Prairie oyster
This North American cure is made of tomato juice, Worcester sauce, black pepper and Tabasco sauce, topped with a raw egg yolk. As with real oysters, just swallow---don’t look or chew.
Tripe soup
A common cure in Romania, Turkey and Mexico, tripe (AKA cow’s stomach) soup is made by boiling the edible offal with root vegetables, garlic, vinegar and cream. If you’re especially lucky, “fresh” tripe contains the cow’s last meal.
Pickle juice
Poland’s go-to cure, pickle juice is the vinegary brine that pickles swim around in.
Pickled herring
A popular inclusion in katerfrühstück or “hangover breakfast,” Germans rely on pickled herring and sauerkraut to quell “the wailing of the cats.”
Voodoo
Haitians place 13 pins in the cork of the bottle that gave them the hangover.
Pickled Sheep Eyeballs
Float these sightless lovelies in a glass of tomato juice and you’ve made yourself a traditional Mongolian cure.
Sicilian sausage
Dried bull penis. The world has Sicily to thank for this one.
Birch Branches
Used by Russians in a steaming sauna to whip the hangover out of themselves. A hardcore cure for a hardcore country where “vodka” means “water.”
Vegemite
A popular Australian cure made from brewer’s yeast, it’s a gooey brown paste packed with Vitamin B and a heinous or delicious taste, depending on whether or not you’re Australian.
Deep-fried canaries
A traditional cure in ancient Rome, sometimes consumed with raw owl eggs. The original greasy breakfast.
Haejangguk
Translated from Korean as “hangover soup,” ingredients include boiled pork spine or cow bone broth, coagulated ox blood, vegetables and spices. There’s something about the word “coagulated” that just doesn’t sit well.
Charcoal
Chimney sweeps in England used to mix soot milkshakes to banish their hangover shakes.
Umeboshi
These salty, pickled plums are a popular cure for Japanese drinkers, along with miso soup, persimmons and green tea. In other news, I just found out that “futsukayoi” means “two days drunk.” Apparently the Japanese go all out.
Rabbit shit tea
The traditional cure for cowboys in the Wild West, it is exactly what it says. Add rabbit droppings to boiling water, steep, and enjoy.
Hair of the dog
From the expression “the hair of the dog that bit you,” which in the case of a hangover means having another drink, not putting dog hair in a bite wound.
