Cricket Recipes – What is considered “good food” or “bad food” is often based on historical myths, class structure, and food safety issues that we don’t even remember and are completely irrelevant in today’s society.
Someone starts talking about eating alternative proteins like grasshoppers, and many people at first think, “Eat a BUG? DIG!”
Cricket Recipes
The problem is, when people think “insect protein,” their minds are going to pick up whatever insect they see in their backyard and stick it in their mouth. In fact, cricket is expensive, and this is because a lot has to be used in farming and ensuring that it is a high quality food product.
Cooking With Crickets Will Save The World. Here’s How To Do It
However, I also understand, after 30 years as a professional chef and adventurous eater, that this reaction is based on nothing more than our own cultural bias.
South American children find peanut butter revolting, many Asian countries turn their noses up at butter. What is cheese but milky fluids squeezed out of a cow’s teats, solidified and pressed into blocks?
In Thailand, children clamor for sellers of fried tarantulas as if they were Iceman, while Polynesian men join expensive clubs to hunt (and eat) fattened fruit bats and taste them on guavas and sweet, ripe mangoes.
Too often our acceptance of what is “acceptable” is based only on what we are told is acceptable and not on any rational, informed personal experience. I, for one, refuse to accept that kind of social treatment.
Easy Chipotle Chili Recipe With Cricket Powder
If we can get past what our own culture has led us to believe is good or bad, tasty or disgusting, then we begin to see that protein is protein, in whatever form original, and micro-focusing on a small number of “high carbon footprint” options (namely: beef, pork, chicken, salmon) is not only disastrous for the environment, but severely limits our nutritional diversity ourselves.
It also virtually guarantees that the food we feed our families is mass farmed as soon as possible without regard to growth hormones, nutritional value, or the (often horrific) conditions these creatures live in. short, tortured lives and dying in them, simply to meet them. the demand of a population unwilling to see beyond our own cultural bias.
Why eat grasshoppers? First, grasshoppers are a high protein, low fat food source that can provide the human body with important healthy vitamins, minerals and macronutrients.
Not to mention that in many parts of the world entomophagy (eating insects for food) is a common and essential part of a healthy diet.
Cricket Flour Breakfast Cookies
When we begin to understand and accept that cricket trumps beef and pork pound for pound for protein, contains a fraction of the fat, and far exceeds steak in calcium and iron; we are beginning to understand our responsibility to our family, our future generations and our planet to broaden our horizons and become part of the solution.
Incredibly sustainable to raise, requiring a fraction of the resources (feed, water and land) that other livestock require…it’s a lot like comparing the carbon footprint of a bicycle to a semi- truck
Although crickets, like many insects, can be eaten alive, they are most often cooked to create a tastier meal (like almost all proteins). As for the taste of cricket, you can think of it as a cross between shrimp and roasted nuts, and most people brave enough to try them (myself included) agree that they are delicious.
You can prepare and cook crickets in a variety of ways. Cooked cricket – whole or powdered – can be a delicious addition to salads, soups and stews, spice mixes, and even your morning smoothie! For most baking recipes, dry-roasted nut crickets can be ground and mixed with flour to replace actual nuts in baking cookies and cakes, creating a delicious and higher protein equivalent, especially for those with common nut allergies.
Cricket Protein Recipe
Crickets can also be turned into delicious sweet and/or spicy cricket snacks. Often dipped in chocolate, candied with simple syrup or roasted with cinnamon and sugar, they provide a crunchy, healthy and delicious snack. Fry them in butter, a splash of balsamic vinegar and a little sea salt and you’ll never go back to popcorn and potato chips!
Typically, crickets are either eaten whole (roasted, pan-fried, etc.) or they are dry-roasted and ground into a powder. Given their small size, there’s really no cooking reason to cut them up unless you want to serve them to someone in a way they won’t be recognized…
One of my favorite ways to eat grasshoppers…roasted with Mexican spices and served over fresh guacamole as a dip for warm corn tortilla chips! YUM!
In terms of availability as an ingredient, cricket has yet to go “mainstream” (although they are on their way!), so the range of options is still quite limited. Whole Crickets (live or pre-cooked), Cricket Powders/meals and cricket-based protein bars are the most commonly available and can be purchased through a number of online retailers.
Insect Enthusiast Puts Cricket Ramen On The Menu
Cricket flour and powders are probably the best way to “enter” the world of alternative proteins, especially for those who still hesitate to see a “bug” in their lunch.
Crickets can be roasted (350F) with your favorite spices until very dry, then ground into a fine, nutritious powder in a blender or spice grinder. The resulting nut powders can then be added, like flour, to your favorite baking recipes and are great in pestos, mole and pasta sauces. Cricket powders are also easily available online.
So, in whatever form you choose to take your alternative protein, I implore you as a cook and as a parent…don’t be shackled to an unhealthy and unsustainable lifestyle just because you’ve been told what’s n acceptable and what is not acceptable.
Read more Protein bars vs. Protein Shake: The Nutritional Benefits By Team EXO on January 31, 2020 Wondering which would win in a battle: protein bars vs. protein shakes? Read More 4 Best Natural Nootropics to Boost Yourself By Team EXO on November 19, 2019 Have you ever felt like you have a ton of days off? You know. The kind of day when you’ve already lost your… Read more How to prepare and cook cricket: roast, roast and more. raw But also like many other foods… Looking for a new source of protein to add to almost any recipe? Cricket flour may be just the answer. He revamped a quarter cup of this classic into a Thai Sweet Potato Curry Cricket recipe.
Spiced Granola With Cricket Protein
If there’s one post I really look forward to all year, it’s my annual Halloween recipe. And this year I’m combining it with my Eating the World Recipes Challenge. I challenged my members as follows: choose a Halloween (or similar party) or scary recipe from a country of your choice and explain why you chose it or talk a little about the country. I chose to cook this Thai Sweet Potato Curry Cricket recipe which also has a little Mexican nod with my marigolds. Obviously, I went the scary route. Dare to read on?
Although I’m now pulling the scary bug card for my Halloween recipe, I really hope you’ll read on below to see all the health and planetary benefits of eating insects.
I know that in Western society we not only turn our noses up at the idea of eating insects, we find it absolutely horrifying and disgusting. Well, guess what, we are partly the exception. Many countries and continents have eaten insects as part of a normal diet for millions of years. We started making tools to find termites more quickly 4 million years ago.
The climate greatly influences which parts of our planet have become more likely to eat insects. Asia, Australia, Africa and Latin America are the predecessors. Later, the Romans and Greeks joined, and a few from the rest of Europe and North America.
Cricket Bar Recipe
While researching potential recipes for this post on my blog, I came across two very interesting articles. If you want to know more about entomophagy, which means that humans eat insects as food, you should read Eating Insects: A Journey Through Time and Eating Bugs Naturally.
I’m not even kidding, I’ve already eaten a meal at a restaurant in Quebec City with bugs. It was a delicious pasta dish and the pasta was made with cricket powder. Cricket farms are becoming extremely popular. So popular I was able to buy a bag of cricket flour at my local big chain grocery store!
80% of the world’s population eats insects. So which insects can make it to your plate? The grasshoppers, the cicada larvae and other insects, bugs, crickets, termites, ants, worms, caterpillars, tarantulas, the list goes on.
Cricket is particularly enjoyed in Indonesia, Thailand and Mexico. An average street food stall can serve you fried cricket, cricket cake, cricket snacks or even cricket tacos. Edible grasshoppers are everywhere in these countries.
Cricket Flour Brownie Recipe
The answer here is a big YES. They are good for you and the environment. They are easy to grow, eat little and reproduce very easily. So growing insects for food leaves a small ecological footprint compared to cattle. It’s good for the planet. Some people
