Edible Insect Recipes

Scaramel Apples

Bug out your bell-ringers or party-guests with these tricked-out treats inspired by Hotlix.com. They were a hit at a company office party – not a single bite was left over. The mealworms and crickets provide a nutty crunch and boost of protein. Except for the “thin layer” of caramel, this is a pretty healthy trick- er, treat.

Recipe:

• Apples
• Caramel
• Skewer sticks
• Waxed paper
• Bugs

Bake rinsed, frozen bugs (mealworms and crickets work well for a mixed-bug look; mealworms alone will look quite snazzy) on lightly-oiled baking sheets at 350 degree for 10-15 minutes, or until golden and crunchy (will smell like roasted nuts). Be careful not to burn them. Periodically turn or shake pans to ensure uniform roasting.

Shove sticks into apples’ cores, from stem to stern, so apples can sit upright. Melt a handful of caramels in a small pot on medium heat until gooey.  Dip apples into caramel. Once coated, remove, allowing excess to drip off bottom. Roll apple in roasted bugs, and set to cool on waxed paper. Refrigerate until cool.

Once the caramel has hardened, you can slice the apples off the sticks just before serving. Cut in stright lines around the core, and then cut smaller pieces. Bug appetit!

P.S. In the background are Rice Creepy Treats. Mix any leftover roasted buglets into regular Rice Crispies Treats recipe for added nuttiness and protein!

P.P.S. Don’t try to cut apples up beforehand, like this:

Although an interesting experiment, the caramel reacted with the moisture in the apples and became watery. They were very tasty, though!

Cabbage, Peas ‘n’ Crickets

I just came up with a new recipe “on the fly,” as it were, as I was cooking lunch: an easy, 6-ingredient stir fry starring crickets as the main protein, calcium and iron source.

This recipe is crazy simple. All you need is crickets, snap peas, and cabbage. Toss them in hot oil with a pinch of garlic and salt, and voila. Bug’s on!

Ingredients

• Handful of crickets
• 1 cup chopped snap peas
• 1 cup chopped red cabbage
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1 crushed clove of garlic
• Pinch of salt

Chop snap peas and cabbage. Heat olive oil in pan or wok. Begin stir-frying veggies and crickets. After 1 minute or so, add crushed garlic. Once cooked to desired level (I prefer mine firm and crunchy) add salt. Bug appetit!

Bee-LT Sandwich

Bee larvae, when sauteed with a little butter and a few drops of honey, taste very much like bacon.

Sometimes, when I talk about eating bees, I hear concern about the problems plaguing bee populations. Naturally, I would never recommend a bug-gredient that is threatened.

I primarily eat drone larvae, which I get from from beekeepers whom I’ve bee-friended. Unlike worker bees, the drones’ main purpose is to mate with the queen: they do not particiapte in pollination, nurse larvae, or help with hive construction. They buzz from hive to hive to see if anyone needs any mating done, and there are generally an excess of them. It is for this reason that beekeepers often consider them a drain on colony resources. Many beekeepers have a special comb just for drones, which they sometimes use as bait for potential parastites.

Periodically, they remove this comb altogether, toss it into the freezer to kill any “extras” like mites, and then either throw it away or feed it to chickens, if they have any. If more people knew how delicious they are, I think the chickens might have to peck elsewhere! 🙂

Ingredients:

• Bee larvae
• 1 egg white
• 1 tsp butter
• 1/4 tsp honey
• 1 tomato
• 1 leaf lettuce
• 2 slices of bread
• 1 tbsp mayonnaise
• 1 pinch salt

Sautee the bee larvae in the butter, with a tiny bit of salt and a few drops of honey. Once larvae become golden brown and crispy-looking, remove, and mix into enough egg white to cover and bind them into a mass. Then return them to the sautee butter, pressing them together into a patty.

Toast bread, and slice tomato. Spread mayonnaise on toasted bread when ready. When bee patty becomes firm, place it atop the lettuce and tomato on the sandwich. Enjoy!

Waxworm Tacos

Freeze live  Waxworms overnight.

Saute onions in olive oil until golden, then turn heat to medium-high. Add waxworms, stirring quickly to keep them moving, while adding a pinch of salt (to taste). Waxworms will start to straighten out as they hit the heat; this means they are partially done and are becoming firm, just like shrimp or fish. When you start to see a little bit of transparency around their edges, they are ready.

Simply use sauteed waxworms as you would any other taco meat, adding whichever complementary ingredients you fancy.

Deep Fried Scorpion

This recipe was adapted from The Eat-A Bug Cookbook’s “Scorpion Scallopine.” For this particular recipe, I used an Emperor Scorpion, because of their low venom (this species is often kept as pets). However, if you can get your hands on a Desert Hairy scorpion, their exoskeleton is less thick and tough, so it might be ultimately tastier.

Freeze live scorpions overnight, or even for several days (although it is highly unlikely, some species of scorpion have been known to re-animate once thawed, so be aware).

Heat up hot oil, deep enough to immerse the scorpion. Pour buttermilk and corn meal into separate bowls, again, deep enough to immerse scorpion.

Holding the scorpion with chopsticks or tongs, immerse it in the buttermilk. Let it soak for a bit, then transfer it to the cornmeal, and dredge thoroughly. Still holding it with tongs, dip it into the hot oil. Watch for cornmeal coating to become toasty-looking, and remove scorpion. If you plan to eat the stinger, at this point I would turn the scorpion tail-side down and dip just the stinger into the hot oil for 30-60 seconds. Heat is supposed to de-nature the proteins that compose the venom, but still, ingest it at your own risk. I don’t, unless the scorpion is very tiny and I know the stinger has had the heck cooked out of it.

Serve scorpion with garnish, and/or a fritter or eggroll dipping sauce; a Vietnamese dipping sauce would go nicely.

Scorp-tastic!