I’ve tried all the world’s hangover cures. Here are the 11 best

No one tries to have a hangover. Sure, you do all the things that will result in one – you go out in a new city, you get a little too excited, you drink all the drinks, you toast to the good health of all your new friends, you stay out far too late – but it still feels surprising and a bit unfair when you wake up feeling terrible.

And then what do you do? Well, it depends on which country you wake up in. Because almost every nation with an established drinking culture will also have an established ritual to mitigate the after-effects of that boozing.

These, in my opinion at least, are the world’s greatest hangover cures. It pays to know them.

Ukon no Chikara, Japan

Walk into any Japanese convenience store and you will inevitably spot, usually facing the front door, a few shelves filled with small, brightly coloured metal bottles covered in Japanese script. These are hangover cures. The trick with the likes of popular brands such as Ukon no Chikara, however, is that you’re supposed to drink them before you go out boozing, not after. Still, all that turmeric and vitamin C can’t hurt the next morning.

Bacon butty, England

Assumed knowledge would have it that the king of British hangover cures is the full English breakfast: bacon, sausages, baked beans, fried bread, black pudding. And that’s fine if you’ve got someone else to make it for you. If not though, who has the energy? Instead, all you need is a few rashers of good bacon, fried until lightly crisp, slapped on white bread and slathered in HP Sauce. All hail the bacon butty.

Haejang-guk, South Korea

Koreans take their hangover cures so seriously that they have not one dish but an entire class of dishes – known as “haejang-guk”, or hangover soups – to ward off the evils of too much soju and beer. Some of these soups are absolute monsters that contain coagulated ox blood, while others, such as kongnamul gukbap, a bean sprout soup served with rice, kimchi and a raw egg cracked over the top, is a little more approachable for first-timers.

Irn-Bru, Scotland

Scotland’s national beverage is a truly disgusting brew with an indescribable flavour, and it’s exactly what you want when you wake up with pure whisky coursing through your veins (or is that just me?). Irn-Bru is a fizzy, neon-orange drink that is said to contain 32 flavours, though I can’t identify any of them. It’s also a national obsession in Scotland, and it does contain a small amount of iron, plus a lot of sugar, so it should sort you right out.

Utopenci, Czechia

Though many of us lean towards the carb-heavy and the fatty when it comes to hangover cures, in much of Eastern Europe there’s a preference for sour, pickled items. The Czechs have figured out a way to tick all boxes with utopenci, or pickled sausages. These are soft snags that are split down the middle and pickled in brine, served with pickled onions and capsicum plus hearty bread. They’re great to eat while drinking beer, and even better the morning after.

Chilaquiles, Mexico

The real experts know that a hangover cure should have a good hit of chilli. And chilaquiles, a classic Mexican breakfast, has a good hit of chilli. It also has corn chips and eggs, which has to hit the mark. To make chilaquiles, crisp, fried corn tortillas are drowned in salsa verde, and then topped with fried eggs, diced onions, coriander and crumbled queso fresco. Many of my mornings in Mexico have been made immeasurably better thanks to chilaquiles.

Pho, Vietnam

You have two choices with a hangover: you can shock it out of your system with a breakfast of pure power, or you can gently coax it into submission with a dish that’s calm and comforting. Vietnamese pho is the latter. It’s a subtle, herbaceous soup with slippery rice noodles and thin-sliced beef. It’s not technically known as a hangover cure in its homeland, though it is served for breakfast and it does do the job after too many Bia Saigons.

Bloody Caesar, Canada

We in Australia have many cures for hangovers, though perhaps the most universally cherished could be described as “hair of the dog”. Canadians agree, which is why they reach for the Clamato (tomato juice mixed with clam broth) to make their own version of the heart-starting Bloody Mary. A Bloody Caesar has vodka, Worcestershire sauce and tabasco, mixed with Clamato, served with a celery stalk and – as with one I tried in Whistler – sometimes even a rasher of crispy bacon. I mean, come on.

100plus, Malaysia

Malaysians don’t drink a whole lot – the country has one of the lowest rates of alcohol consumption in Asia. Malaysia has also, however, inadvertently produced one of the world’s great hangover cures, 100plus. This is an electrolyte-rich, isotonic drink similar to Gatorade or Pocari Sweat, designed to help people recover from physical activity. Though it also helps people recover from alcoholic activity.

Leche de tigre, Peru

You’ve heard of hair of the dog, but how about milk of the tiger? Leche de tigre – literal translation, “tiger’s milk” – is the juice used to cure fish in ceviche. It’s a sour, delicious concoction made with lime juice, fish stock, onion, garlic, celery, ginger and aji limo (a local chilli). Once the ceviche has been served, the leftover liquid is kept and consumed as a short drink in the evening, or as a killer hangover cure the next morning.

Rollmops, Germany

They love a beer in Germany, which means they also suffer the odd hangover, and they defeat it with the creation of a “katerfruehstueck”, or hangover breakfast. One of the key elements of said meal is rollmops, pickled herring fillets that are wrapped around onion and gherkins. A rollmop is sour and salty, rich with good oils and electrolytes, and yeah, it’s a bit of a challenge at 7am. But it’s exactly what your body needs after a long night in a beer hall.

The verdict

All these hangover cures have worked for me in the past, and most have even been pleasurable to consume. If I was going to nominate a winner, however, my dream hangover cure, it would probably be a bacon butty washed down with an Ukon no Chikara and a Bloody Caesar. With a bowl of pho later on. Cheers.