They’re crunchy with a mild, nutty flavor, and are loaded with protein. But they’re also a little creepy.
We’re talking about crickets, which are increasingly coming up as a sustainable snack.
“Insects seem like a really good solution to the future of food,” says Aruna Antonella Handa, an advocate of eating bugs, “but also the most toxic in terms of resistance from the public.”
Handa wants to change that, and recently hosted a “Future Food Salon” in Chelsea — a food and arts event promoting more sustainable eating habits that showcased all the tasty ways to fry up an insect. The easiest method for would-be bug munchers involves grinding crickets into a fine flour, and then adding it to other foods.
“It’s a gentle introduction,” says Pat Crowley, the founder of Chapul, a Utah company that manufactures energy bars made with cricket flour. His bars, for sale at Westerly Natural Market in midtown, were a hit at the future food salon, perhaps because one can’t really taste the crickets in them. The same was true with “crittle,” a peanut brittle with chunks of cricket meat locked in the hardened sugar.
To truly taste the crickets, salon guests had to grab a cricket on a stick, or reach into a big bowl of salted crickets and snack away. After getting past the initial skepticism, dozens of New Yorkers and visitors were soon eating bugs like it was the most natural thing in the world. And perhaps it is.
More than 2 billion people around the world currently eat insects, according to a recent United Nations report. “Insects are not harmful to eat, quite the contrary,” says Eva Muller, director of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization’s Forest Economics, Policy and Products Division. “They are nutritious, they have a lot of protein and are considered a delicacy in many countries.”
But that doesn’t mean they’d be a popular menu addition at Per Se. It’s all a little weird if you’re not used to it.
“When you first try it, you have to keep your eyes closed,” says Helen Yung, 25, an artist who was showing her work at the salon. “But then it doesn’t taste that bad. Kind of like nuts. If I was going to order insects at a restaurant, I’d order crickets. They are like shrimp.”
While crickets might seem less offensive than other insects, this doesn’t explain why anyone would want to eat bugs in the first place. According to Crowley, we may one day have little choice. Whereas 10 pounds of animal feed will produce 1 pound of beef, those same 10 pounds will make 8 pounds of crickets. They need far less water, and unlike the cruel practice of factory farming, he says, crickets and other bugs actually thrive when they are packed on top of each other.
Jakub Dzamba, a speaker at the salon who’s researching radical approaches to urban agriculture, is working to build insect farms that can go right into the walls of an apartment building. The idea is that families could feed their food scraps and leftovers to the crickets, and then eat those same crickets, thus solving the dual agricultural problems of production and distribution.
Right now he’s testing it out in his Montreal apartment.
“I had a few cricket escapes over the years and my wife kicked my butt a few times,” he said. “But it’s something you’d want to have in your apartment. It’s not something smelly or gross.”
While most New Yorkers would probably not go so far as to install a cricket farm, adventurous eaters are in luck. The insects are already a menu staple at one SoHo restaurant.
“They are so interesting that I didn’t want to hide them inside anything,” says Regina Galvanduque, co-owner of Antojeria La Popular, of the cricket tacos on her menu. At this authentic Mexican cafe, crickets are served on an open-face taco, resting on a layer of guacamole and topped with creme fraiche.
Galvanduque says that in Mexico it’s also common to crush worms into salt and eat them with mescal. Not to mention escamoles, a dish of ant larvae which she calls “better than caviar.”
“But I draw the line at scorpions.”
jsilverman@nydailynews.com
