How do people eat insects? Twelve most delicious insect dishes

Experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations agreed with the opinion of scientists that people should be persuaded to eat insects instead of meat. First, crickets and grasshoppers have as much protein as a piece of steak meat. Secondly, their cultivation is much cheaper and requires less space.

Experts note that about 1,400 species of insects are edible for humans. They are eaten in 36 African, 29 Asian and 23 North and South America. Moreover, in some states, insects are considered a delicacy, in others - insects are part of the daily diet.

Let's see what they offer us:

Eaten: in Asia and parts of the US
Tastes like asparagus
Cooking method: Boil or fry like shrimp

Wasp larvae

Eat: in Japan
Taste: Sweet and crunchy
Cooking method: with soy sauce and sugar

scorpions

Eat: in Vietnam, Thailand, China
Tastes like crab or shrimp
Cooking method: on skewers, fried in oil

red ants

Eat: in Thailand
Tastes like lemon
Cooking method: adding to salads

caterpillars

Eat: in Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe
Taste: oily
Cooking method: dried or smoked, served with sauce

Larvae of the longhorn beetle Prionoplus reticularis

Eat: in New Zealand
Tastes like peanut butter
Cooking method: eaten raw

Eat: in Vietnam, China, Korea
Tastes like dried shrimp

tarantulas

Eat: in Cambodia and Venezuela
Tastes like crab
Cooking method: fried in oil with salt and sugar

dragonflies

Eat: in Indonesia
Tastes like crab
Cooking method: boiled or fried

Eat: in Mexico
Tastes like cinnamon
Cooking method: ground with chili or as a filling for such

Palm weevil:

Eat: in Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia
Tastes Like Coconut When Raw, Like Bacon When Cooked
Cooking method: raw or fried on skewers

Eat: in West Africa, Australia, parts of South America
Tastes like carrot
Cooking method: fried

Grasshoppers

Eat: in Mexico
Taste: salty and spicy
Cooking method: fried with chili and lime

Ant eggs

Eat: in Mexico
Taste: Oily and nutty
Cooking method: boiled or fried in butter, usually eaten in tacos

water beetles

Eat: Thailand

Cooking method: In Thailand, for example, they prefer fried water beetles.

It is believed that scorpions taste very much like crabs, cooked water beetles are indistinguishable from scallop fillets, Madagascar cockroaches are like ham, ants have a pleasant delicate sour taste, and salted dried locusts and grasshoppers are an excellent snack for beer.

And not only adherents of exotic Asian cuisine think so, where often due to the poverty of the population or established traditions, eating insects is the daily diet of most local residents, not at all. In Europe and America, these delicacies are also considered quite fashionable, modern and in demand. After all, the problem of replacing expensive meat on our tables with something more affordable is creeping up and quite noticeably.

So, in Germany there are special restaurants that include dishes from insects in their menu. In the United States, insect dinners are periodically held for visitors to fashionable establishments (for example, the famous Travel Club).

Have you heard about casu marzu? Well, of course, because this is the most famous Italian cheese with larvae (by the way, it is also an aphrodisiac)! And in the Netherlands today there are even high-tech breeding farms food insects where parties are held with refreshments. They also recently published a whole cookbook on "insect-eating" with the involvement of culinary authorities and eminent scientists who advocate for healthy lifestyle life.

Well, were you persuaded to try? In any case, we think that it will be at least interesting for many to get acquainted with the traditions and recipes of insect dishes. After all, these arthropods form the basis of the nutrition of hundreds of thousands of people in hundreds of countries around the world. So, what is cooked in the world from beetles and spiders?

It just so happened that the traditions of entomophagy have most taken root in Asian cuisine. Most likely, because of the scarcity of the local animal world. Even in ancient times, even an unpretentious European would hardly have exchanged a well-fed rabbit or a fat capon (yes, even a roasted pigeon or a rat) for a dish of the most beautiful locusts or grasshoppers. And in Asia, nothing - they eat, and even praise. And not only locusts, since today about one and a half thousand species of arthropods are considered edible: dragonflies, swimming beetles, scorpions, bamboo worms, ants, tarantulas, various larvae ...

So, from the main dishes to your attention are offered:

quiche pies and pancakes stuffed with insects, as well as pizzas with larvae;
cakes and buns with locusts baked in them;
fried in batter or simply without anything spiders and grasshoppers;
ant egg soup;
steamed or grilled scorpions;
cutlets from earthworms;
bee and wasp larvae boiled with sugar and soy sauce;
smoked caterpillars;
pates from any insects with spices and white wine;
mealworm and vegetable stew;
cheese with cheese fly larvae;
shish kebab from the larvae of the barbel beetle.

And this is not the tenth or even the hundredth part of insect recipes, there is simply no point in listing everything. Such delights in many Asian countries you can try it not only in restaurants and cafes, but literally everywhere - on the beach, at street vendors, in the market. However, not only in Asian ones: the same cheese with larvae is the invention of Sardinian culinary specialists, it is even officially its cultural heritage.

Dessert

Many will not believe, but local craftsmen have even learned how to make desserts from insects! However, remember the Bible - even John the Baptist himself ate locusts with wild honey. Our contemporaries are not far behind. How about, for example, chocolate-coated ants, mealworm and rum ice cream, sugar-coated dragonflies, dark beetle larvae chocolate pralines, earthen wasp rice crackers, scorpion lozenges, and cricket chocolate hazelnut cookies?

All these desserts are quite common in many countries and are in great demand. They say that it is very tasty and healthy - such sweets strengthen immune system and energize. In addition, they look unusual and will certainly become a highlight. holiday table. Moreover, you can try them not only in exotic places, in distant Bali and somewhere else, but also in Japan, which is quite traditional in the opinion of a European.

We hope that after reading the article you are convinced that the beetle is not so terrible as it is sometimes painted ... in cookbooks.

In many cultures around the world, insects, a protein-rich food, are an important part of the daily diet. And now in Europe there are restaurants that serve dishes from insects.

But in China, you can see fried locust everywhere, which is sold on wooden sticks.

But the Chinese are less squeamish. They are ready to absorb even fried scorpions on skewers. After all, taste is everything...

The Chinese talk with humor about their gastronomic tastes: "We eat everything that flies, except for an airplane, everything that has four legs, except for a table and chairs." Of course, China in the use of insects is ahead of the rest. Many restaurants specialize exclusively in dishes made from insects.

For many people, just the thought of eating this mountain of larvae can cause a strong disgust.

Would you like to have a snack between your main meals? How do you like such a deep-fried, deep-fried spider? The people of Cambodia really like it.

And if in Mexico you can buy fried insects simply from a street vendor's stall, then in other Western countries such dishes are more like a delicacy served in expensive restaurants. For example, the New York restaurant of the Explorers Club hosts an annual reception during which insect dishes are served.

Many people in different parts of the world consider locusts to be a real disaster. But not the Mexicans. In Mexico, especially in its southern regions, in addition to all kinds of tortillas, you will also find fried locusts wrapped in unleavened cakes.

But not all scientists consider the impending threat so inevitable. For example, Arnold van Heijs is already trying to find a solution to the problem by studying the possibilities of using insects as food for humans of the future. And he, it must be said, has a high opinion of the prospects for replenishing our usual menu with dishes from representatives of the most common class of living beings on the planet. Helping the Dutch professor to carry the idea to the masses is Chef Henk van Gurp, who develops recipes for dishes with insects. He also holds special master classes where he teaches those who wish to cook these strange, unusual dishes, but perhaps the most interesting thing is not the preparation, but the subsequent tasting of delicacies.

The idea of a Dutch scientist trying to move various spider bugs from the category of delicacies for thrill-seekers to the category of popular and affordable food is not based at all on empty place. The fact that insects can be a complete source of proteins and trace elements, so necessary human body, said the English traveler Vincent Holt. In his book Why Don't We Eat Insects? (1885) he recommended that readers diversify their usual diet with beetles, caterpillars and butterflies. And really, why not? Here is the approximate content of proteins and fats in various types edible insects (per 100 grams): dung beetles - 17.2 g and 3.8 g; in live caterpillars - 14.2 g and 1.2 g; grasshoppers - 20.6 g and 6.1 g; termites - 14.2 g and 2.2 g; bees 13.4 g and 1.4 g respectively.

For comparison, a piece of beef of the same weight contains 23.5 g of protein and 21.2 g of fat. The fact that, in addition to such an advantageous ratio of proteins and fats, insect food contains chitin also speaks in favor of the appearance of insect dishes in the list of foods we use. One of his many useful properties- help in cleansing the body. Chitin serves as the basis for the production of chitosan, an integral part of many weight loss products. Chitosan has many other useful properties, but back to our insects. They are so useful that Japanese scientists presented in July 2010 at the Congress on Space Research, held in Bremen, a new diet for astronauts. As you probably guessed, it also includes insects. By the way, the disgust at the sight of baked larvae or ice cream with ants, characteristic of the average inhabitants of Europe or, say, England, is not at all shared by the natives of many countries in Asia, Africa, and Australia.

For them, these dishes are just another way to snack. In about a hundred states, eating insects does not seem unusual today. In Thailand, for example, insect breeding is already being done on an industrial scale. After all, this is a much less costly and laborious occupation than, for example, raising pigs and chickens. No need large areas, and insects eat immeasurably less. According to some forecasts, it is insect farms that will soon become the main food producer in this country. Well, what are we? There are about a million species of insects known to science. Unknown, according to some scientists - even more.

There are about 1400 edible species out of this million. But even this is a lot. Is it possible that, due to the unusual nature of such food and a considerable amount of disgust, this, inexhaustible on this moment, a source nutrients- not for us? I think, nevertheless, no. After all, if the benefits are obvious ... An example of this is the Spanish fly, popular in the past in France, and not only an aphrodisiac, it is an ash fly. In the era of the great French revolution, not a single drink designed to ignite passion could do without this component. Yes, and fashion contributes to the popularization of insect eating. For example, in European countries you can find restaurants that specialize only in this kind of delicacies. And visiting such establishments is becoming fashionable. For the first sample, dishes are most often chosen where insects are used as a filling that is not visible to the neophyte. For example, putting a cricket in chocolate icing into your mouth is somewhat easier than a fried cockroach.

One foreign company decided to sell fried ants.
But not simple, but giant Colombian ants, the length of which reaches 2 centimeters.
The price of this delicacy is $20.

And here are some more options...

It is impossible in situations threatening hunger to forget about the so-called non-traditional foodstuffs. It is foolish to doom yourself to starvation just because the food around you has an unusual look, taste and smell. You can afford to frown in disgust at the sight of a worm that crawled out of an apple, but only at home, and not in an emergency. Here, if you want to survive, it is better to get rid of old habits like disgust. And the sooner, the better for health. Therefore, if in such a, to put it mildly, predicament, a wormy apple fell into the hands of the victim, you should not throw it away, but, on the contrary, you should eat it completely, to the last bone, and even a worm, sorry , be sure to catch and eat, as it is more high-calorie than the apple itself. And it will be more than correct. Our ancestors, who lived in the cruel conditions of the struggle for their own existence, firmly grasped this unwritten law. Their menu, in terms of assortment, was much richer than ours. They ate everything. Well, let's just say almost everything.

Not the worst diet can be made up of: garden and grape snails, slugs, earth and wood worms, smooth-skinned, that is, devoid of hair and chitin, caterpillars, cicadas, beetles and their larvae living in the ground and wood, as well as dragonfly larvae, as well as and dragonflies themselves, crawling and flying ants and other insects. In the water, you can collect edible pond shells, barley shells, water beetles and other aquatic insects.

In the recent past, dried and ground into flour grasshoppers, retreating from worldly cares, were used by hermits for baking bread cakes and making porridges. So if you come across in some book the phrase “the hermits ate berries, mushrooms and locusts”, know that the holy fathers consumed grasshoppers with no small appetite. And, by the way, they acted wisely, because 100 g of food mass prepared from grasshoppers “pulls” 225 calories - only slightly less than wheat bread. And 100 g of fried termites - 560 calories!

Many peoples inhabiting the deserts revered locusts for a delicacy. The Chinese enjoy eating dried spiders. The Japanese, who do not experience much hunger, are dragonflies. The peoples of the South Asian region are generally distinguished by their amazing omnivorousness and use almost all the insects they encounter, from the most exotic, such as fried scorpions revered as a delicacy, to purely domestic ones. And mosquitoes! Those that cover the face and hands? They are also edible. And easily accessible. Just have time to beat yourself on the cheeks and lick what remains of them from your fingers. Or collect for material and cook a stew ...

Ants and their southern counterparts - termites, grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, some species of beetles, honey bees, and aquatic insects are considered to be the most valuable in nutritional terms. A person who finds himself in emergency conditions is most accessible to sedentary snails, slugs, worms, larvae, especially since they usually cluster in one place. Having found their habitat, it is no longer difficult to find them themselves in the required quantities. Jumping and flying insects are much more difficult to catch.

The easiest way to find insects on the trunks of old and dead trees, stump. By the way, these varieties of larvae are the most edible and, according to connoisseurs of oriental cuisine, are delicious. To collect them, one must carefully examine the crevices, hollows and other depressions, rip off the old bark and collect insects and their larvae from its reverse side and from bare wood. In glades and meadows, you can collect insects by looking at tall plants, on the stems and flowers of which it is easy to notice spider cocoons, thickenings and similar defects in which larvae and caterpillars live. In addition, they can be found in the seeds of plants. For example, in the stems and prickly "heads" of the well-known burdock, a certain number of insects can be collected even in winter.

Grasshoppers are more convenient to catch in the morning, in the cold, when they are inactive. It is better to look for soil insects in moist, shady places, among rotten foliage, under stones, heaps of deadwood and fallen tree trunks, at the bottom of dried puddles. Aquatic - naturally in the water, at the bottom of lakes, rivers, streams, swamps, individual large puddles, among the vegetation surrounding them. The easiest way to find ants is by large, sometimes reaching a height of 1.5-2 m, heaps of anthills. But you can catch them "by smell" in jars and other containers placed near ant paths, into which you can throw a small amount of food debris.

Ants are very good in fried and baked form. In addition, in anthills you can find caterpillars and their larvae harvested for the future. Of particular value are the so-called honey, or sugar, ants, which act as containers for storing nectar in anthills. They differ from worker ants in having a disproportionately large barrel-shaped abdomen filled with a sweet liquid. The most nutritious are not the ants themselves, but their larvae and pupae (or, as they are sometimes called, ant eggs), resembling appearance white or yellow rice grains. Larvae can be collected by stirring up the wall of a large anthill. In small anthills, it is enough to lift a stone or a tree trunk covering it from above in order to find a whole deposit of ant eggs.

Much more pupae can be obtained using a cloth trap. To do this, near the anthill, on a horizontal platform illuminated by the sun, it is necessary to spread a large, 1 - 1.5 m2 piece of fabric, wrap all four of its corners up and put branches under them to form slit-like cavities. Then top part anthill breaks and crumbles thin layer on fabric, under the rays of the sun. Saving the pupae from drying out, the ants quickly drag them under the wrapped edges of the fabric. At night, insects can be caught by the light of a lantern, a candle, or a piece of white, preferably illuminated, rag spread on the ground. During the day - with the help of a net made from any material at hand. Shoot down to the ground with removed clothes. Or just carefully cut and shake grass and shrub vegetation over the material.

Water insects - various water beetles and their larvae, larvae of butterflies - ephemeral, dragonflies, May flies, etc. can promise good food for those in distress. They should be collected in shallow water, always in running, unstagnant water. Catching fidgeting aquatic animals with your hands is a thankless and hopeless business, and therefore it is better to use an impromptu net. To do this, stretching to the sides a piece of tulle, gauze or any other fabric at hand (in last resort removed shirt or pants), you need to walk through the shallow water as quickly as possible, raking the water and everything in it to the shore. Or, on the contrary, to lead the net above the very bottom, like a deep-sea trawl.

Even more catchy is a stationary network placed downstream of a river or stream. Several stakes are driven into the bottom, between which any fabric found is stretched at an angle open towards the direction of the flow. Then, upstream, it is enough to shake the bottom with your feet and shake aquatic vegetation so that all the raised living creatures are carried into the net. In the absence of any material suitable for the manufacture of networks, you can use long poles to pull large armfuls of algae ashore, inside which to collect aquatic insects hidden there. Before eating, it is better to boil all aquatic insects, since there is no guarantee that the water in which they live is sterile.

Experts note that about 1,400 species of insects are edible for humans. They are eaten in 36 African, 29 Asian and 23 countries in North and South America. Moreover, in some states, insects are considered a delicacy, in others - insects are part of the daily diet.

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1. In many cultures around the world, insects, a protein-rich food, are an important part of the daily diet. And now in Europe there are restaurants that serve dishes from insects.

2. But in China, you can see fried locust everywhere, which is sold on wooden sticks.

3. Many people in different parts of the world consider locusts to be a real disaster. But not the Mexicans. In Mexico, especially in its southern regions, in addition to all kinds of tortillas, you will also find fried locusts wrapped in unleavened cakes.

4. And if in Mexico you can buy fried insects simply from a street vendor's stall, then in other Western countries such dishes are more like a delicacy served in expensive restaurants. For example, the New York restaurant of the Explorers Club hosts an annual reception during which insect dishes are served.

5. The Chinese talk about their gastronomic tastes with humor: “We eat everything that flies, except for an airplane, everything that has four legs, except for a table and chairs.” Of course, China in the use of insects is ahead of the rest. Many restaurants specialize exclusively in dishes made from insects.

6. For many people, just the thought of eating this mountain of larvae can cause a strong disgust.

7. But the Chinese are less squeamish. They are ready to absorb even fried scorpions on skewers. After all, taste is everything...

8. This is a real exotic for tourists, but for locals it is an absolute routine: everything that crawls will be used for food.

Hi all!

Man is born omnivorous, but few are ready to take it to heart and eat, for example, bugs, crickets, snakes, or some kind of disgusting plant. Meanwhile, insects are eaten around the globe: they have more protein than chicken meat, full of iron, magnesium and others important elements Finally, it's just delicious. Approximately 1700 species of insects are edible. And they are regularly eaten in 130 countries of the world! Basically, these are the countries of Asia and Africa. But the fashion for “fried insects” also reaches European countries.

But we will not talk about the culinary delights of other countries, but imagine a situation when you (God forbid) lost all your supplies and equipment, well, or almost everything. Remained: a knife, matches, etc. And you are not in the jungle, but in your native Russia, presumably in middle lane, during the summer season.

Insects

So, what insects do we primarily encounter in the forest? You can eat mosquitoes and midges, but I think that the efforts spent on catching them will not pay off. Let's look for something more high-calorie.

Carpenter beetle larvae.

There are many dry trees in the forest, under their bark the beetles lay their eggs, from which, in turn, the larvae appear. They feed on wood and it is not difficult to get them from under the bark. If you have the opportunity to strip the bark from living spruces, then enough beetles themselves will flock to the smell of fresh bark, which are easy to collect. And eat.

Ants.

They live almost everywhere. Ant eggs are especially nutritious. The ants themselves are edible. Not for nothing that even bears feed on them. In early spring it is not difficult to collect ants, they come out to "warm up" in large clusters, just have time to collect! Yes, and at other times, with a wet stick, you can collect ants without special work. But in the fall they will have to be dug out of the ground.

Wild bees.

Not bad if you manage to find a hollow with wild bees. You can profit not only by the bees themselves, but also by their larvae, and possibly honey. But if you do not have fire, you should not try to get them. Bee and wasp stings are painful, while hornet stings can be fatal. From a dry tinder fungus that grows on trees in the form of a scallop, you need to make a smokebox. Make a gag out of the grass, enough to close the hollow with the bees. And try, after laying the smokebox in the hollow, to close it with a gag. After a while, the insects will die, it remains only to get them. The nest of wasps is quite noticeable and resembles a paper ball. If you bring fire to such a nest, it will burn very quickly, as it consists of cellulose, at the same time fry the inhabitants of the nest and their larvae. When preying on bees, wasps or hornets, remember that these insects primarily react to movement, do not wave your arms or run (or run very fast and far). And one more thing: when bitten, enzymes are released that serve as a guide for other relatives where to bite! Be careful!

Bumblebees, by themselves, are not aggressive. If you do not wave your arms strongly, then honeycombs with honey can be taken out of the nest with your bare hands. Bumblebees live, as a rule, in abandoned mouse holes. But sometimes they build nests in the grass. Bumblebee honey has an indescribable aroma! Found a bumblebee nest - lucky you!

Grasshoppers.

Grasshoppers are a readily available source of protein and fat.
They are easier to catch in cool weather, which will make them somewhat lethargic.

Flies, horseflies, gadflies and other "aviation".

EAT INSECTS THAT EAT YOU!

Like most insects, flies are an excellent source of fat and protein. In a survival situation, do not skip any food source. All this together will help you get through the next day.

Do not forget that insects are not eaten raw! It's best to roast them. As an option, dry, crush and add to other foods.

Amphibians

Frogs, newts and salamanders.

These small amphibians live around freshwater bodies in both warm and cold climates. temperate climate. Catch frogs at night, when they are easy to spot by their croaking, and kill them with a stick. Eat them whole with their skins off. Newts and salamanders can be found under rotten logs or under rocks in the same places where frogs usually abound.

Shellfish.

These include invertebrates that live in water and grass: snails, toothless, slugs.

Recipe:

For cooking bivalve mollusks in field conditions First you need to catch them. Although, with their speed of about 10 cm per day, the word “catch” sounds ridiculous ... You should not take very small and very large shells. There is nothing to eat in small ones, and large ones are old and excessively hard. Optimal size- 7-10 cm. Before cooking, the outer part of the shells must be thoroughly washed from silt, sand and bottom mud.

A good, cookable sink is defined as follows: if the valves are tightly compressed, then everything is in order. The mollusk is alive and holds the valves tightly.

Next, make a small fire. To cook shellfish, you need a lot of coals and heat, but not an open flame. When the fire is mostly burned out, we put the clams on top of the coals. After 3-5 minutes, turn the shells over with a stick on the other side. A well-done clam makes it easy to open the shells. This is a sign of readiness.

You can, of course, rake up the coals and put the clams inside, and then fill it with hot coals from above. But this method has a drawback. Some shells spontaneously open when roasted. And this means that fragments of coal will get inside.

The so-called leg is eaten from the shell - a muscular process with which the mollusk is repelled from the bottom and moved. This is a small formation of light beige or Pink colour. Everything else must be thrown away.

I myself have tasted these creatures. The main thing is not to digest and not overcook, otherwise you will chew on a “piece of tire”.

Crustaceans.

Of these "comrades" we can meet only one - crayfish. There are several ways to get these inhabitants of the river bottom. Very often they catch crayfish with their hands, marking a certain place in the reservoir where, by all indications, crayfish can live, they go into the water and carefully move along the bottom, inspect all the pitfalls, snags, look under the trunks of trees lying in the water. as soon as they notice the crawling cancer, they immediately, without delay, grab it with their hand, otherwise the cancer can quickly hide in some kind of shelter (remember that crayfish become surprisingly quick in case of danger threatening them). Catching crayfish with your hands is an old, “old-fashioned” way, and, of course, the most primitive of all the others. in addition, this method can not always be applied - only in those reservoirs where crayfish are caught at a depth of half a meter to one and a half meters. In deeper places, you have to use crayfish, etc.

Crayfish go hunting after dark, so the most suitable period for catching them is from 10 pm to 3 am. in some reservoirs, crayfish come out for fishing and early morning, in the wee hours. so that at such a time the hunt for river "hermits" can be very lucrative.

From myself I recommend to always have a women's nylon stocking in your pocket. Takes up minimum space. We put in a stocking something rotten or the same toothless (her meat), a little scorched at the stake. We throw in deep place, where we can’t catch with our hands, and go about our business for 30 minutes, decide for yourself how much. Cancer tries to get food and clings to the stocking with claws, it is difficult to unhook. Pulled out like 9 pieces at one time. You can take several stockings.

Reptiles.

Don't neglect snakes and lizards as a possible source of food. All of them are edible. Remove the scaly skin from them and then boil or roast them. Hold them over a fire before skinning them to make skinning them easier.

Insect - Huge, from a horror movie - these are your fears of disease and other dangers. If a huge insect attacks, know that with your emotions of fear you have drawn trouble to yourself, and if you do not relocate fear, then it will happen. Small, annoying, flying - a lot of unnecessary information about other people flocks to you, do not accumulate it in yourself, "let it in one ear, let it out the other", then no one will accuse you of collecting "compromising evidence". Crawling on you - they talk a lot about you, and it annoys you. Here, the so-called astral phantom connections work, a phantom web, thanks to which one person "hears" another, even if he does not have clairaudience. Frequent contact with the phantom web can lead to nervous exhaustion, hysteria. Insects are very beautiful - you will be deceived in your expectations, especially if they coincide with the hopes of other people.

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To be honest, the culture of eating insects among the Slavs is not particularly developed. No, seriously, why is there any crawling and flying muck, if it's much easier and easier to find or go to? Whether it's the natives of Australia and South Asia ... Here, for them, eating insects is a process as normal and natural as for us, for example, porridge for breakfast. However, for a person who, for example, is lost in the taiga, any source of protein can be a salvation. So it is better to study the basic rules regarding the consumption of arthropods in advance. So what are these insects?

Edible insects - the basic rules for eating

Ants

Collecting ants is easy. The easiest way that even chimpanzees have been able to master is to use a long twig. You just take a long branch and
following the example of our distant relatives, you stuff it into an anthill. Then he pulls it out - everything, how many insects you caught there. More hard way- destroy part of the anthill and organize a beautiful shaded place nearby, where frightened insects will drag their eggs and larvae, which you then cynically collect and eat. You can also break off part of the anthill and throw it into the water, and then collect all those who come up. This method works perfectly with termites, but the poor ants are much worse on the water, so they do not emerge at full strength.

earthworms

Formally, classifying them as insects is absolutely wrong. Annelids are a more primitive stage of evolution. But as for me, eating a worm is exactly the same as eating a fat and juicy bark beetle larva. So let's not get into formalism.
Finding earthworms is very simple: dig loose earth - you will definitely find a couple. If you're lucky, you can even find a fairly large specimen. And considering that at night they themselves crawl out to the surface of the earth ...

But what, exactly, should be done with it? The problem lies in the way the worm feeds, which passes earth through its food tract, which must be disposed of. You have several options. The first is to arrange a few days of hunger strike for the worms: the earth will come out by itself. The second is to put them in flour. Worms don’t care what they swallow, so very soon they will be safely stuffed with “dough”. Someone very aptly compared this state with "sausage in the dough", only the other way around. Well, the third way is to put them in salt water. When the worms become transparent, you can wash and cook further. You can, in the end, just manually squeeze out the worm. Of course, part of the soil will remain, but heat treatment eliminate any risk. After the preparation is completed, you can unleash your culinary fantasy, because the worm is 80 percent protein. Bake it whole, mince it, deep-fry it, boil it - it will all be very nutritious, and some say delicious. In the most extreme case, it can be eaten raw.

Larvae

This category includes intermediate forms of a wide variety of beetles, wasps, bees and other insects. Virtually identical to caterpillars. But the latter bravely crawl around the world around them, because most often they are absolutely inedible or poisonous. And the larvae are forced to hide their plump little bodies under the protection of rotten wood or fallen leaves. And they do the right thing by hiding it. As much as they are unpleasant to look at, they are just as useful as a food product. The purest protein in an easily digestible form! The same applies to the larvae of bees and wasps.

Yes, getting them is quite difficult - there is a risk of being bitten quite badly, but this source of protein will be a useful addition to honey. So the main problem- Find the same source. A rotten tree, an old stump, a bee's nest are the main objects of interest.

And then the most difficult thing is to convince your body that this whitish, eyeless and generally nasty something is great food. You can recall, for example, that the Japanese - a very highly developed nation - are extremely fond of eating boiled wasp larvae. Or that Australian aborigines quite calmly eat giant larvae alive - and nothing, they live for themselves. If you are convinced, great. Take prey and fry it. It can be in oil, it can be in flour, it can be just like that. Special extremals can even eat it raw.

tarantulas

The tarantula is a unique creature. Not only can it give you some trouble, but it can also save you from starvation. The fact is that fried tarantula is a common dish in Cambodia. Well, as usual ... During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, food was bad - so they began to eat spiders. And then they got used to it, got used to it. So do not forget the lessons of the Cambodians: if you see a tarantula, take it not as a danger, but as a prey. Just do not forget to remove the poisonous glands - heat treatment, of course, destroys the poison, but, as practice shows, not completely.

As you can see, insects are indeed a great source of food. It's pretty easy to collect them. the nutritional value they have a huge one. Only one drawback - well, our people are not used to eating this creeping and flying muck. Just not used to it. So much so that it can even earn from nerves. But this problem can also be overcome. The main thing to remember is that extreme situations require extreme solutions. And eating worms and larvae is not the worst thing that can happen to you.