Ingredients You Used To Hate But Now Love

Jade

Jade

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I'm amazed at what my taste has developed into currently. I did eat vegetables and other foods less likely to be liked by kids when I was younger, but I was never terribly into some of the more obscure or "weirder" ones like pickled products or ginger. Now that I'm older, though, I can't get enough of these and I even like having some sort of picked product in every meal.

How about you guys, any dishes or ingredients that you used to hate but now can't get enough of?
 
I never used to like spinach or sweet potatoes but now I do. I like the fresh spinach and sweet potatoes. I try incorporating these two into my meals as much as I can. They are so delicious!
 
When I read the topic I already knew what I was going to say: olives.
I didn't like them when I was smaller, but all my relatives said "just wait a couple of years, when you grow up you will love them". And surely enough, now I enjoy them a lot! :D
 
Fennel. I have never really liked it, but last November I came across a recipe for braised fennel with white chocolate and it does not taste of aniseed or even vaguely like fennel by the time you have finished cooking it. Just had it for our evening meal :)
 
I used to hate using whole black pepper on dishes cause if I would bite it, it was really spicy. In vegetables, I used to hate eating bitter gourd but later realized it was no that bad at all depends on how would you prepare it.
 
I hated onions growing up but now I love them and will even ask for extra!
 
I've been trying to answer this question for awhile now and I can't really think of anything.

I can go the other way and say that I used to really like meat but can easily live without it now. However, I don't remember anything that I didn't used to like but like now. Pretty much all my food aversions have to do with smell and you can't change their smells (I'm not going to cook with it if it stinks beforehand). An example of a food that stinks is papaya. It smells like sweaty shoes to me. When I'm in the grocery store and they're especially fragrant I leave because it makes me want to vomit.
 
I never liked sweet potatoes as a child, but I love them now! Also things like zuchini bread. I think maybe it was more of a 'did not want to try it" as a child thing! I find I now like most all vegetables.
 
Mayonnaise is a big one. I used to really dislike the mix of salty and sweet, and the texture that I thought was too cloying. Now I have it with everything, sweet or savory.

Coconut is another. I thought it left a really odd aftertaste. Now I can just appreciate what I took for oddness somehow.

Chili peppers have a funny story. I used to really dislike them, but then I moved to Indonesia, where I grew up, and had to learn to tolerate hot and spicy foods or else I would starve to death! At the time, it seemed, there was almost nothing else. Sure, there were some sweet stuff, but I couldn't live on sweets... When I moved away, I actually missed having a proper meal that burned up my lips and throat that I would still be feeling the burn an hour later.
 
Mine is the bitter gourd. I used to hate it when I was a kid. I could tolerate it, though. Our mom forced us to eat the dish because it was good for the blood and it fights diabetes. We come from a diabetic family, by the way. Anyway, I eventually learned to like it and I have been using the bitter gourd as an ingredient for stews and omelets. My kids have learned to like the bitter gourd, too. I would not say that they hated it; but I'm glad they have not expressed hatred towards it yet.
 
I don't recall eating much spinach as a child. There had to be some bribe involved to get me to finish, lol. Now, I go through spinach so quickly. I love my spinach salads, I put it in smoothies, I saute' it...I can barely imagine a time when I didn't like it. It's funny how things change.
 
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