Bugs You Can Eat

Peter & Faith: According to Larry Peterman, founder of the HotLix candy company, most Americans have two reactions to eating bugs: disbelief and disgust. In fact, he says, they buy his company’s insect-related sweets and snacks because they think they’re unbelievable and disgusting. [At right, the Cricket Lick-It, a real insect in a sugar-free crème de menthe-flavored lollipop.]

Faith: I tend not to like the taste of fatty foods, and this thing looks like a living, squirming, pasty-white piece of fat, which, of course, it is. But even thinking about this presupposes that I put this grub in the category of “food,” which I don’t. Or at least didn’t.

Faith: Although chicken replaced dragonflies on his dinner table years ago, [our guide] Darsana taught his children how to hunt the insect using a slender strip of palmwood dipped in the sticky white sap of the jackfruit tree. … Standing in one paddy, Darsana shouts encouragement as his 8-year-old daughter, Ni Wayan Sriyani, slowly extends her bamboo pole as far as she can reach. A dragonfly approaches, zig-zagging over the rice. Like an expert fly-fisher, she flicks out the end of her pole and catches the wing of the first dragonfly of the day. … [Later] the family returns home to fry the cache of dragonflies in coconut oil and pop them in their mouths like candy.

Peter: [T]he grasshoppers we found on [our] second visit to Mexico are daily bread. … They are especially popular in the southern state of Oaxaca.

Peter: A researcher who brings her work home, [our friend] Julieta has a refrigerator that is a science project in itself—dozens of containers of live and dead insects. The insects are part of a cookbook project with dozens of bug recipes she has collected or concocted herself

Mopane caterpillars
Botswana

Faith: Catching mopane worms is messy and hard on the hands. The worms have thornlike points on their backs that are sharp enough to slice unwary fingers. … Julie [a local woman] grabs a handful, and holding them tightly at one end, she squeezes out the insides from the other end. Bright green and yellow juice spurts out—instant death for the caterpillar—and then the worms are tossed into the bucket [to be stewed later as seen here]. The guts smell like freshly crushed leaves, which is exactly what they are. The cycle—pick, squeeze, toss—happens over and over, filling the buckets to capacity as the day heats up.

Palm grubs
Peru

Peter: The palms here are smaller than those in Indonesia or Uganda, but the grubs are the same size. The real difference is in the way they are eaten—uncooked. Raw, raw, raw—that’s the spirit! But not for me. After we return to [our host's] house, the bowl of grubs sits out in the sun for about four hours. By the time people eat them, the white, wiggling worms are no longer white and no longer wiggling. I photograph everyone else sucking out the insides but I pass.

Peter: In Uganda, snacking on termites is like raiding the refrigerator in the U.S., except that raiding a termite mound is more work.

Tarantulas
Cambodia

Peter: The tarantulas are greasy, but good. The legs are crispy and each big hairy body is a decent-sized chewy bite that tastes like … deep-fried tarantula. Faith asks me what they taste like, but in the English language there are no words to describe it. If day-old deep-fried chickens had no bones, had hair instead of feathers, and were the size of a newborn sparrow, they might taste like tarantulas.

Stink bugs
Irian Jaya, Indonesia

Faith: If one must, it’s advisable to begin by eating insects that crisp up well when roasted. I wouldn’t suggest starting with anything too chewy, like a worm, or too fleshy, like cicadas. You want to ease into the experience while not making a total fool of yourself. It’s helpful if the people with whom you are feasting are under the age of ten. They will be paying more attention to the meal at hand than to you. … Stink bugs fit the category of crispy insect. … The taste experience is rather like eating a bitter sunflower seed, shell and all, without salt. I chew quickly.

Silkworm pupae
Guangzhou, China

Faith: By the time I work up the courage to put anything in my mouth, the food is cold. I grab a silkworm pupa with my chopsticks along with a piece of green pepper. The pupa pops in my mouth rather unpleasantly and has the consistency of rubber but the taste isn’t too bad. As I wash it down with a mouthful of green tea I realize that it might have tasted alright if I’d eaten it hot.

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