Aarón Sánchez Dreads Seeing These 2 Ingredients On Chopped

Imagine you're making a nice strawberry shortcake for a summer get-together, and then someone walks in and tells you to include anchovies. Although something like this is unlikely to happen in our day-to-day lives, chefs are constantly subjected to these horrors on cooking shows like "Chopped" and "Guy's Grocery Games."

"Chopped" is especially infamous for its mystery baskets. If you haven't watched the show, mystery baskets contain surprise ingredients that the chefs must incorporate into their dish. For example, in an episode judged by Geoffrey Zakarian, the surprise ingredient turned out to be nutria, a critter similar to a muskrat. Judges on these sorts of shows have to be pretty open to trying weird things, so you know an ingredient is gross if they dread seeing it. And celebrity chef Aarón Sánchez, well-known for hosting "MasterChef" alongside Gordon Ramsay, has seen his fair share of unusual ingredients during his time as a judge on "Chopped."

According to CinemaBlend, Aarón Sánchez has two mystery basket ingredients he never wants to eat again. The first? Duck testicles. What on earth do you even make with duck testicles? Maybe a better question is: Why make anything at all with duck testicles? "I didn't even know ducks had testicles, so that's kind of something I wouldn't even know how to go about. Yeah, so definitely that. Anything ball-related is always a tough one," Sánchez says.

The second ingredient Sánchez can't stand is Southeast Asia's durian, widely known as one of the world's stinkiest fruits. Sánchez says the fruit smells so bad it's banned from restaurants and airplanes. While durian might smell like turpentine, gym socks, or a rotting corpse, at least it's said to taste amazing — like many other bizarre foods.

Many of us will pass on the jellied moose nose and spoon worms, but it's fun to see others cook with weird ingredients — and even more fun to watch people eat weird food.