Sunday, May 20, 2018

10 Incredible Edible Insects

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Snacking on arthropods is becoming popular. There's even a word for it: “entomophagy,” the human consumption of insects as food. The United Nations encourages the practice. Among billions of others, U. S. President Barack Obama has tasted a few bugs, describing them, in his autobiography, as “crunchy.” Among foodies in Asia, Africa, and Mexico, if not yet most of Europe and North America, bugs are more and more considered the stuff of fine dining, and nutritionists say they're not only yummy but good for us, too. Hungry? Here are 10 incredible edible insects to enjoy.

10 Waterboatmen


A type of water bug, waterboatmen deposit their eggs on freshwater and saltwater aquatic plant stems. Once they're collected and dried, the eggs make Mexican caviar, a dish that “tastes like shrimp.” Their eggs can also be “eaten fresh” for “their fishy flavor.” (LINK 1)

Both adult waterboatmen and their eggs, which are making a culinary comeback, were eaten by humans for centuries. After Aztec fishermen caught adults in nets, the insects were “dried in the sun, ground into a dough, cooked in lime water, and . . . sold in the markets as cone-shaped tamales wrapped in corn husks.” 

To collect the insects' eggs, Aztec farmers bound reed bundles at intervals along a submerged rope anchored in the muddy bottom of Lake Texcoco. Waterboatmen laid their eggs in the bundles. Days or weeks later, the farmers recovered the rope, shook the sun-dried reeds to dislodge the eggs, and collected them. Shaping the dried eggs into bricks, the farmers sold them at the market. Buyers used the eggs to make tortillas and tamales or “mixed [them] with cooked bird eggs.” Waterboatmen eggs were also used as bird food for “pet parrots” and the birds of Tenochtitlan's royal zoo. Tons of the abundant eggs have been collected, eaten, and exported for hundreds of years. 

Today, waterboatmen eggs are valued as much for their nutrients as for their taste, as they are “high in essential amino acids, vitamin B, iron, and protein.” (LINK 2)

9 Potato Bugs


At a bar in Laos, as Richard Sterling, a parched traveler, drank a cold beer, he observed a 16-year-old girl who seemed to be “stringing beans.” In fact, she was fixing deep-fried potato bugs “as a specialty of the house,” pausing, occasionally, to snack on one. After snapping the insect's neck, leaving the head “attached,” she extracted its torso's “contents.” Then, grasping its “hind end,” she “cracked the exoskeleton, and slowly pulled out the bug's “viscera in a long, slimy string.”

Although Sterling had eaten many insects in his travels, at first he thought he wouldn't be able to stomach the girl's offer of a potato bug treat. It looked to him like “a six-legged pustule.” But, then, he ate a bunch of them and challenged a French tourist to join him. Together, the two travelers enjoyed several of the bugs. They tasted like shrimp cooked inside their shells. (LINK 3)

8 Caterpillars


Fish and meat are too expensive for many of the citizens of Bas Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and most of animals in the bush have fallen prey to hunters, so, for their protein, they rely on caterpillars. When trees are felled to obtain charcoal, the caterpillars living in them are collected. Those too high in unharvested trees were once left there. However, this practice is no longer always followed. As a result, the population of “edible caterpillars” has declined, causing the Salvation Army to initiate a conservation project to “conserve and increase the number of edible caterpillars.”

In preparing them for dinner, the insects are “broken open or punctured” so their “green gut contents” can be “squeezed out.” However, “white or brown matter is not removed.” Boiled with “salt and hot peppers until almost dry,” they're “eaten direct or cooked with peanut butter, or the seeds of pumpkin or sesame” and may be “cooked with cassava leaves.” Although some species are equipped with “spines,” the spines are left intact. (LINK 4)

7 Dragonflies


Zack Lemann, Executive Bug Chef at the Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium in New Orleans, Louisiana, serves fresh-caught Louisiana dragonflies. After running them “through an egg bath,” he dredges them “in seasoned fish fry.” Before cooking them, he mixes “equal parts [a teaspoon] of butter, soy sauce, and creole or country-style Dijon mustard mix,” heating the ingredients “in a small skillet for a couple of minutes on a low setting.”

He cooks the dragonflies in vegetable oil, over a “medium heat” for 30 seconds, flips them, and cooks them for an additional half minute. Since the insects are fragile, Lemann recommends using featherweight tweezers, by which the dragonflies can be held by their “wings both when prepping them for the pan (the egg and flour procedure) and when they are being turned in and removed from hot oil.” Once cooked, the dragonflies are served with sliced portobello mushrooms sauteed “in a very small amount of butter” and a “sprinkle of garlic powder.” Prepared in this fashion, the insects “taste like soft-shelled crab.” (LINK 5)

6 Maggots


Búi Bjarmar Aðalsteinsson's Iceland Fly Factory is a “self-contained insect farm” that can be installed in a greenhouse or a home kitchen. It operates “like a type of composting system.” The farm's plants, grown in larvae excrement, obtain nitrogen from the feces. The maggots, or larvae, can be collected for human consumption as ingredients in such meals as “larvae pate” and “coconut-chocolate larvae pudding.” Rich in both fat and protein, the maggots' taste depends on how they're prepared. (LINK 6)

5 Bee Brood
Bee brood, the “larvae and pupae of drones,” can also help to feed a hungry world. As protein-nutritious as steak, the larvae and pupae of honeybees is particularly rich in fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals and, according to Professor Annette Bruun Jensen of the University of Copenhagen, “can be processed using wet or dry heat, acid or fermentation techniques.” Although bee brood must be stored apart from oxygen to prevent the larvae and pupae from becoming “rancid,” bee brood “can be frozen and stored for up to 10 months without severe loss of taste,” Jensen said. (LINK 7)

4 Mealworms


As part of his research for an article on edible insects, journalist Spencer Michels sampled mealworms and other creepy crawlers. In the process, he learned “a six-ounce serving of mealworms has more protein than ground pork and half the fat.” Insect chef Monica Martinez told Michels she has the option of growing her own mealworms or ordering them from suppliers. She has a mealworm farm of her own, from which she obtains larvae from the hatched eggs of darkling beetles. She “fattens” them on an “all-veggie organic diet,” feeding them bran and carrots, which is all they need besides water. Martinez can raise 500 mealworms each month. (LINK 8)

3 Termites


A favorite dish across Eastern and Southern Africa is spiced, fried termites served “with with ugali, a corn, millet, or sorghum-based porridge.” But termites, which “are rich in protein and . . . Omega 3 fatty acids” and contain iron and Vitamin A, are also enjoyed as snacks or side dishes. In contrast to meat and fish, which are expensive in Africa, termites are cheap and plentiful. The most popular edible termite is the flying variety, which is collected “during the rainy season when they fly around.” (LINK 9)

2 Cockroaches


Wang Fuming's cockroach farm in Jinan, China, is home to millions of the insects. By the time of harvest, he said, he has 10 million on hand inside his warehouse of “narrow corridors and hives made of cement roof shingles.” He sells them by the ton to Chinese pharmaceutical companies, where they are ground up to fill pills advertised as cure-alls. He also fries them in peanut oil. They must be chewed, because they're “too big to swallow whole.” A cooked roach crunches “like a spindly overcooked French fry.” They also leave an enduring aftertaste. In addition to selling his roaches to pharmacies, Wang wants to sell them as food. His goal is to “put roaches on plates and bowls throughout China as a high[-]protein meal.” (LINK 10)

1 Crickets


Ounce for ounce, crickets supply more protein than beef or chicken. The insects “have all the essential amino acids,” contain zinc and calcium, and are rich in fiber and iron. They're said to be “nutty” and to “taste like popcorn.” In the US, cricket farms have sold them for use in reptile and pet foods, but selling them to restaurants for human consumption is something new. Cameron Marshad, who's making the documentary The Gateway Bug, said crickets are most nutritious when they're eaten whole, “exoskeleton, muscles . . . organs,” and all. 

The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook author David George Gordon suggested frozen crickets be sauteed “with butter and garlic.” People who don't want to eat the insects' legs and antennae can “detach” these body parts by “shaking” the crickets “in a bag” after they've been cooked. (LINK 11)
















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