Thanksgiving Day Meal With Insects

Nov. 19, 2012

-- A Thanksgiving Day meal with intentional insect ingredients is hardly the norm for most Americans, but it could be our future due to the cost, nutritional and environmental benefits of edible bugs. Such dishes already are on the menu at the Audubon Butterfly Garden Insectarium in New Orleans, with its "Bug Appétit" daily cooking shows and samples. "We certainly don't serve anything other than terrific food in New Orleans -- haven’t you heard?" asked Zack Lemann, animal and visitor programs manager at Audubon. "And we like upholding our city's reputation as an outstanding food town. So even though insects may seem odd, you can bet that ours will be tasty."

Turkey With Extra Insect Protein The right edible insect can provide an incredible protein punch. For example, Lemann said that house crickets, per 100 grams, contain about 13 grams of protein and 5 grams each of carbohydrate and fat. "This is actually a very good nutritional balance for humans," he told Discovery News, adding that roasted crickets taste a lot like sunflower seeds. "So a diet that includes a lot of these insects would by yummy and healthy."

Turkey With Bug Dressing Lemann and his team get their edible insects from a few different "farms" in the U.S. that otherwise supply to the zoo industry and the pet trade. As small creatures, insects can absorb pollutants, so harvesting them on your own is not advisable. The Insectarium recipe for turkey stuffing includes a half-cup of mealworms per cup of stuffing. They are boiled for 10-15 minutes with, if desired, a seasoning blend for extra spice kick. After straining, they are mixed into the stuffing. "The insects themselves can be cooked any number of ways: roasting frying boiling, grilling," said Lemann, who reminds to use a skewer when grilling so the insects "don't fall through the grill slats." High heat is also a no-no, as "the bugs may burst. That's fine if you’re making a gravy or paste, but not if you want whole insects when the cooking’s done."

Wax Worm Cranberry Sauce Cranberry sauce is on virtually all Thanksgiving Day tables. "I'm certain your old stand-by, maybe handed down from grandma, is superb," Lemann said, "but wouldn't it be even more wonderful with poached wax worms added?" He first poaches the wax worms in hot- not quite boiling water- for about 3 minutes. One-half cup of insects per cup of the regular cranberry sauce mixture "should provide a good ratio so you can see and taste the bugs."

Pumpkin Pie With Crickets Pecan and pumpkin pie can be "nuttier by adding roasted house crickets," Lemann shared. "Use enough crickets to mostly cover a standard sized baking tray and cook them at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes." When baked or roasted, the crickets become crunchy and retain their sunflower seed taste. "They make dessert hoppin' good."

NEWS: 10 Weird Bug Facts

Chocolate Chirp Cookies Like all food ingredients, edible insects aren't just for holiday-time consumption. Chocolate chip cookies, for example, often include nuts. Instead of nuts, Lemann adds toasted edible insects for extra crunch and flavor.

Dragonflies and Mushrooms Even diners who have tried every food imaginable probably have not sampled a dish of dragonflies and mushrooms. "Fried dragonflies taste like soft shell crab and are just fabulous," Lemann said. "We like to collect wild specimens when we can. It's definitely a specialty dish. After we fry them they go atop a sautéed mushroom slice with a small dollop of Dijon-soy butter. Outstanding!"

Insect Hors D'Oeuvres Although there are many benefits associated with edible insects, they are now a hard sell for most diners. Joop de Boer and colleagues from University of Amsterdam's Institute for Environmental Studies recently studied how motivated people are to eat more environmentally-friendly proteins. The study included a snack made out of locusts, along with foods containing lentils, seaweed and a "hybrid meat" that was part meat and part meat substitute. "In answering the question which snack they would least like to taste, most participants chose the snack made from insects," de Boer and team wrote in the paper, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Food Quality and Preference. The hybrid meat item struck the test subjects as being more palatable.

Ants and Crackers Early humans, and our hominid ancestors beforehand, likely ate a lot of insects. While certain Latin, African and other cultures have no problem with such foods today, many people clearly are put off by the idea. Lemann explained that "what is farmed or harvested commercially in large number is what we tend to buy at the store. Since-large-scale rearing of insects for market is not practiced, there is little available opportunity for use to re-embrace bug munching." Cultural differences are another factor. He explained that people in the tropics tend to be more inclined to eat insects because raising livestock and poultry in these regions can be hard, but edible insects are available year round. In Europe and North America, on the other hand, people in prehistoric times could not rely on insects throughout the year, due to season-driven supply changes. "Try to catch a lot of insects north of the Mason-Dixon line between October and May," he said. "You'll likely burn more calories than you take in." Human groups sometimes come up with food trends that are hard to explain, however. He points out that crustaceans (shrimp, crab, lobster…) are acceptable on menus, and yet each of these creatures is "basically just a bug that lives in the water. For that matter, we eat some mammals (cattle and swine, for example) and not others. Explanations can be hard to come by for these varying choices and practices."

Cricket Gumbo Crickets seem to be tasty good eats for many different animal consumers, including willing humans, but not all insect species are edible. Lemann said a general rule of warning is when an insect displays patterns of red, orange, yellow or white spots/bands on black. These usually are visual signals meaning "I taste bad" or "I will sting you." "Stay away, in other words," summarizes Lemann. "Camouflage insects are trying to hide from vertebrates that want to eat them because, in many instances, they taste good,”" he said. "Second if you look at cultures around the world that eat insects, you'll see that generally 'on the menu' are many types of grasshoppers and their kin, caterpillars and beetle larvae." It's best to stick with the tried and true edibles.

Hearty Cricket Winter Soup Our palates, to some degree, are shaped by education and experience. That's one reason why so many of us love traditional holiday dishes. They are familiar to us and bring back good memories. If a person grows up eating and enjoying edible insects, that fondness will likely carry over into adulthood. The idea might seem preposterous to many who see this photo of a hearty cricket-infused dish, but Lemann points out that "there has been a real, visible, and large boom in Internet information about entomophagy (edible insects) in the last 18 months. Web sites, Facebook pages, etc. have taken off and are, pardon me, abuzz with activity." He continued, "'Going green' includes embracing agricultural practices that are more environmentally friendly, and rearing insects for human consumption as opposed to cattle, for example, fits the bill. Insects convert plant matter into edible table 'meat' at a rate of efficiency 10 times better than cows."

Thanksgiving Day Dishes Educational institutions worldwide are researching entomophagy as a means to satisfy world hunger and nutritional issues. A leader in this has been Wageningen University in The Netherlands, which now even has shelf-stable insects in grocery stores there. Efforts are also underway in Africa, where it's hoped that greater acceptance of edible insects could resolve food shortage problems in certain regions. America is gradually getting on the bug bandwagon too. "The U.S. is, more and more, seeing insect fairs that include bug tasting," Lemann said. "And you can also find a marked increase in restaurants that offer insect dishes. Who would have thought, 30 years ago, that you could find raw fish at restaurants in Arizona and Iowa in such numbers as we see today? But sushi is everywhere, right? Maybe insects will take off in similar fashion."

NEWS: 'Insect Pizza,' 'Bug Mac' Foods of the Future?