Eating Cicadas (and other bugs)

[BookTenTiger]

I found this article on a chef who is cooking Brood X really interesting:

100 Ways to Cook Cicadas

The chef is practically a D&D character, they even have a familiar:

One picky eater who’s not quite as excited about Yoon’s quest is his pet tarantula, Natasha. The chef tried to give her a cicada, but Natasha refused, preferring her usual crickets. “Natasha is not an adventurous eater,” Yoon laughs.

Overall the article made me think a lot about the future of protein consumption. The photos do not look appetizing! But I wondered if I would feel different if I saw shrimp, crawdads, or crabs mixed in (hint: I would find that delicious).

What do you think it would take to shift a modern population to a bug-based protein diet?

Do you have any bug-based culinary cultures in your campaigns?

 

[Umbran]

What do you think it would take to shift a modern population to a bug-based protein diet?

Simple answer: hunger. No, "I missed lunch and now I'm a bit crabby," hunger. Real sustained hunger. Prices on other protein sources that make them unsupportable.

Squeamishness melts away in the face of the gnawing in your gut.

 

[Ryujin]

Campaigns? No. Real life? I've had crickets and locusts, a long time ago. No, they don't taste like chicken. Dry roasting almost anything can make it at least somewhat palatable. Earthworms are likely the next big source of protein. You can farm thousands of times more of them, by weight, than you can a cow in the same acreage.

 

[Istbor]

Campaigns? No. Real life? I've had crickets and locusts, a long time ago. No, they don't taste like chicken. Dry roasting almost anything can make it at least somewhat palatable. Earthworms are likely the next big source of protein. You can farm thousands of times more of them, by weight, than you can a cow in the same acreage.

And to that point, while I baked and ate some worm chocolate chip cookies for Zoology in High school. The cookies still aren't that great, because worms. Chop them up as much as you like, you are still eating a cookie with interesting tasting meat in it.

 

[Ryujin]

And to that point, while I baked and ate some worm chocolate chip cookies for Zoology in High school. The cookies still aren't that great, because worms. Chop them up as much as you like, you are still eating a cookie with interesting tasting meat in it.

Yeeeaaah, meat doesn't belong in cookies. Use them to make a McDonalds burger, though, and you might not even notice

 

[Umbran]

Yeeeaaah, meat doesn't belong in cookies.

I've had cricket-chip cookies that were okay. Their major failing was in the cookie dough itself, not the crickets.

 

[CleverNickName]

I've had roasted and salted mealworms before, and they're actually pretty good. The taste reminds me of soy nuts and toasted rice snacks.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I remember watching Snowpiercer and an early scene makes a big point out of how gross it is that their food is made up of ground up bugs... But I remember thinking that's not such a bad idea!

Some PR person needs to come in and rename a bunch of bugs to sound more delicious, kind of like what they did for Chilean Sea Bass (it used to be called a Toothfish).

Um... Land Shrimp! Crawldads! Chilean Land Bass!

 

[Eltab]

I'm gonna pass on "Here, try a cicaida" unless you happen to find me staggering back to civilization after 40 days in the desert or stranded halfway up a mountain. Intellectually I know it can be done, but experience and practice cause my stomach to think more like (cue the sharks in Finding Nemo) "Fish* are friends, not food."

* insert "bugs" here

 

[Morrus]

Make it look like a burger. People will happily eat it then.