Nov 16
Well we cooked up the crickets last night. The first try didn't go quite as well as we hoped. We prepared them and using the Dry Roasted Crickets recipe here. The first step was to boil them for a couple minutes to clean them. After that we spread them out on a cookie sheet to roast them. At this point the smell was actually quite appetizing. Sarah described it as somewhat like fresh potatoes, which I think was fairly accurate. It went a long way toward calming our initial nervousness. The smell actually improved while they were roasting, and after an hour we had a batch of roasted crickets ready to eat.
Boiled crickets ready for roasting
So from there we picked what looked like a couple of choice crickets, broke off the legs and antennae, and took the plunge. The flavor was actually fairly pleasant. I'd definitely agree with the people who describe them as somewhat nutty, but I don't know about people who say they taste like almonds. Didn't really seem like it to us.
An unsure Sarah about to try her first bug
So we went through the rest of them, breaking off the legs/antennae and collecting them in a bowl. This step was a lot more work than we initially anticipated, but would probably go a lot faster with practice. From there we lightly oiled and salted them and sat down on the couch to eat them like popcorn.
Dry Roasted Crickets
Unfortunately despite how well things went up to this point we actually didn't end up finishing them. They weren't bad per se, but the texture seemed to leave something to be desired. I think we would have done better to get larger crickets (we got medium sized), there was too much skin/exoskeleton to meat, or so it seemed to me. Next time we're going to give meal-worms a try. We're also definitely going to give crickets a go again, but we'll try to get larger ones next time, and probably honey-roast them or something.
Nov 14
Well the crickets showed up today, in slightly rough shape. They were packed in a box with some egg flats and a few (by then moldy) carrot pieces, We decided to sort through and separate the living from the dead before putting them in the freezer. It turned out to be about as easy as you might expect, which is to say, not very. Our strategy was to take them outside so as not to let any loose in the house and one by one remove the egg flats, and grabbing any that were moving. It worked, but it turns out crickets are not very cooperative when it comes to that. Fortunately they are natural hiders, so most of the time when they got away the just tried to run back under the flat.
Sarah catching crickets
All in all the process took a little over 30 minutes. I'm not sure exactly how many we've got, there were more dead than I was expecting, but I think we've got a fair amount. I think the moral here is to buy local. Either that or find a better shipper. Tomorrow hopefully we'll try cooking them up and see how they turn out.
The yield
Nov 10
Lately I've been looking more and more at ways I can raise at least some of my own food. Gardening is of course a good idea, but it's tough with our small apartment, and frankly it's an activity I've never enjoyed. I've also spent a fair amount of time looking into Aquaponics, and may even attempt to build something, but that's also pretty space intensive, and a fair chunk of work to get started.
More recently I've been looking at Entomophagy, that is, raising bugs to eat. The sound of that might make some people squeamish, but it actually has a number of advantages. For one, it's really easy to get started. Crickets or meal-worms are both pretty easy to breed, even in limited space. They also are a surprisingly good source of proteins and vitamins. Crickets for example, are a great source of iron and calcium, and relatively low on fat.
There's also a macro benefit to be had from the consumption of bugs. The food, water, and space requirements for raising insects are only a fraction of what would be required to raise the same amount of cattle. In addition, the CO2 emissions for insects are 12-54% that of cattle.
So, given all that, Sarah and I have decided to give it a go. We've decided to start out slow; first we'll just be buying some crickets and trying a few recipes to see how we like them. Once we're comfortable that this is something we can see ourselves eating regularly we'll actually trying setting up our own little cricket ranch and raising them ourselves.
We'll be sure to keep this page updated with how it's going.
Gateway Bug