A Beginner's Guide To Eating Insects
Buckle up 😉
Hello 👋
I’ll be your host as we explore the alternative world of critter cuisine! In the show Cooking with Critters, on the Bugible.com blog, and through the different tasting events I host, it’s my hope that I can convince folks to try their first bug. Bugible has a mission: To open minds and mouths to a healthier, yummier, more diverse future. 🦗🍄
Bugs aren’t the only solution to our global food challenges, but they’re a BIG part of it. And they’re certainly a provocative way to steer the conversation back to the facts: what we eat impacts our bodies and the environment. 💡🔋
Some fun food framing will help us transform fear of the unknown into excitement for the unexplored. Join the adventures in the wonderful world of bug-eating. To have a big impact on the future… it’s time to think smaller. 🐜
What's the *bug* deal? 🧠
Insects are an underutilized alternative protein source that offer promising options for sustainable, nutritious, and delicious food. While eating bugs is a practice with a rich history across the world’s various cultures, very few Western societies are familiar with it today. For people who did not grow up with insects as normal ingredients, the wonderful world of eating bugs is a new discovery. Entomophagy – the practice of eating insects – will normally come up in the search results for anyone interested in topics like a) supplementing their daily diet with protein, vitamins, fiber; b) finding alternatives to meat for protein; c) combating global food insecurity; or d) the future of animal feed.
The insect industry is broad – beyond feeding insects to humans, we can consider insects’ role in the future of livestock feed, fine-dining restaurant menu items, premium fertilizer, waste solutions, circular agriculture, improved soil health, natural medicine, functional food, biodiversity management, or even space travel. But, if you’re new here and are looking for the basics, we’ve provided short answers to eight common bug-beginner questions below.
Why should I eat bugs? 🤔
Insects are a highly sustainable food source. Most insects require fewer resources, including land, water, and feed, to raise than other protein sources, while producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Many insects have an extremely efficient feed-to-body-mass conversion ratio (insects are cold-blooded and require less feed per unit of body weight than traditional livestock to sustain themselves). We can also consume an insect’s entire body, wasting little flesh.
Insects are also excellent sources of macro and micro nutrients, making them a great addition to any diet. Depending on the species, they can be great sources of protein, fiber, and other vitamins/minerals. For example, pound for pound, eating insects provides similar levels of protein to conventional meats like beef and chicken Insects often have higher levels of nutrients like iron, zinc, and calcium because we consume the exoskeleton and all.
Last but not least, insects are delicious – or, at the very least, not “gross.” Insects have been consumed by humans for thousands of years throughout history. Currently, it is estimated that over two billion people around the world eat insects as part of their diets.
What bugs can I eat? 🐝
Sources cite over two million recorded species of edible insects (and counting! There are likely hundreds of thousands that we just haven’t tried out.) Some of the most common species include beetles, caterpillars, bees, ants, grasshoppers, and crickets. In North America, grasshoppers and crickets are the most widely produced and consumed.
Can I eat bugs I catch in the wild? 🐌
Bugs that are farmed specifically for human consumption are as safe if not safer (due to larger genetic variance from humans) than traditional livestock. Be aware that insects caught in fields often have greater levels of pesticides and herbicides than those caught in forests, because these insects often feed off of vegetables and grains that are farmed with heavy pesticide use. Otherwise, common methods of preparing insects also lend themselves to making them more safe to consume. Methods like roasting, frying, or boiling help inactivate potentially harmful microbial content in wild insects.
Is eating bugs healthy for you? 🥦
Bugs are high in complete proteins, which contain all 9 essential amino acids. In general, edible insects contain 67-98% of edible protein, with 46-96% of this protein being composed of essential amino acids. Many bugs contain healthy fats, including essential linoleic and α-linolenic acids (omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids). They also contain other vitamins and nutrients, like iron and zinc, deficiencies of which are common public health concerns. Most edible insects contain more iron per 100g serving than beef! Lastly, we cannot overlook the nutritional value of the exoskeleton as a source of fiber. Chitin, the main component of exoskeletons, is an insoluble fiber that is beneficial for digestive health.
Where can I buy bugs? 🌍
While different cultures have insects integrated into menus and local cuisine to different degrees based on geography, you don’t have to rely on epicurean tourism to snack on tasty insects. Insects are increasingly available all over the globe from online stores. For a list of reputable sources to buy bugs online from, check out: https://bugible.com/shop/. Additionally, insects can often be found in local shops from various geographies where bugs are commonly consumed. Luckily, insects are increasingly easy to find as they become more and more available in health food grocery stores or on aggregators like Amazon.com.
What do bugs taste like? 🌮
Insects are often described as “flavor vehicles” and will take on the flavor of a seasoning or marinade, while adding a savory, umami component and a satisfying crunch. Each insect has its own unique flavor, but categories can be created around different species. For instance, crickets and mealworms are known for being nutty, earthy, and/or mushroomy. Grubs and larvae that are higher in fats have a meatier flavor. Many scorpions or locusts are said to be “shrimp of the land” and have a slight, well, shrimpy flavor. Black ants contain formic acid and have a sour, lemon-pepper flavor. These are just some examples of the varied world of insect flavors.
How do you cook insects? 🥣
Insects, like any ingredient, can be cooked in a huge variety of ways. It is recommended that you first euthanize insects in a “humane” way. Insects are commonly euthanized by being placed in a freezer for 2-3 hours. Raw insects can be washed and then prepared by boiling or roasting them directly over a flame. Other methods include frying them in oil, or roasting them in an oven for 1-2 hours at 200F.
Many insects you can purchase come dry roasted. You can eat these as they come, but you may choose to flavor and to lightly fry or saute them. Dry roasted insects have a longer shelf-life than raw – “wet” – insects. Moreover, insects can be ground up into powders or “flours” and used to make a broader variety of baked goods, like breads or cookies.
Why Bug & Wine Pairings? 🍷
Everyone may not understand wine or entomophagy, but everyone does understand passion. While we might have very different passions, maybe we can agree that sometimes the world looks best when seen through the lens of a glass of wine. Wine has a unique role in connecting the food plebeian with the flowery language of foodies. It’s a bridge for everyday consumers to connect with their inner food critics and senses of culinary adventure and exploration.
Marketing food involves a technique called framing that can be used to position items as more desirable. Wine is luxurious. When things are paired with wine, suddenly they become more elegant – they’re elevated. People talk about the subtle cherry notes they can pick up from some moldy cheese when it’s paired with wine.
Wine tastes and smells like so many different things beyond grapes. The more you drink wine, the more you start to notice subtle flavors like apple, vanilla, spices, or even charred tobacco. It is through this lens of exploration that we hope to encourage people to taste bugs through.
I'm not saying you *have* to eat bugs...
- improve biodiversity (in guts and soils),
- reduce organics waste (nature uses insects not landfills),
- reuse biomass – insects consume would-be-waste and make 2 primary outputs: their larvae (premium protein, lipids to feed animals) and frass (a mixture of insect manure, exoskeleton, and beneficial soil microbes that restores soils destroyed by synthetic fertilizers)
- improve soil health,
- waste-to-value services,
- improve natural plant defense (lower need for pesticides),
- bio-filtration – insects don’t bioaccumulate heavy metals and other toxins (we should use nature’s filters),
- feed the growing pet food, poultry, and aquafeed industries,
- improve domestic food security (decrease reliance on imported synthetic fertilizers and more),
- improve bioregional food security (hyper-localized production improvements, or, in simpler words, insects work at big and small scales, improving food security for countries or within a single farm ecosystem)
- close protein gap,
- improving crop nutrition (by restoring soils… it’s all interconnected)
- improve animal welfare (chickens fed insects…what they eat in the wild… fare better than those stuffed with corn. Shocker. they need fewer antibiotics as well),
- improve natural plant defense (lower the need for pesticides),
- the list goes on (I highly recommend this TEDx talk from 2017)
Food is part of a system – ideally, it’s circular. But in America, we scaled up parts of our food system while leaving others behind. Today, we are feeling the externalities of extractive, industrial agricultural production. We fed landfills instead of insects, encouraged monoculture instead of resilient biodiversity, used antibiotics instead of fostering healthy gut biomes, killed soils with synthetic fertilizers instead of replenishing them… Insects are a keystone species, meaning ecosystems collapse without them.
From both an environmental and economic lens, the most impactful climate action we can take is to close the loop on food production by re-integrating insects back into our food system.
Nature gets things right (it’s almost like millions of years of evolution went into this or something!)
There’s a, “Don’t build the skyscraper on sand…” analogy to be made here: all the investment $$$ into lab meat, genetically modified bacteria, or even ESG metrics won’t mean *frass* unless we get our fundamentals right: organic waste can’t continue. We must close the loop on agriculture. We must scale (”catch up”) the insect industry up to provide ecosystem services – like protein/lipid production, bio-filtration, nutrient recovery, soil restoration – throughout the food value chain.
My hope is that you’ll help integrate insects back into the story. This solution already exists, and we just need to educate folks about it and dispel harmful conspiracies or reductionist dismissals like, “oh… now they just want us to eat bug”…even though I want YOU to eat these bugs 😉
Who wrote this and why?
I spent the last 12 years independently advocating for the insect industry under the persona Bugible, and I relish any opportunity to put that hat back on. (If so, lmk the best mailing address)
Now, for the big question: how do bugs taste? 🧠
There are over 2,000 species of edible bugs, and many more to be discovered. They all have unique, beautiful flavor profiles just waiting to be explored. Imagine that you have a friend who is an artist. She paints beautiful pictures, but only uses red, pink, and yellow. She can make lovely paintings, but one day you show her the other rainbow of colors that exist – the blues, greens, purples, oranges, silvers, and more. Now she can make even more vivid paintings.
That’s where we are in the culinary world. We have a huge range of raw ingredients that chefs use, but there are rainbows of additional flavors to explore with bugs. And bugs can be tasty.
One of the top restaurants in the world, Noma, has made use of bugs for many years on their menu. Fancy restaurants in France serve up snails – or escargot. You’ve been eating bugs all along and haven’t known it too! Processed foods are allowed to contain certain levels of bugs (it’s unavoidable in food packing facilities.) The foods with the highest amounts of bugs are peanut butter, ketchup, and chocolate bars. They are probably more nutritious because of the bugs.
Here’s another fun fact: Bugs are small enough that they quite literally are what they eat. If you have some crickets and feed them mint, they will have a minty flavor. If you feed your crickets banana, they will adopt a banana flavor. We are only at the beginning of our exploration of bugs as ingredients.
I place most bugs into three unofficial flavor categories. The first group tastes nutty and earthy. Crickets and mealworms are examples of bugs that taste similar to seeds, nuts or mushrooms. The second group tastes like seafood. Locusts and scorpions are examples of bugs that have been compared to crab. The third group tastes meaty or savory. Sago grubs are often called the bacon of the bug world.
Now, for the big question: how do bugs taste? 🧠
There are over 2,000 species of edible bugs, and many more to be discovered. They all have unique, beautiful flavor profiles just waiting to be explored. Imagine that you have a friend who is an artist. She paints beautiful pictures, but only uses red, pink, and yellow. She can make lovely paintings, but one day you show her the other rainbow of colors that exist – the blues, greens, purples, oranges, silvers, and more. Now she can make even more vivid paintings.
That’s where we are in the culinary world. We have a huge range of raw ingredients that chefs use, but there are rainbows of additional flavors to explore with bugs. And bugs can be tasty.
One of the top restaurants in the world, Noma, has made use of bugs for many years on their menu. Fancy restaurants in France serve up snails – or escargot. You’ve been eating bugs all along and haven’t known it too! Processed foods are allowed to contain certain levels of bugs (it’s unavoidable in food packing facilities.) The foods with the highest amounts of bugs are peanut butter, ketchup, and chocolate bars. They are probably more nutritious because of the bugs.
Here’s another fun fact: Bugs are small enough that they quite literally are what they eat. If you have some crickets and feed them mint, they will have a minty flavor. If you feed your crickets banana, they will adopt a banana flavor. We are only at the beginning of our exploration of bugs as ingredients.
I place most bugs into three unofficial flavor categories. The first group tastes nutty and earthy. Crickets and mealworms are examples of bugs that taste similar to seeds, nuts or mushrooms. The second group tastes like seafood. Locusts and scorpions are examples of bugs that have been compared to crab. The third group tastes meaty or savory. Sago grubs are often called the bacon of the bug world.
** THE SECTION BELOW IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION**
⭐️ Beginner Bug-Eating Guide
- Taste: Buttery, nutty, grassy, soil-y flavor (imparted by the ants’ diet of herbs and grass). The taste is creamy with a lovely soft texture like butter.
- Notes: Some compare ant eggs to caviar.
Flavor: Often eaten fried in Thailand, these Grass Moth larvae eat their way through bamboo before metamorphosing. Strangely, the first word I would use to describe the taste of bamboo worms is “cold.” The texture is unique – buttery, mildly fishy or cheesy. Some people pick up a blueberry aftertaste. Other tasting notes: macadamia, flowery, or burnt parmesan.
Wine:
Buttery Chardonnay: A buttery Chardonnay keeps the spice and flavor intensity low, while accentuating the creamier buttery flavors and textures of the food it is paired with. Try a buttery Chardonnay with bamboo worms to highlight the soft flavors present. |
Flavor: Black ants are a little oily – a bit like roe. The texture they leave over is a little like edible charcoal, blackberry seed, or currants. The flavor is described as lemon-pepper, with a zesty, citrus pop. With one of the more surprising flavors, people often think that plain black ants have been seasoned. Instead, black ants are naturally acidic due to the formic acid in their systems. Wine:
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Flavor: Crickets are often described as flavor vehicles, much like unseasoned potato chips or nuts. They are often seasoned with flavors like BBQ or lime, as their plain taste can be difficult to distinguish. Unseasoned, they taste a bit like edamame and have an earthy, umami quality. Crickets are often compared to soybeans or various nuts. Regardless, a nutty, woodsy, earthy flavor comes through.
Wine:
Pinot Noir: Pinot Noir is often called the “catch-all food” pairing wine. Pinot Noir is light enough for salmon but complex enough to hold up to some richer meat including duck. It’s versatile nature lends well to the earthy, often seasoned, flavors of roasted crickets. Pinot Noirs can also elevate the “funkiness” that we taste in crickets. |
Flavor: Let me start by saying these are delicious and mellow, best compared to big pumpkin seeds. The meat inside the water bug’s body is often compared to sweet scallops. The head has hints of anise. On the far ends of the spectrum, I’ve heard a comparison to clam-flavored potatoes. Others claim a salty, fruity taste (giant water bugs also have the aromatic hydrocarbon compounds that create a slight apple taste for some,) or a mellow gorgonzola. I find them to be most similar to pumpkin seeds, with a subtle seafood note at the end.
Wine:
Barbera: You can match the flavors within Barbera to make them stand out. With the giant water bugs, we’re aiming at that anise – or sour, sage, white pepper whatever-you-pick-up – pop. Somehow Barbera wine tastes both rich and light-bodied. While a mildly sweet Riesling could pair well here – as in the case of the shield bug – a Barbera is a bolder choice. |
Flavor: Grasshoppers are often referred to by their Spanish name – Chapulines. When seasoned Oaxacan-style, grasshoppers are a fantastic flavor vehicle for the peppers, spices, and lime. Oaxacan-style grasshoppers will taste of beautiful smokey spices with a hint of sour. Seasoned as such, grasshoppers have a cool lingering heat. They’ve also been compared to bar nuts or green tea.
Wine:
Fruity Cabernet Sauvignon: Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the more complex and layered wines out there. It has higher tannins and a savory, fruity character that will work well with the complex flavors and spices in the seasoned grasshoppers. |
Flavor: June beetles are across the board, in my experience. The smaller june beetles I’ve sampled are slightly acidic with a metallic finish. They have a mustier flavor, similar to mushroom, liver, or even wet dog. The larger june beetles take on a much more savory profile, like buttery walnuts. These buggers, if salted and dehydrated, have a bacon-laden umami with a sour-jerky finish.
Wine:
Earthy Nebbiolo: Upon tasting Nebbiolo you will experience leathery, gripping high tannin that seems to make your mouth stick to itself. Despite its gripping tannin, the other flavors of the Nebbiolo – rose, cherry, leather, and clay pot – can still shine through. This is a wine that can stand up to the sharp, unexpected twists of a june beetle in all its musty, sour-jerky flavor idiosyncrasies. |
Flavor: Affectionately known to many in the entomophagy community as the gateway bug, mealworms are probably one of the first edible insects people ever try, mainly because they are super easy to raise, they have a great nutrition profile, and they taste really good (if you’re a fan of roasted nuts.) They are nutty in taste with a light, crunch texture. The aroma is earthy, similar to parsnips pulled fresh from the ground. When seasoned, they can be likened to crispy onions.
Wine:
Pinot Noir: Any time you can have an earthy-fatty dish using mushrooms it will always highlight the fruitiness of Pinot Noir. Similarly, pairing a Pinot Noir with crickets is common practice. |
Flavor: Dried Weaver Ants are mild in flavor. They only have a slightly sour taste and have been described as vaguely salty, similar to corn nuts, sweet nuts, Cheezits, or even hay. They are slightly salty and aromatic, with a crunchy texture. They are light like peanut skin, bark dust, wood chip dust, earth, dry tea, dehydrated tea, or other herbal comparisons. Weaver ants have a subtle, light, vegetal flavor.
Wine:
Herbaceous Sauvignon Blanc: Sauvignon Blanc, with its herbaceous notes, pairs well with similar green herbs. Sauvignon Blanc is light-bodied, but it has higher acidity than other white wines, and is a great congruent pairing with weaver ants. This light wine doesn’t overshadow the subtle vegetal qualities of the weaver ants. |
Flavor: Shield bugs are naturally high in oils; their aromatic hydrocarbons create a hint of apple-flavor at the finish. I find sunflower seeds to be the most appropriate flavor and texture comparison to shield bugs. They also have a savory quality to them, like ground beef or peanut skins. Shield bugs are perhaps better known by the term: stink bugs.
Wine:
Mildly Sweet Riesling:Traditionally, most Riesling wines are on the sweeter end of the spectrum, in order to balance the wine’s high acidity. This aromatic wine offers primary fruit aromas of orchard fruits like honey-crisp apple and pears. Besides fruit, you’ll often smell things like jasmine or diesel fuel. A mildly sweet Riesling can compliment the sweet, savory notes in the shield while possibly bringing out the apple notes. |