Unorthodox food blogger Cai Nan is well-known for coming up with all kinds of wacky and otherworldly dishes using a variety of complex processes used in molecular gastronomy. His most impressive achievement yet is translucent fried chicken, a glass-like dish that’s more of a work of art.

Last month, Cai Nan uploaded a video titled  ‘I want to make the fried chicken transparent, but the result is strange,’  to his YouTube channel. It blew up, getting almost a million views on Alphabet’s platform alone, and for good reason. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

The simple concept of making fried chicken transparent, or at least translucent, sounds insane, but to see someone actually pull it off is just incredible. The end result looks magical, but Cai Nan explains the process behind it in great detail.

Cai Nan’s translucent chicken is incredible, though-provoking and disturbing, all at the same time. It makes some people curious about trying the unusual dish, while putting off many others who claim they would never put anything that unusual in their mouths.

In his viral clip. Cai Nan explains that he basically recreated the fried chicken piece by piece, starting with the bones. He began with a mixture of bone marrow, collagen, and cold gel, which he then placed in chicken bone-shaped moulds and let them set.

For the meat, the Chinese food blogger first used a device to turn the chicken meat into a watery liquid. He then restored the structure of muscle fibres using a technique called spherification, which is commonly used in molecular gastronomy. Finally, the glass-like meat and bones are placed in another mold to fuse them together.

Cai Nan even managed to recreate the crunchy outer shell of conventional fried chicken, even though there is nothing conventional about his version.

You might not find translucent fried chicken appetising, you might even call it off-putting, but you have to admit it looks interesting.