Ngl, this is one southern specialty I have never felt the need to try again.
I have eaten bugs, game animals including possum and coon, every vegetable that ever crossed my plate, and even the stuff I didn't like, I was willing to try again later just to see if my tastes changed.
But fuck chitlins. They smell almost as bad as it gets. What little taste they have on their own is distinctly unpleasant. And, regardless of whether or not what I was done correctly or not, the texture was horrible.
Like, I've pulled grubs out of logs and cooked them in hot ash, and that was better than chitlins. Even possum stew, the third (maybe forth) smelliest and least pleasant thing I've ever eaten was better overall by virtue of texture and the lack of overwhelming anything else available.
Fuck chitlins, y'all can have them all. And you sure as hell aren't cooking them in my house lol. Last place I was in where chitlins were cooked, it took a week for the smell to go away entirely. I was with that patient six hours a day, and that week was misery.
My neighbor used to cook them for family holidays. Usually 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and sometimes easter. That's what they did chitlins because for them it was a special occasion food, and it wasn't worth the smell for anything else. But holy crap, it was years before we got air conditioning in this house. So every damn time, it would fill up our house too. Even after the AC, you'd get hints of it.
And I have tried them three times. Once as a kid because my dad loved them. Once as a teenager because that neighbor convinced me that me throwing up the first time might have just been a fluke. I managed to not throw up, but it was close.
The third time was with a patient (not the same one from above) who's family did it a different way. Nope. Just fucking nope. Never again. That makes a mess full for anyone that enjoys then to have instead of me, and they're welcome to it.
I don't even know if I could force myself in starvation conditions.
I'm normally pretty big into minimum waste when an animal is slaughtered. You use everything possible. But intestine is for sausage casing, not eating by itself.