Yookhwe (Korea)

Korean food has a whole category of raw meat dishes, called hwe , but most of them are made with fish or other seafood, a la Japanese sashimi. Yookhwe, however, is typically made with beef, julienned and mixed with a garlicky soy-based sauce and topped with sesame seeds and, more often than not, a raw egg. And look! Here's Bon Appetit's own recipe for yookhwe . (Credit: Wikimedia)

Steak Tartare (France)

Some claim that the name for the most famous dish of raw meat (beef or horse, typically) came from the Central Asian Tatars' habit of sticking horse meat under their saddle during a day's ride, and eating it raw and tenderized at the end of the day. This, however, is false: the original raw beef dish was actually called steak a l'americaine , and a variety served with tartar sauce on the side (and no egg yolk) was called a la tartare . Eventually, the sauce got dropped, but the name stuck. (Credit: Flickr/rdpeyton )

Parisa (South Texas)

The Upper Midwest calls steak tartare "tiger meat," but it's pretty much the same dish as the French original. This hyperlocal South Texan dish, on the other hand, is a horse of a different color. Coming from a particular area west of San Antonio where Alsatian immigrants settled in the 1800s, Parisa is a mix of raw beef, bison, or venison, mixed with cheddar cheese, minced onions, and some kind of pepper. One butcher shop in particular, Dziuk's , in Castroville, still sells it fresh from its case every day. (Credit: Full Custom Gospel BBQ )

Ossenworst (The Netherlands)

This raw Dutch sausage was originally made with ox meat (hence the name-- ossen is the Dutch for "oxen"), and is flavored with spices brought in by the vast Dutch trading empire of yore, like cloves, mace, and nutmeg. (Credit: Flickr/Ellen van den Berg )

Mett (Germany)

This German minced pork spread is typically flavored with salt, pepper, and (depending on where you are in the country) garlic or caraway. One way to eat it, which was popular in the 70s, is to shape a lump of Mett like a hedgehog , with onion rings or pretzel sticks stuck in to form the spiny back. Cute! (Credit: Flickr/tobo )

Koi Soi (Thailand)

Southeast Asia has its own school of raw "cooking," and the raw beef koi soi is Thailand's contribution to the mix. Like most Thai dishes, it has fish sauce, chiles, lime, and fresh herbs on top. Unlike most Thai dishes, you can get a version of koi soi thickened with blood or bile, in which case it's called larb lu . (Credit: Flickr/mmmyoso )

Bo Tai Chanh (Vietnam)

Instead of the julienned beef of the koi soi or yookhwe, the Vietnamese version of the raw beef dish uses thin sheets of beef round, lightly marinated in citrus and topped off with chiles, onions, and peanuts. (Credit: Flickr/Tricia Wang )

Kitfo (Ethiopia)

Minced raw beef, Ethiopian spices, and an herb-infused clarified butter go into kitfo, which (like a lot of Ethiopian cuisine) is typically eaten with injera, a spongy kind of flatbread, and occasionally topped with crumbled goat cheese. (Credit: Flickr/Charles Haynes )

Gored Gored (Ethiopia/Eritrea)

East African cuisine also has gored gored, a dish that, unlike kitfo, is left unmarinated, and cut into bigger chunks. Injera (as you can see in this picture) is still the preferred accompaniment, though. (Credit: Flickr/vincent03 )

Kibbeh Nayyeh (Lebanon/Middle East)

You might be familiar with kibbeh, the Middle Eastern dish of ground meat, minced onions, and bulgur, which is usually cooked up into little roast footballs. But if you just leave out the cooking part, you've got yourself a plate of kibbeh nayyeh, which makes a great spread on flatbread. (Credit: Flickr/Montage_Man )

Crudos (Chile)

Raw dishes tend to follow the German diaspora wherever it happened to land around the world, and Chile's population of German immigrants came up with crudos. It's basically mett with beef instead of pork (and no hedgehog serving style), a sensible adaptation to a country that's bigger on cattle ranching than schwein farming. (Credit: Flickr/ClauErices )

Carne Apache (Mexico)

Basically ground beef ceviche, which is allowed to cure a little in lime juice before serving, carne apache makes a great dip for tostadas. (Credit: Flickr/essgee51 )

Cig Kofte (Turkey/Armenia)

Move a little north of kibbeh nayyeh, and you've got cig kofte (or as it's known in Armenia, chee kufta). Sometimes served in little dumpling forms, the main difference from kibbeh is that it's rarely eaten with bread (and has a wider variety of spicing options, as you might expect from Turkish and Armenian food). (Credit: Flickr/leyla.a )

Beef Carpaccio (Italy)

Second to steak tartare, the thinly sliced Italian carpaccio is probably the most familiar raw dish out there. It's named after a Venetian painter named Vittore Carpaccio, known for the beauty of his red and white tones, and was only dubbed in 1950, when the city held a celebration in the painter's honor. It was, of course, made in the region for centuries (millennia, even!) before that, but it had the much less mellifluous name of "carne crudo." (Credit: Flickr/Beholder )

Basashi (Japan)

Japan is famous for its raw fish, but it has just as long a tradition of raw meat dishes, prepared in almost the same way. You can get raw beef (gyu tataki) and raw chicken (toriwasa), but the most common is basashi--horse sashimi. Back in the day, horse was also known as sakuraniku, literally "cherry blossom meat," as part of a code used by the technically Buddhist (and vegetarian) diners of the Edo period that assigned a flower to different types of meat based on their color. Venison was momoji, or "maple leaf," and wild boar was botan, or "peony." (Credit: Flickr/ imagesbyk2 )

In this enlightened age of hygiene and actually knowing how people get sick, raw meat has picked up a regrettable reputation. The elegance of a nice steak tartare, mixed up tableside, has been mostly forgotten, and some people even (horror of horrors) ask for perfectly nice pieces of beef to be ruined into well-doneness. But in other parts of the globe (and even some parts of America), the raw meat dish tradition is going strong. Here are 15 of the most prominent examples, from every continent (well, except Australia and Antarctica) in the world.

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