The following is excerpted from Wild Vision Adventures In Observation, A Monthly Newsletter for Texas Wildlife Interpreters, Published by Wild Vision, November 1996 Volume 2, Issue 11.
Where does this revulsion towards eating insects come from? Is it a European distaste passed on to the colonists and brought forward to the present? Certainly it can be viewed as merely a cultural aversion - many societies relish the thought of eating certain adult or insect larvae. Stranger still, our revulsion is directed only towards certain types of arthropods. Other arthropods like crabs, lobsters, crayfish and shrimp are eagerly devoured; the sound of their carapaces cracking as we hunt for delectable morsel in a restaurant doesn’t raise any eyebrows from the table next to us. Oh, but try crunching a nicely roasted cockroach in someone else’s presence - the look of pure disgust! Cockroaches are described as tasting like shrimp, but I can’t imagine any American eating establishments listing farm raised cockroaches on their menu.
If we approach the subject logically, it becomes odd to think that insects aren’t a common item on the menu. After all, they are higher in protein than beef and most other sources, extremely abundant in the wild, would be easy and cheap to grow commercially, and when you get right down to it, they just taste good. Even so, I don’t expect many people would volunteer for the taste tests.
What about pill bugs and sow bugs? They are crustaceans; akin to little land shrimp, and seem to be good candidates for new menu items. Pill bugs and sow bugs generally feed on humus (rotting vegetation) and fungi. Knowing this, it could be conjectured that they might sequester enough of the dangerous fungal poisons to be unpalatable or worse. Some study needs to be done here - research into these poisons and how quickly they are broken down into non-poisonous metabolites, as well as simple taste tests and best methods of collection. It is most likely that pill bugs would be ridiculously easy to raise in a terrarium away from any poisonous mushrooms. Initial experiments are being conducted as this is written. I will let you know how they progress.
This article is mainly aimed at backpackers who want to reduce the weight of food brought from home and be able to augment their diet along the way, thereby extending the distance and scope of their backpacking adventures. One of the first rules of survival in the wild is to avoid burning more calories collecting food than the food will provide. Therefore, if insects are to be included in our diet we must focus on easily gathered abundant insect sources. The next requirement is to develop a few reliable collecting and preparation techniques.
To that end, I conducted some preliminary experiments using what must be our most abundant local insect - the fire ant. Having eaten cochineal insects fairly often and assorted other insects on occasion, eating new and different insects was not too terribly difficult. For those of you who are completely new to the experience, fire ants would seem to be a good place to start because they are quickly and easily cooked and are so small they can be roasted and added to gravy or soups without being grossly apparent. They are also ridiculously easy to locate, though care must be taken to collect them where it can reasonably be assumed they have not been poisoned. The problem of course is how to collect them in quantity and with little or no dirt to contend with. Your ideas on this one would be greatly appreciated. My first collection experiments have proven inadequate and require improvement.
The following collection technique completely eliminates the dirt but doesn’t yield more than two teaspoonfuls of ants per mound. The procedure is simple: With a hand trowel, quickly dig a hole in the center of a mound and place a tall glass jar into the hole with an inch or so projecting above the surface of the ground. The agitated ants swarm over the rim of the jar and fall inside, becoming stuck. Meanwhile, walk around doing this to several other mounds. After ten minutes or so, return to the first mound and screw the lid onto the jar and lift it out of the ground. Using this method (and wearing leather gloves) I was able to collect quite a few ants without being stung. There must be a better way to collect a greater quantity. Dr. Geoffrey Stanford suggested agitating the mound and scooping them up, dirt and all into a jar, then sorting them out by placing them in water and scooping the ants off the top. Ants float, dirt doesn’t. I haven’t tried this technique yet. Feel free to call with any suggestions and I will do the legwork.
So what do fire ants taste like anyway? I tried them two ways - sautéed in oil and slow roasted in the oven. As far as taste is concerned, I would suggest the first method. The initial flavor in both cases is good - a nutty, almost popcorn like flavor. When sautéed, the aftertaste is slight; while roasted fire ants have a distinctive aftertaste that is unlike anything I have ever tasted. It is a bizarre cross between citrus and pepper.
The next insect candidate for collecting and cooking in the wild was the grasshopper. I collected twenty of them in a short time in a grassy area near a woodland. Even though it was late in November, the field was alive with a brand new generation of ‘hoppers’. There were no large grasshoppers to be found, all of the ones caught were between 3/4 to 1 inch long. At home I placed them in the freezer for awhile so they wouldn’t hop around when they were placed on a cookie sheet to be roasted. For seasoning, I used Louisiana style hot sauce, some garlic powder and cayenne pepper. They were then roasted at 250° until they were dry and brittle. The taste and texture remind me of hot & spicy pork rinds. Very yummy (although I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit I’ve eaten pork skins on occasion). No ill effects were noted from eating the ants or grasshoppers, although LuCretia was somewhat nauseated from watching me.
These preliminary experiments have been encouraging and I plan to explore this matter further until all the bugs are worked out. By continuing to delve into this subject, something will eventually develop that will provide that extra protein for those people who like to live off the land but are hesitant to hunt larger creatures that, in today’s ecology, are becoming increasingly rare. Who knows, with a simple method of collection and a few good recipes, maybe someday ants will be welcome at our picnics.
Further Reading:
"Iowa State University's Tasty Insect Recipes". http://www.ent.iastate.edu/Misc/InsectsAsFood.html
"Bugfood II: Insects as Food!?!" http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/Entomology/ythfacts/bugfood2.htm
Royce Milam Copyright ©
November 1996 Wild Vision. All rights reserved.