Great Grub!
- Written by Meredith MacLeod
Scenario...
You’re deep in the woods on a four-day family camping adventure and your kids want a snack.
They turn down the trail mix. They refuse the seeds and nuts.
They want something a little more adventurous.
Why not impress them with a meal they won’t forget?
They can hunt the prey themselves and help with the cooking as you whip up helpings of crickets, ants and grubs.
Don’t knock it, ‘til you try it, say the legions of bug-eaters who point out that insects are high in protein and low in fat. Remember, most kids are ready to try anything once and people all over the world incorporate insects into their regular diets.
Most kids (and adults) are fascinated by Survivor or Fear Factor, television shows that often show bug-eating adventures. Chocolate covered grasshoppers or dry-roasted grubs are sold in expensive specialty shops.
Your head tells you this is really yucky while your mouth says this is really good!
Before fast food, farms, or even wild game, insects fed prehistoric hunter-gatherers all over the world. A near taboo in the Western world, entomophagy (eating bugs) is still practiced in Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America by millions of people in traditional societies.
What’s it like to eat a grub?
“It was an amazing sensation,” says Peter Menzel, a photographer who has travelled the world eating insects for his book, Man Eating Bugs. “Your head tells you this is really yucky while your mouth says this is really good.”
Moths, regular old “fly into the light” moths, are pretty good too. They taste a bit like almonds. Grasshoppers, dried or fried, are kind of like chalky potato chips or cheese puffs. Live grasshoppers kick like hell and can give you worms, the kind you probably wouldn’t eat.
Of course there is always the happy maggot... that’s a different story... Easy to capture, often found in clusters, high in calories and protein. Properly prepared, they taste and look like wild rice. Gather a handful or two, drop your prize into an old sock, and rinse in cold clear water a couple of times. Then boil. After about five minutes, toss in a bullion cube. When the cube has finished dissolving, settle back to a fine hot stew of what looks like brown rice. It is really a fine meal.
Ants are, for the most, part are one of the best bug feasts. The formic acid pretty much disappears when they are boiled. Black ants eaten raw have a semi sweet flavor. Sort of like crunchy raw sugar with legs.
Bees and wasps are OK eaten after a good boiling. The poison is basically a protein which disassembles at boiling temperatures. The stinger softens. Pounding them before boiling is effective.
Don’t forget... if you are going to eat bugs it is best to cook them first. And never eat bugs you find dead.
“In those cultures where they are eaten raw, the consumers know the species of insect they are consuming. If you do not know what it is, better not to eat it raw, or not eat it all,” wrote Ronald L. Taylor and Barbara J. Carter in “Entertaining with Insects.” He equates the dangers of eating raw insects to those associated with eating wild mushrooms or berries.
Experts say you also should be wary of bugs with stingers, like bees, wasps, spiders and scorpions, unless they’re frozen or thawed. And be cautious of bright-colored insects, because they may contain poison.
North Americans have viewed eating bugs as taboo since early in their nation’s history, according to David George Gordon, author of “The Eat-A’Bug Cookbook.” Settlers saw Native Americans as barbaric and because they ate insects, doing so was considered a barbaric act. Settlers also thought that bugs were a competition for crops, ruining harvests as well as livestock.
“Historically,” said Chris Paradise, an entomologist and assistant professor of biology at Davidson College in Davidson NC, “early Europeans probably ate bugs and other invertebrates, but those habits may have been lost by many cultures as they became more technologically advanced.”
Amy Cousin said her family cut out beef and pork because of the antibodies pumped into them. And she was aware that food regulations allow for degrees of insect damage and infestation for various foods so she noted that North Americans are essentially eating bugs anyway. There can be 34 fruit fly eggs in a cup of raisins, for example, or 74 mites in 100 grams of canned mushrooms.
And, her daughter Emily is quick to note, “Honey is bee vomit.”
Scott Bowers, a veteran bug-eater, says people should be careful of where they get insects.
Here’s a killer cricket recipe.
Capture crickets and put them in a jar painted on the inside with oil. Keep them inside for 24 hours. This gives them a chance to empty their intestinal tracts (the cause of some bitterness in the flavour). After they are “clean”, dump them into a cloth bag and hang it by a fire to dry (cook slowly) or in a pot over a slow fire. When dried, the crickets make a tasty snack or can be used in rice meals. Grasshoppers can be prepared in the same way but it is best to pull the legs off before the feast.
