Consuming Insects For Survival Or Pleasure
Posted by Owen Jones in Uncategorized, tags: diet, family, food, garden, gourmet, holidays, insects, other, plants, recipes, self help, survival, travel, UncategorizedIn the West, not many individuals consume insects for pleasure, but that is fairly unusual if you consider the number of people and the number of nations in the world that do. In Asia, numerous people consume insects on a weekly or even daily basis. However, you may one day be happy that you read about eating insects, if you are stranded somewhere a long way from any other supply of food.
For instance, lots of army personnel are taught how to eat worms and insects as part of their routine training course as part of their survival training. Insects are abundant and are simple to catch or trap, they are also a richer source of protein than steak and easier to cook and far less risky to eat raw than meat from mammals, fish or birds.
Insects can provide more than three times the amount of protein weight for weight than any meat or fish. They are also free, you just have to know where to look or how to bait them. However, you ought to not consume just any insect that you can get your hands on. There a few easy basic guidelines.
Do not consume anything that can bite or sting you back. Not because this is perilous to you, but because creatures like bees, wasps and some ants simply do not taste pleasant because of the poisons they create for their stings. A notable exception to this rule is the scorpion. Numerous people find roast scorpion a delicacy.
You could improve this rule to merely include brightly coloured, stinging insects - particularly ones with yellow colouring. Furry insects are not tasty either, especially caterpillars. Flying insects in general, like flies, mosquitoes, blue bottles and the like, should be avoided as well.
Big beetles (with the exception of cockroaches), grass hoppers, locusts, crickets and scorpions are the best. So are worms, maggots and most other larvae of that sort like bee, wasp and hornet larvae. Termites and non-stinging ants are also edible.
Most people fry the insects in oil after removing the wings (like with flying termites or ants). However, if you are stuck in the wild, you may not have any oil with you. Luckily, that is not too big a difficulty if you cook the insects quite slowly, because many of them have enough of their own body fat to be fried in.
If you find that taking your first meal of insects is simply too much to stomach, have a go at mashing them in with some boiled root vegetables or wrap them in leaves. Boiled nettle leaves are very good for you and young dandelion leaves can be consumed raw like lettuce.
If you are uncertain how much to cook your insects, worms and larvae, here are a couple of pointers from Asia. Fry big beetles, termites and scorpions until they are crunchy on the outside but with a small, slightly soft centre. Fry worms, crickets, grass hoppers and the like until they are crunchy and crisp and boil grubs and bee, wasp and hornet larvae for merely a few seconds.
The majority of Westerners that visit Thailand turn their noses up at eating insects, but after six years of staying here, I have never heard any of those who tried them say that they were unpleasant. In fact, most said that they were surprisingly tasty, but then why else would so many individuals like them?
Owen Jones writes articles on several topics, but is at present concerned with fighting beetles If you are interested too, come over to our web site at Electronic Insect Killer.
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