Traditional medicine

How to prepare locusts for food. Locusts in the diet of different ethnic groups

What insects can you eat? in central Russia, so as not to get poisoned? I have collected the most common types of insects that can be eaten if you are in survival conditions

Black forest ants and their larvae

In the forest you can often find anthills, and ants live in them. Ants are an excellent food for the hungry prepper. They contain a lot of protein. Ants contain formic acid, which is easily, almost completely neutralized during heat treatment (cooking). Red ants are very acidic (they contain a lot of formic acid).

How to cook:

Ant broth
Roasting ants
Eat raw

Ant eggs

Ant eggs are a light food that is very easy to collect. They are very nutritious and contain a lot of protein. There is one simple way to collect ant eggs.

We dig up an anthill from the side (or at least from above). We scatter the contents of the anthill on a cloth (you can use an awning or a jacket), wrap the edges. Be sure to spread it out (fabric, jacket) so that it receives direct sunlight. To avoid the eggs and larvae from drying out, the ants begin to drag them into the shade (under the folds of fabric or jackets). This way we get a lot of nutritious and clean (without soil and garbage) product.

Wood beetle larva

A very easy to obtain food and very nutritious is the larva of the wood beetle. It is not difficult to obtain it by tearing off the bark of a rotten tree, or simply by picking apart the passages of the woodworm and pulling out the juicy white larva. The larvae feed on wood, so they can be eaten raw, baked, fried, boiled...

Grasshoppers and locusts

In the summer season, you can find grasshoppers in the fields and meadows, which can also be eaten. Grasshoppers can be fried over a fire, strung on a stick, or deep-fried (boiling oil). First season well with spices and salt.

Locust

The locust is similar to a grasshopper, but much larger. John the Baptist, as is known, ate grasshoppers: the locusts, which he ate with wild honey, are locusts, a close relative of the grasshopper.

According to the Book of Leviticus (11:22), four types of insects were considered acceptable in the diet of the ancient Israelites: “...of these you shall eat: the locust with its kind, the solam (type of locust) with its kind, the hargol (beetle) with its kind, and the chagab ( grasshopper) with her breed.” The Gospel of Matthew (3.4) says that John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey in the desert. Acrids are known to be several species of true locusts common in the Middle East and North Africa.

Carlton Kuhn's book "The Hunting Man" tells how the Indians caught locusts. They dug a trench and filled it with dry grass, which the locusts feed on, then they drove the locusts into the trench with sticks, they set the grass in the trench on fire, the locusts were fried, the villagers collected the ready-made fried locusts and carried away.

The pioneers of America also prepared locusts. They boiled it in salt water and then fried it in butter with vegetables and vinegar.

During the summer, California Indians consumed huge quantities of locusts. They soaked these insects in salt water, then baked them in clay ovens, then ground them and added them to soups.

In Africa they love locusts very much, they eat them raw, cook them on stones or an open fire. In Japan, locusts are marinated in soy sauce and fried. In Asia they fry in oil. In Taiwan, locusts are a delicacy that is served even in the most expensive restaurants. Locust is very nutritious. It contains 50 percent protein (more than beef) as well as calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamins B 2 and niacin (nicotinic acid - vitamin PP)

How to cook locusts?

Before cooking, locusts should be boiled, after removing the legs and wings, then fried in oil. According to some gourmets, locusts taste like crayfish

Dragonfly

You can also eat dragonflies if you first tear off their wings and fry them, it will turn out very well. In Bali, for example, dragonflies are considered a delicacy. They even manage to make sweets from them, after frying them in boiling coconut oil and sprinkling them with sugar. Dragonflies are cooked in the same way.

Earthworms

They are absolutely tasteless, but at the same time quite nutritious, and getting them is not difficult. Worms can be eaten raw, after removing the dirt. Some craftsmen even manage to make cutlets from worms. Worms can also be baked.

Crickets

Crickets live in burrows. To get a cricket, fill its hole with water and it will come out on its own. We catch it, and then fry it, even boil it, or even bake it over the fire.

What insects can be eaten in extreme conditions?

Everyone knows that locusts are a dangerous pest of agricultural crops. Hordes of locusts are capable of destroying crops and plantings on hundreds and thousands of hectares. It is not for nothing that swarms of locusts are one of the Egyptian plagues, along with punishment by blood, execution by frogs, invasion of blood-sucking insects, punishment by dog flies, pestilence of livestock, ulcers and boils, thunder, lightning and hail, darkness, death of the firstborn.

However, entomophagologists (researchers of the nutritional potential of insects) mostly agree that Orthoptera (grasshoppers, locusts) are the most popular edible insects after ants.

The history of eating locusts goes back to ancient times. Pliny the Elder writes that the Parthians willingly ate locusts, and the ancient Greek historian Herodotus describes the method adopted by the Nazamons (Libyans from the Mediterranean coast) of baking pies from flour mixed with crushed locusts. For thousands of years, locusts were cooked in a variety of ways in the Crimea, Arabia, Persia, India, Africa and Madagascar. They simply fried it, tearing off the legs and wings, boiled it until it was red, which made the insects look like miniature lobsters, prepared curry from them, and used many other recipes in accordance with local tastes and traditions. According to the Book of Leviticus (11:22), four types of insects were considered acceptable in the diet of the ancient Israelites: “...of these you shall eat: the locust with its kind, the solam (type of locust) with its kind, the hargol (beetle) with its kind, and Khagab (grasshopper) with her breed.” The Gospel of Matthew (3.4) says that John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey in the desert. Acrids are known to be several species of true locusts common in the Middle East and North Africa.

Modern Jewish residents of Yemen and North Africa also ate locusts, including mixing them into flat cakes. In Israel itself, locusts are practically not eaten: firstly due to the inability to recognize kosher types of locusts, and secondly due to the scarcity of locusts.

Arab Bedouin women until recently knew how to cook about 22 dishes from locusts.

Locusts were used as food on all continents. Thus, in his book “The Hunting Man,” Carlton Kuhn tells the story of how a group of Indians dug trenches 9 to 12 m long, 0.3 m wide and 0.3 m deep. The Indians filled these trenches with dry grass, which locusts fed on. Then the villagers lined up and began to drive the insects towards the trenches with tufts of grass. Locusts jumped and crawled into the trenches. In the end, people set fire to bunches of dry grass in their hands, and from them they set fire to the grass in the trenches. The fire not only killed the insects, but also fried them. Then the women took handfuls of ready-made food from the trenches and carried them home in baskets.

Other Indians, in an area infested with locusts, dug a hole approximately 30 × 30 m in size and 1.2-1.5 m deep. Then they surrounded an area of several hectares, in the center of which there was a hole, and began to converge, hitting the ground with sticks, driving the locusts to the hole - so the insects found themselves in a trap. The Indians then ate the locusts. American pioneers also ate locusts, which were boiled in salt water and then cooked with vegetables, butter, salt and vinegar, served as a stew, soup or over rice.

During the locust summer, the California Indians held real feasts. Locusts were soaked in salt water and cooked in clay ovens, after which they were either eaten or pounded for later inclusion in soups. Their descendants do the same today. In Africa, locusts are eaten raw, fried on stones and open fires, boiled in salt water and dried in the sun, as aspic, pressed into a paste, boiled like shrimp and served with couscous. In many parts of Asia, locusts have been a common food item for thousands of years, and today they can be purchased inexpensively from street vendors from Bombay to Bangkok and Beijing, usually fried in oil. In Japan, locusts are marinated in soy sauce and fried in a small amount of vegetable oil.

In Asia, locusts are more often eaten as a snack, rather than as part of complex dishes or as a separate course in a larger meal. The taste of the crispy shell and legs of the locust is the same as that of any other product fried in oil, and the core is soft, buttery, and sweetish in taste. They say that locusts fried in vegetable oil and salted are an excellent snack for beer. In Taiwan, locusts are considered a delicacy; they are sold in bazaars and are on the menu of many restaurants.

Locusts are a nutritious product, one might even say dietary. It contains up to 50% protein (this is 3 times more than, for example, beef), calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamins B 2 and niacin (nicotinic acid - vitamin PP), and the fat content is low (no more than 5% ).

In a word, paraphrasing the words of academician I.P. Pavlova about milk, locusts are amazing food prepared by nature itself.

It should be said that locusts are a good additive in animal feed. Thus, feeding dried and ground locusts to poultry improves the taste of broiler meat and chicken eggs - their taste is closer to that of village eggs.

How to cook locusts? Here are some recipes.

You can simply fry the locusts in a hot frying pan in olive or peanut oil, removing the legs and wings and sprinkling with salt. Before this, the locusts can be boiled for 20-40 minutes.

You can make a pate. To do this, you need to fry the insects in oil until crunchy (the wings and legs can be left in place), crush the locusts in a mortar with the addition of butter and nuts (peanuts, cashews, walnuts) until you obtain the consistency of peanut butter for sandwiches. Another option is to dry the insects in the sun and crush them together with the nuts, adding oil little by little. Store the pate in a jar and consume it by spreading it on bread or crackers.

A dish of the ancient Greeks and Romans: sweet locusts soaked in honey.

Some chefs believe that locusts must be cooked alive, otherwise they will taste bitter.

Gourmets compare the taste of locust dishes with boiled crayfish or roasted chestnuts.

And one more interesting note: non-strict vegetarians believe that eating locusts and other insects does not violate vegetarian canons, since insects are neither meat nor fish.

Attention! When using locusts for food, it is imperative to ensure that they have not been treated with insecticides (some unscrupulous traders in Asia and Africa offer dishes made from such locusts in markets, without bothering to catch live insects).

In general - bon appetit!

In preparing the article, materials from pleh77.livejournal.com and www.reklamzone.ru were used

Locust is not just a snack that scares girls away from the table, it is 40-50% protein and only 4.5% fat

You can get live locusts in two ways: a) in their habitats, b) in any large pet store that sells reptile food (15–25 rubles per piece). I took the second route and was pleased with the product.

Before cooking insects, they need to be euthanized (but not killed) so that they are fresh and do not escape from the pan. I kept the locusts in a container in the refrigerator for a day, but this only invigorated them. I had to put it in the freezer for 3-4 hours. Advice: after removing the container, lightly knock on the walls - no one should show signs of life inside. Now you need to quickly fry it.

WHAT YOU NEED:
(for 2 servings)

20 large (4-5 cm) locusts
5 tbsp. l. olive oil
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 hot red pepper
1 lime

WHAT TO DO:

Step 1 I rinse the locusts in a colander under cold water and place them on a paper towel to let the kids dry. Heat olive oil in a deep frying pan. I throw in coarsely chopped garlic and pepper (without seeds). Fry for 2-3 minutes. The main thing is that the garlic does not burn, otherwise the locusts will smell so-so.

Step 2 With a wooden spatula I pick out the garlic and pepper from the frying pan - they fulfilled their mission, adding aroma and spiciness to the oil. I throw locusts in their place and fry, stirring often, for three minutes. You can add a little salt.

Step 3 I squeeze the juice from two lime halves directly into the frying pan (Don’t have a lime on hand? At the same stage, add 2 tablespoons of soy sauce instead - it will turn out no less tasty.), I fry the locusts for another 2 minutes. To prevent oil from splashing all over the kitchen, use a special mesh lid. But do not cover the frying pan with a regular lid, otherwise the locust bodies will lose their appetizing crunchiness.

Step 4 I place the finished insects on a paper towel so that it absorbs excess oil. I mentally fill the glass with good beer, and take the resulting delicacy to the editorial office - it’s somehow awkward to drink in the morning and alone. Whether you tear off the wings and legs from the locust or eat it whole - decide for yourself.

So, my friends, we are fighting locusts in the Astrakhan region,” a fragile, pretty girl takes a large fried locust from a plate, puts it in her mouth and, thoughtfully crunching her wings, says: “Very tasty, by the way.”

But you didn’t believe me that this was possible))), - the head of the region clearly appreciated the girl’s bold step.

But they didn’t believe Alexander Alexandrovich in 2010. Then the head of the region proposed a disaster - locusts in Astrakhan can be caught with your hands and turned into a business.

Yesterday I looked at how many millions of rubles we spend annually on fighting locusts, and I thought: maybe we can make it a profitable business (after all, dozens of countries in the world eat locusts)? Organize, for example, a business for harvesting locusts: dry, salt, freeze and export, or send to Thai and Chinese restaurants in St. Petersburg and Moscow? This is what sparked the idea. But this year I just got tired of it, and in general, from the most, at first glance, crazy ideas, original solutions are born... - Alexander Alexandrovich published such a post in his.

Five years have passed, and locusts are still ravaging both fields and budgets. But it is clear that Alexander Zhilkin still hopes to bring his idea to life. Especially now, when everyone is talking about import substitution and the search for new types of food products. Why isn't there a way out of the situation? And what a response to sanctioned goods!

"Fried locusts are like chips, only with wings"

And the brave girl eating the locusts turned out to be Muscovite Evgenia Koroleva, general producer of the “You Can” television festival.

I came to Astrakhan on business, and my colleagues suggested trying the delicacy. For the first time in my life I saw fried locusts. Of course, there was a feeling of disgust, but the guys took it lightly. Later we even wanted to organize a flash mob “Eat locusts - save the Astrakhan region,” Zhenya laughs.

- Well, how does it taste?

Yes normal. Very similar to chips. If I ate it with my eyes closed, I would never have guessed that it was a locust.

- Did your colleagues support you?

Only men. The girls did not dare to do this.

Or maybe in vain? After all, the delicious dish was prepared not by an amateur, but by a real chef from the local restaurant “Poplavok”.

"Tasty, but dangerous"

“We don’t have such a dish on the menu,” admits manager Rufat Khadzhaev. – But we decided to experiment. The chef prepared it according to a special recipe with garlic butter and herbs.

- Delicious, probably...

I don’t know,” Rufat laughs. – I didn’t dare try it. But some of my colleagues ate it with pleasure.

We caught locusts near the city.

Yes, there is plenty of it in Astrakhan itself, but in the field you can catch a lot at once. You swipe the net and it’s already full.

It's hard to believe, but it's true. Now its quantity reaches 800 pieces per 1 square meter! Just imagine how much food that is!

But neither the availability of the delicacy nor the talents of the chef have yet forced the restaurant management to put this dish on the menu next to fish, meat and seafood snacks.

Still, our mentality is different,” Rufat concludes. – Meat is more familiar.

“This is in the Kamyzyak district, she flew from the territory of the reserve (you can’t poison her there, it’s prohibited),” Alexander Zhilkin captioned the photo on his page.

And, as it turned out, safer.

I would not recommend eating this insect. Even if we do not take into account the taste and sensations that are unusual for us, it is important to know that it can be dangerous to health. The fact is that we treat areas with chemicals. If they didn’t even directly hit the locusts, then they are pollinated plants, which means they can also be poisonous,” says Head of the plant protection department of the branch of the Federal State Institution Rosselkhoztsentr in the Astrakhan region Anastasia Talyshkina.

This means that for now locusts will remain an expense part of the budget. The region spends about two million rubles annually on pest control. Only villagers dared to do business with insects. Advertisement sites are teeming with offers to supply insects to any city in Russia. The pests are mainly purchased by fishermen - “grasshoppers” make good bait for fish - and by owners of terrariums - spiders and snakes are very fond of locusts. By the way, the earnings are really quite good: for 5 pieces sellers ask 80 rubles, for 20 insects - 300 rubles.

HELP "KP"

Locusts are a dangerous enemy for agriculture. In a day it can travel a distance of more than 30 km, devouring everything in its path. There were years when there was so much of it that tree branches broke under the weight of insects. The body length of locusts ranges from 1 centimeter to 8 centimeters. Large individuals can reach 20.

Locust is a popular dish in Asian and African countries. It is a rich source of animal protein. It can be an independent dish, it can be added to soups, or made into flour.

GOURMET RECIPE

Locusts in honey

Place frozen locusts on a baking sheet and place in a hot oven for 30 minutes. Cool. Grind with a blender. Add nuts, maybe walnuts. After this, put the mixture in a saucepan and pour in honey. Evaporate the liquid over low heat. Place into molds and cool.

You just have to know how to cook it

However, entomophagologists (researchers of the nutritional potential of insects) mostly agree that Orthoptera (grasshoppers, locusts) are the most popular edible insects after ants.

In Asia, locusts are more often eaten as a snack rather than as part of complex dishes or as a separate course in a larger meal. The taste of the crispy shell and legs of the locust is the same as that of any other product fried in oil, and the core is soft, buttery, and sweetish in taste. They say that locusts fried in vegetable oil and salted are an excellent snack for beer. In Taiwan, locusts are considered a delicacy; they are sold in bazaars and are on the menu of many restaurants.

In a word, paraphrasing the words of academician I.P. Pavlova about milk, locusts - This is amazing food prepared by nature itself.

How to cook locusts? Here are some recipes.

You can simply fry the locusts in a hot frying pan in olive or peanut oil, removing the legs and wings and sprinkling with salt. Before this, the locusts can be boiled for 20-40 minutes.

A dish of the ancient Greeks and Romans: sweet locusts soaked in honey.

Some chefs believe that locusts must be cooked alive, otherwise they will taste bitter.

Gourmets compare the taste of locust dishes with boiled crayfish or roasted chestnuts.

And one more interesting note: non-strict vegetarians believe that eating locusts and other insects does not violate vegetarian canons, since insects are neither meat nor fish.

In general - bon appetit!

In preparing the article, materials from pleh77.livejournal.com and www.reklamzone.ru were used

SPb. It is widely known that frog legs taste like chicken. But what do bedbugs, larvae and spiders taste like, the DP correspondent decided to find out.

Eating insects is scientifically called entomophagy. In Europe, the first to seriously raise the question of the taste of beetles and arthropods was the Englishman Holt, who in 1885, at his own expense, published the book “Why Not Eat Insects?” Despite the many beneficial properties that the ideologist of insect eating found in his charges, Europeans never began to eat insects and other creeping and jumping reptiles en masse. And we can be fed such dishes only by convincing the target audience that the plate contains a fabulous delicacy that the monarchs of the world eat for breakfast. Well, or as a creative experiment.

Locust chips

This is exactly the experiment that was conducted on visitors at the Noodle restaurant. The restaurant's chef, Dmitry Shcherbakov, who acquired useful skills in preparing locusts and bedbugs during an internship in Thailand a couple of years ago, got the opportunity to practice on his compatriots.

“In Thailand they really eat this, and this is considered normal. There you can often see on the street trays with large deep fryers and aquariums in which live locusts are jumping; they are thrown into oil and fried right in front of the buyer,” recalls Dmitry Shcherbakov. “It turns out to be locusts.” deep-fried, it’s very cheap, they eat it there, like we have chips or sunflower seeds.”

However, the chef did not offer banal deep-fried locusts to the guests: the first item they brought out was “perch soufflé with shrimp, locusts and spider larvae, fried in banana leaves.” The magnificent name could not deceive the eye: a full-length locust, with head and legs, crowned a tiny piece of perch soufflé, and next to it picturesquely lay spider larvae, similar to... larvae and which seemed very disgusting to me to look at. The taste, however, of the killed spider children turned out to be very pleasant, reminiscent of a walnut. The locusts did not impress me: they turned out to be similar to the tails of dried fish, only under-salted - the seeds are much tastier.

"In all these small animals there is a lot of easily digestible protein. The only problem that may arise is the shell: the chitinous shell is difficult to eat," explained the biologist, games participant and world champion in "What? Where? When?" Mikhail Bass, who also tasted Thai animals for the first time.

Bony frog

After the extreme first course, the guests were allowed to rest by being offered “fried rolls in rice dough with viper and tarantula,” which, if not for the loud announcement of the name, could well pass for fried pancakes with chicken. Viper skewers seemed like a completely civilized dish, like conger eel or lamprey.

But when the next delicacy was brought, self-control and bravado left, if not everyone around me, then certainly me: a whole frog, as if alive, was looking at me from the white creamy soup. Of course, knowing the name of the dish - “coconut soup with toads and fried frogs” - one could prepare for it, but who expected that the unfortunate amphibian would not even be cut.

Overcoming myself, I bit off the back of the green amphibian's body - the frog crunched. It turned out to be terribly bony and, if it tasted like chicken, it was like some run-of-the-mill and bluish one from the furthest Soviet poultry farm.

The soup itself and even the fatty pieces of toad meat turned out to be very good. True, after it, rice with bedbugs seemed like a completely normal meal. By the way, all the ingredients of the “witch’s” food were brought to Dmitry Shcherbakov directly from Thailand: locusts and bedbugs were frozen, and toads and frogs were dried, like our dried mushrooms. “Of course, this is not authentic Thai food,” the chef finally admitted. “I tried to make an adapted version, add some familiar products. If I had prepared everything the way it is eaten in my homeland, no one would even look at these dishes ".

Restaurant business

At the same time, not only for Thais, but also for many peoples, eating a wide variety of living creatures is considered the norm. In Mexico they eat live bugs and pickled grasshoppers, in North America they eat bread from locust eggs, in Africa they eat termites, and in Japan they eat fried bees, and the aborigines of Australia eat caterpillars of cutworm butterflies. Insect eating and others like it are proposed by scientists as a solution to the problem of food shortages on earth.

Some forward-thinking restaurateurs have already begun to tackle the problem locally in this way. The London restaurant Edible serves piranhas, giant alligators, Tibetan yaks, stinging nettle soup, as well as unusual desserts and chocolates filled with insects.

Residents of Panama and its visitors are fed caramel filled with crickets and worms grown in laboratory conditions. For bringing this idea to life, product creator Annie Muñoz received the Young Entrepreneur Award from the Panama Association of Business Executives (APEDE).

There is an entire fast food chain in Indonesia that sells exclusively insect dishes. The menu includes crickets, grasshoppers, worms in sauce and in their own juice. The Berlin restaurant Soda is the only place in Berlin that serves dishes made from insects and related arthropods. In Moscow there was a restaurant "Temple of the Moon", where you could try the dish "Scorpion's Nest". In St. Petersburg there are currently no specialized establishments with exotic cuisine.

“I don’t remember that we have such restaurants; it is very expensive for them to bring ingredients, and they are unlikely to be in great demand,” says restaurant critic Alexey Dudin.

Fried Thai bug has an excellent nutty flavor.

Note

Grasshoppers are 6 times richer in protein than cod or steak.

A cup of crickets contains 250 calories and only 6 grams of fat.

100 g of silkworm larvae provide 100% of the daily human need for iron, zinc, copper, and some B vitamins. And the honey bee larva contains 15 daily norms of vitamins A and D.

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