3 years or so. Sugar free energy drinks that can mask the bitterness of caffeine require some fancy chemistry.
Brands like Ice taste much more like soda than most flavored water did years ago. They use carbonated water instead of seltzer, and a lot of citric acid for acidity.
Oh yeah, I love those types of drinks too. Always have.
Specifically though my tastes changed on the unsweetened sparkling water drinks (La Croix, Bubly, Aha, Topo Chico, Mineragua, etc). The ones that a lot of people typically vocally dislike.
Salmon
Growing up, my mother often cooked salmon for dinner. Well, she so horribly overcooked and underseasoned it to the point where it wept enough white albumin to cover the fish and came out so dry and bland.
It wasn't until as an adult that I learned how to properly season and cook it on cast iron did I learn to unlock the delicate deliciousness of salmon.
An aside: I prefer farmed salmon over wild salmon. It's fatty, delicate, and indulgent, whereas I find wild salmon lean, tough, and gamey. It's funny how scarcity and pricing play into our perception of luxury and desirability. Wagyu beef is expensive and prized for its fatty marbling and melt-in-your-mouth texture, and lean cuts of beef are cheaper and less desirable. Yet wild salmon is prized and farmed salmon is disdained for qualities that are opposite to those desired in beef.
Oddly, I just can't eat salmon. I've tried. On the occasions I've eaten it (and there have been more than one), there's something about the taste and texture that literally makes me gag.
I don't understand it - I enjoy most other kinds of fish and seafood, and I don't think of myself as a picky eater.
Peppers. There was something about the seeds that grossed me out until some point in my late 30s.
Now, I love them. Seeds and all. Bell, poblano, jalapeno, even habanero (though, they are a bit excessively hot).
Did not used to like kimchi and now I can't imagine why. I love acidic foods!
Sushi, or more specifically uni/sea urchin. Like most food, after a few times you get used to it. Heck, look at the Beverly Hillbillies, now a days most the food they ate doesn’t sound so questionable now.
Garlic. I used to despise it because my older sister used to put it on EVERYTHING. Even things it doesn't really go with. It was horrible. Not only did she put it on absolutely everything (even boiled potatoes!!) she also burnt the hell out of making it taste bitter and disgusting.
I discovered the magic of properly used garlic in my early 20s and have been loving it ever since (35 now).
Your sister and the entire country of Portugal.
(I still don't like it!)
Not particularly on topic because it was instant love, but I never ate pistachios until I was 27. Without any good reason, I’d say, other than because they were green.
Then, one day, I was with a friend of mine that was eating pistachios, and I thought, “maybe it is time to try them.” Since then, they have been my favorite thing ever.
Sometimes we really stuck with our habits without reason.
Black olives. When I was a kid I thought they were beetle shells and would pick them out of food. Still not a fan of green olives though. :p
Honestly... vegetables in general. I didn't like much when I was younger, but after experimenting the ways you cook them, season them etc can make most veggies so delicious. Never thought I'd be having meatless meals, but here we are.
Spicy foods as well. Used to avoid even mild spice, I'm not exactly rawdogging ghost peppers these days but I can appreciate a decent burn.
Durian. Granted, I sort of worked for this one.
My dad told me about some candies he'd bought that were these durian hard candies. Having tried frozen/shipped durian from a local Taiwanese grocer, I figured I would buy these candies to sort of "explore" the flavor. I was curious about the flavor and the major thing I found is that it is too much for the western palate. You get hit with melon, onion and custard flavors all cranked to 11. If you can take the time to hold it in your mouth and pick it apart, or experience the flavor over time, you can start to "understand" it, I think. These candies punched as much as any other durian-flavored product I've had, so they definitely didn't lack in the potency department, but I grew to appreciate the unique mix of flavors in durian.
Cilantro. I used to think it tasted like soap. Now, it tastes like soap but I kind of like it, sort of.
The reason for this is because you are one of the few people who have a variation in your olfactory receptors genes!
Onions. I used to hate the sight of them and refuse to eat anything if I even saw a single onion on any given food I'd have otherwise loved to eat, but I've grown to like it quite a bit. I don't know how it happened or why I even attempted to change my habit but it did.
I still cannot stand it raw, but I do like it cooked quite a bit and use it as much as I can on foods that work well with it.
I used to hate onions all together other than onion rings. Now I'll cut onions and munch on them while I prep dinner. I still don't really eat raw onions though. I prefer them cooked, but I don't find them disgusting.
Except red onion. I despise red onion.
Squash. Though that probably has a lot to do with how much butter I roast it with.
Sour cream. It was so disgusting to me until I learned more about the palliate and saw how it could help diffuse the spiciness in food. Now I love it and will blend it with some avocado and cilantro and dump it on my food.
Mayonnaise! Maybe I was just exposed to the worst stuff or solely Miracle Whip as a kid, but I reviled the stuff! Tuna, potato, and pasta salads could only be vinegar based for me; all else I turned up my nose too. Mayo was reserved for the super wet coleslaws that left pools of tasteless fat.
It wasn't until I was well I to my 20s when I stared enjoying it, but part of that was also experiencing Duke's and Sir Kensington's. Heavily mayo based items are still hit or miss for me, but if it's balanced just right then I will happily have it.
Cool whip, thus all whipped cream everywhere (even from a can). I absolutely could not tolerate the texture or flavor. It was somehow flimy, gross.
I grew up, and someone made a pie with homemade whipped cream on the side. I was so grateful that I didn't have to scrape it off! I thanked the cook. Well, she insisted that I try "the real thing" because, according to her, "cool whip is an abomination." I very reluctantly tried it and fell in love! I still hate cool whip with a passion (not as intense as my burning hatred for Microsoft and Windows, but I digress).
Homemade whipped cream is awesome, and I make it whenever I can get away with it.
You know, I can't think of anything I've ever actually disliked. As a kid, I "hated" mushrooms, mayonnaise, and lettuce--but hating things as a kid was just psychological; I didn't like the way they looked, generally. I actually liked mushrooms when I was very young, then I spent the night at an aunt and uncle's house where I heard that mushrooms were gross, so suddenly I also thought mushrooms were gross.
But now, I like everything (other than stuff that's just low quality, like cheap canned mushrooms/olives or poorly-steamed/boiled vegetables). Canned mushrooms are slimy and disgusting, but mushrooms in general have such a nice rich flavor that I can't help but like them. As a young adult, I was convinced that I acquired a taste for them, but in retrospect I think I simply just thought I didn't like them, then as an adult ate what was put in front of me, and eventually realized they were delicious.
I'm not sure there are any tastes I've legitimately acquired other than spicy food, but that's more about pushing my tolerance than acquiring any specific taste. I've always liked spicy food, and now I like spicier food.
There actually is one food I can't eat (or at least couldn't ~20 years ago): blue cheese. I ate a blue cheese fritter one time and literally had to force my throat to swallow it. I think it was in my mouth for ten minutes while I gradually swallowed one particle at a time. My throat said: this is poison. It's bad for you. Don't eat it! While I said: but I'm at a restaurant with friends! They all like them, and I'm sure I won't get away with spitting this into my cloth napkin! Perhaps someday I'll acquire that taste. But I shall not do so by stuffing an entire blue cheese fritter in my mouth at a restaurant!
This one is a drink not a food, but I am doing it anyway: tonic.
Gin has been my favorite alcohol for years, but I never liked tonic. I recently took a trip to the UK, and tried a G+T at many bars. They were all quite decent. I was convinced that we just had crap tonic here in the US, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. I just all of a sudden started liking tonic. Not sure what changed.
Fried morel mushrooms. The taste was just too strange and complex for young me, but now its one of the vest foods in my opinion.
I tend to like all food, regardless of anything. One food that always got to me though was olives. Just salty fruit, they had no real value to me as food but my wife ate them like candy when she was pregnant. Recently, I was at a Spanish restaurant in Amsterdam where one of the plats was just olives pickled in sardine brine (and subsequently the other dish was the sardines) and they were the best tasting olives I ever had in my life. Since then I'm starting to come around on olives in general.
Guacamole. I know...I know, I'm the weird one. Avocados always seemed mushy and gross to me and the thought of eating one always made me recoil. But since it's so prevalent and everybody raves about it, I figured I'd keep giving it a shot in its guac form. Slowly, but surely something clicked and I came to appreciate the smooth, savory, and citrusy tang of it slathered on my next taco/burrito bite or tortilla chip. I've even graduated to the point where I can eat some sliced avocado with just a bit of salt.
However, some flavors like anise and cardamom are just a no for me no matter how much I expose my taste buds to them.
For me it is cheese and tomato sauce.
I have always hated cheese growing up except in pizza. I would always order a burger without cheese or a plain steak sub. I just never liked cheese for some reason. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started eating some things with cheese. I’ll eat cheeseburgers, mozzarella sticks etc. I’m still not a fan of steak and cheese subs as to me, it just doesn’t go together. I still absolutely loathe blue cheese but am slowly branching out.
For tomato sauce, I just for some reason never ate it. I would also eat plain pasta. Now I enjoy pasta sauce in many forms. I don’t like it when it has big chunks of tomatoes, especially with the skin, but I manage much better now.
One thing that I still refuse to eat is seafood in any form. I just do not like the taste of seafood. Lobsters and crabs are just in their own category of terribleness. I’m never going to touch those ocean cockroaches.
Peanut butter of all things. I hated it growing up & never really tried it again until I passed 50. Love it now, don't know what my problem was.
Also, too, Marmite, but I'm an American so only got to try it once when I was a teen. Tried it again visiting family in the UK & it's the bomb.
Marmite + peanut butter is S-tier.