In countries where eating insects is an old custom and part of the culinary tradition you often eat them whole. Snacking them, stir frying them, grilling them on skewers or popping them into soups or stews. Sometimes they are grinded, used as flavouring and sometimes made into powder and mixed with salts and spices.
Lately countries without this tradition, countries with a more processed approach to food, have started experimenting with insects and suddenly we have even more applications of the nutritious bugs. In this blog post I will continually keep track of all the different kinds of applications that have surfaced over the years. Some of them are a bit unique. Others (like protein bars) are really common and have been replicated many times.
This article was first published 17th of June 2019 and will be continually updated with text, new categories and images.
Please add comments if you find products that are not covered! And do not miss my other massive guide: The Eating insects startups: Here is the list of Entopreneurs around the world!
Index:
Bar (protein bar, energy bar)
Beer
Bitters
Bread
Burgers
Candy & chocolate covered insects
Coffee
Convenience food
Cookies
Crackers
Crisps/Chips
Crisp bread
Croquets/insect balls/insect falafel
Food subscription box
Gourmet insects
Granola & Granola bites
Ice cream
Meat replacement (replacing minced meat)
”Milk”
Natural – for cooking
Noodles
Oil
Pancake mix
Pasta
Pasta sauce
Paté / bread spread
Pesto
Pills
Powder (Flour)
Powder / baking flour
Protein powder / shakes
Protein Snacks
Ravioli
Roasted whole insects (with different flavours)
Sausages
Shakes and smoothies
Shots
Soft drinks
Spices and Seasonings
Spirits
Tapenade
Tsukudani
Bar (protein bar, energy bar)
The power bar/protein bar/energy bar is originally a spinoff product of the space race. In the sixties NASA came up with the idea of a compact bar full of nutrition you could eat on a space mission. In the 60:s products were launched in shops called “space sticks”, and in the 80s we got the “power bar”. The last decade the market of bars have exploded and it is an important part of what often is referred to as a “snacking culture”. Skipping meals and instead snacking on the go. It’s also part of an ongoing lets-have-more-proteins trend.
As insects like crickets and mealworms contain a lot of proteins it’s not strange that many entoprenuers have come up with the idea: “Let’s make a cricket bar”!
One of the earliest examples is Chapul from the USA. Chapul was started by Pat Crowley in 2012 and made the concept cricket bar famous when he appeared on the show “Shark tank” 21 of March 2014. You can see a clip from where he convinces Mark Cuban to invest in the business.
Unfortunately, many of the so-called cricket bars on the market actually contain a really small amount of cricket powder. The reason is still cost. Insect powder is more expensive than the other ingredients in the list. Hopefully this will change in the future.
Photo credits: Chapul (USA), Yumpa (UK/Canada), Näak (Canada). Hey Planet (Denmark), Kriket (Belgium), Grilo Protein (Australia) (no longer in business), Sens food (Germany), Get sharp (UK) (no longer in business), Jungle bar (Iceland) (no longer in business), Coast protein (Canada) (no longer in business) and Lithic Food (USA) (no longer in business).
Beer
Insect snacks go great with beer, but you can also use insects to brew the beer itself? Some researchers say that using yeasts from insects might be the future of beer brewing… Some avant-garde brewers are already doing it. Like Dailey Crafton who have made “Wasp bear” using yeasts from Wasps. Most breweries experimenting with insects as an ingredient uses it for flavouring: Like the Dutch brewery De Molen that made a Grasshopper saison 2015, and the guys in Brazil who invented the Leafcutter Ant Saison.
These are small batch products, but there are also examples of beers that are sold in larger quantities. One is New Zealand brewery Garage Projects sour ale Aardvark flavoured with lemon grass ants. I actually once hold one in my hand, at Systembolaget in Stockholm the day it was supposed to be launched. Unfortunately, Swedish food regulations stopped it (read story in Swedish here).
Photo credits: From left: Savu Sirkka, ”Smoked Cricket in English) is a Finnish small scaled brewed beer using smoked crickets to get its taste. Photo from Hyönteiskokki.fi. Next Aaardvark from Garage Projects Madora Brown Ale, an ale made with South African Mopane worms from Drifter. And then we have Belgian Beetles Beer, spiced with beetles.
Bitters
This product from ”The Trouble Makers inc” is more of a statement then a business idea.
”We’ve found that people are more willing to first try insects in a cocktail than in food. And crickets have a completely unique rich flavour that add an amazing depth of flavour to drinks.
Give them a try – join the movement to change the conversation around what and how we are consuming. ”
Update October 2020: Critter bitters are no longer available.
Bread
When Finnish food giant Fazer in November 2017 launched the cricket bread in Finnish grocery stores they boasted that they were they were first. One bread contained 70 ground crickets that added proteins minerals and vitamin B12. And a slight nutty taste. In March 2019 another Nordic country, Norway, followed the Finns example. This time creating a bread containing mealworms.
In 2019 Roberts bakery launched their limited edition ”Crunchy Cricket Loaf” in the UK. Containing 336 ground up crickets provided by Eat Grub.
In December 2020 Japanese food company Pasco launched a cricket baguette and a cake using cricket powder. See video here >>
Photo credits: Bakehuset & Fazer
Burgers
The burger is the perfect food form factor if you want to launch food with a new novel ingredient but still want people to feel some comfort eating it. You can eat the Bug Burger just like an ordinary beef burger but instead of beef you get a burger containing a mixture of insects and vegetables. A climate friendly and healthy alternative to a Whopper or McFeast.
That’s why I originally in 2014 founded Bugburger and started experimenting with different bug burger recipes.
In my case I wrote a book instead but there are a lot of entopreneurs out there who have developed bugburgers, and more are coming. One of the first was the ”Bux burger” from German Bug Foundation that originally was launched in restaurants in Belgium 2014, and later launched in grocery stores in Germany.
A different take on the bug burger is the Swiss ”Flexi burger”, made with 50 percent beef and 50 percent mealworm. And it is freezdried. Check out Bugburgers review here >>
Photo credits: In the photo above you see Bug Foundations Insect burger, Minus farms ”Incredible burger”, and Essentos Burger.
Here one of my own videos when I make a Bugburger >>
Candy & chocolate covered insects
The easiest way to launch insects: Cover them in chocolate and sell them as candy. A roasted grasshopper coated in chocolate tastes like Kit kat!
A classic! Another classic is the lollipops with a whole insect in them. This novelty was invented by the American company Hotlix in 1982, and the concept have been copied many times.
Some companies make insects candy with ground up insect powder.
Photo credits: In the photo you see dark chocolate crickets from Don Bugito, lollipops from Hotlix and a mealworm package from Zirp Insects and a couple of chocolate covered scorpions.
Coffee
”The ultimate cup born from the passion of college students who love insect food” is the google translation of the sales pitch of the Japanese Cricket Blend Coffee. The first time I have seen a coffee house making a serious attempt at making coffee using ground insects as an ingredient. The team has come up with coffee with crickets, grasshoppers and silkworm pupae. Will this innovation from Osaka, Japan spread around the world?
Photo credit: Bugsfarm.jp
Convenience food
You go to the grocery stores freeze food section. You buy a bag of freeze semi prepared food, go home put it in a pan and add some ingredients, and a couple of minutes later your dish is ready. Convenient!
One hop kitchens pasta sauce with crickets (check the pasta sauce category) is one example of convenience food. Another great on is Finnish Griidy’s Pannu Sirkka. Precooked and then frozen crickets that you just toss into a saucepan.
See film here >>
Photo credits: Griidy & K-citymarket
Cookies
One of the first commercialized insect products I tried was Bitty’s cookies. Including some insect powder in your cookie dough make a great stealth product. Make your cookies more nutritious and delicious!
If you don’t find insect cookies in your local store it is easy to make them yourself. Just add a couple of cups of insect powder to your cookie dough.
Photo credits: In the photo you see macarons and cookies from French Minus farms, American Bittys cookies (no longer sold) and Mexican Grichas vanilla cookies.
Crackers
I have seen a lot of companies promoting insect crackers. A healthier alternative to cream crackers and a great combo with cheese or marmalade.
(read Bugburgers review of Crickés crackers >>)
Photo credits: Cricket crackers from Crické (now rebranded to Small Giants), Organic crackers from Crickstart (now named Landish), crisp rye bread from Finnish Savonia, the Kickstarter Crickers, Belgian Little foods Tomato Crickers, and Finnish Griidys Cricket Crackers.
Crisps/Chips
Whole roasted insects often make a great snack just by themselves, but not all entopreneurs think this is the best way to make more people eat insects. Why not incorporate nutritious insect powder in snacks that looks like traditional snacks instead?
One great example is American Chirps, the name obviously a play with the sounds crickets make and the word chips (crisps in English English).
Promoting more healthy snacks, healthy unguilty pleasures could be a success story. At the moment the products are a bit too expensive compared to the more unhealthy alternatives.
Photo credits: In the photo above you find Chirps chips, Bella pupa a snack made from silk pupae (from Bugsolutely) and cricket tortilla chips from Crické.
Crisp bread
A personal favourite is making crispbread where you replace 1/3 of the flour with insect powder (mealworm or cricket (or similar)). It makes a great snack. You can make it yourself (recipe in my book) or you can buy it from a couple of companies (one of them Swedish Eat:em).
Photo credits: Insektsknæk from Danish Enorm Food, crisp bread from Swedish company Kafka. Crispbread from Swedish Eat:em and Knäckebrot from German Imago Insect Products.
Croquets/insect balls/insect falafel
Just like burgers, balls, like meatballs and falafel, are a well-known food form factor. There are several examples of products using insects as one of the ingredients. In the Netherlands there have been made a variant of the local “Bitterbal” called “Bitter Balzz”, and in Switzerland the company Essento launched Insects balls sold at Coops supermarkets.
Photo credits: To the left: Swizz Essentos Insect Balls. In the right top corner: Belgian mealworm croquettes from Nimavert. Below: Swizz Pop-Bugs.
Food subscription box
Food subscription services are a booming business. In many cities you can get a box/bag with ingredients and a recipe with instructions delivered to your door. A great way to broaden your repertoire of cooking, and maybe learn to eat more vegetarian? The guys at Better Universal Grub (Bug) thinks it is time to the same with edible insects. And as the ingredients they provide are dry the box can be sent all over Europe. If this becomes a success maybe we will see similar services in other parts of the world?
Read Bugburgers review here >>
Update 2021: Bug has changed it’s concept and now make meal kits with insects sold in stores.
Check out Bugs service and recipes here >>
Photo credit: Bug.
Gourmet insects
When a food sector gets more developed you always find gourmet alternatives. Pricey alternatives claiming to give you extra good quality, sensational taste, great craftmanship, etc. A good example of this is Japanese Takeos: ”Hiroshima crickets”. Crickets that were fed a diet of almonds, which gives them an extra nutty, almondy flavour.
The crickets are sold in two versions: A half dried frozen version and a roasted version. Takeo recommends the frozen ones. Thaw them, heat them up a bit and get a mouthful of the tender juicy cricket flavour with a touch of almonds. According to Takeo the crickets goes really well with chocolate.
Price: 2080 yen for a package with 19 grammes of crickets. Thats around 900 euro per kilo.
In my book ”Äta insekter: Entomaten och det stora proteinskiftet” (Only in Swedish) I write about the differences in taste between crickets in different stages… maybe we will in the future see handpicked crickets sold in different qualities?
Photo credit: Takeo
Granola & Granola bites
If I would have found insects in my granola let’s say 2008 I would probably have thought the packet was old and throw it away. Early 2018 I bought a packet of granola from Finnish Entocube with whole roasted crickets in it. As the crickets taste nutty, and granola usually contains nuts it makes sense. And Entocube are not the only ones that have come to this conclusion. But not all take the bold step and introduce whole crickets. Seek Foods granola combines traditional oats and almonds with flakes made of cricket powder. An alternative is just selling this granola flakes, or as Don Bugito calls them “Granola bites”. You can then add them to your own granola. Finnish Entis has done something similar with their Bugbites (read a review here).
Photo credits: granola from Samu (Entocube), Don Bugitos granola bites, crunch from Hopper foods and granola from Seek.
Ice cream
I borrowed the image above from South African company Gourmet Grubb who are the inventors behind ”ento milk” a product similar too cow milk made from black soldier fly larvae. They are not first with the idea of using insects to make ice cream. Lee and Eli Cadesky from C-fu-foods demonstrated in 2016 ice cream made with cricket protein. A product that never was launched commercially.
I hope Gourmet Grubb launches their ice cream, and I really would like to try it!
Photo credit: Gourmet Grubb
Meat replacement (replacing minced meat)
If you really want to make a product that can be claimed to be climate friendly and make an impact you have to create something that actually replaces meat! Replace a serving of beef with insects and you have made a difference.
In many countries minced meat is used a lot as a base for cooking: Bolognese, meatballs, burgers, meatloaf etc.
Several companies have been working on alternatives using insects. Often the insects have been mixed with soy. The reason for this is mostly cost (crickets are still expensive).
One example is Sirkkis from Finnish company Entis (see photo). Another example is Dutch Protifarm who have developed an ingredient called Adalba Pro that can be used by food producers to make their own meat replacement products (you find a short interview with Lee Cadesky from Protifarm in this Bugburger article >>)
Photo credit: Entis
”Milk”
Soy milk, oat milk, almond milk… let’s add: Ento milk! The original Insect milk was invented by a South African company called Gourmet Grubb.
No sugar, no carbs. They also invented the Bug Icecream.
There have also been reports that cockroaches produce something similar to milk that feeds their offspring and that the ”milk” from these insects are extremely nutritious.
Looking forward to more insect milk!
Natural – for cooking
The most obvious choice for a burgeoning insect chef: Buy whole insects and cook with them! Dried insects are easy to sell online as they are light and keep well. But I hope we will see more producers sell frozen insects. Like Belgian distributor Deli Ostrich, Austrian Die Wurmfarm or Finnish Entocube. UK based Eatgrub have been selling dried insects for cooking since 2014 and also made their own cook book.
Unfortunately, this is still a niche product, and maybe will see more interest from cutting edge restaurants before we see a bigger interest from the amateur chefs
Photo credits: Die Wurmfarm, Entocube, Eatgrub and a photo by Bugburger taken at Danish shop selling Deli Ostrich products.
Noodles
Cricket pasta is a growing product category, and it seems logical that we will see more noodles made with added insect powder. I’m not sure that Nutribugs cricket rice noodles ever reached the market or was just a concept. But Japanese Bugsfarms udo noodles with cricket powder is the real thing. Made by a noodle maker with 90 years in the business (with cricket powder from Swedish/Thai company Global Bugs). I like that the package also contains some roasted whole crickets.
I have not tried these, but I definitely think there should be a market for them. Maybe we in the future will see instant ramen-packages with cricket flavour!
Photo credits: Nutribug and Bugfarm
Oil
In January 2016 the university in Wageningen made a press release announcing that one of their researchers Daylan Tzompa-Souza had discovered that you can make tasty, nutritious and aromatic oils from insects! She tried extruding oil from several insects and claim that the oil from grasshoppers and Black soldier fly has a fruity, pleasant aroma and could very well make a good oil in a salad dressing.
Maybe we will see insect oil in other products, for instance replacing palm oil.
Photo credit: Thailand Unique
Pancake mix
Yes, pancakes can be part of a nutritious breakfast! Just add cricket powder to the mix. Its really quite simple mixing the ingredients yourself… but people tend to be lazy, especially in the mornings. So why not sell a mix where you just mix powder with water and oil and make pancakes?
Photo credit: Mighty Cricket, Bbite & Circle Harvest
Pasta
People love pasta. Pasta is quick and easy to cook, and dried pasta has great shelf life. Unfortunately, pasta provides a lot of carbs… but if you add another ingredient like cricket powder you get pasta with protein, iron and vitamin B12!
I am not sure who came up with the idea first but one of the earliest companies to market insect pasta is Thai/Italian company Bugsolutely. You can see their cricket pasta above. You can of course also use other insects than crickets. Austrian Die Wurmfarm makes their pasta with mealworm powder.
Photo credits: Beneto Foods, Bugsolutely, Goffard Sisters, Hoppa Foods , Die Wurmfarm and Entoma Foods.
Pasta sauce
Both Gryllies tomato sauce with crickets, and One Hop kitchens mealworm bolognese and cricket Bolognese are creations by companies from Toronto. I once heard Lee Cadesky from C-fu foods explain that putting insects in tomato sauce made a great nutritional product that also have great shelf life. None of these products are still sold and both Gryllies and C-Fu food (who was behind One hop kitchen) have seized to exist.
Photo credits: Gryllies and One hop kitchen (both out of business)
Pâté / bread spread / butters
In many countries making bread spreads from animal liver is big. Why not make pâté out of mealworms instead? This concept has for instance been tried in Denmark by Danish company Crickster (see image above (left)). Looking forward to seeing more companies experimenting in this field making more sustainable and maybe healthier alternatives to the pig liver bread spreads.
There are also several companies that have made different kind of bread spreads. Like Rebel Food Tasmanias peanut butter with smoked crickets.
Photo credit: Crickster & Rebel Food Tasmania
Pesto
I think I first saw insect infused pesto marketed by a Belgian company. The photos above are from Austrian Zirp, mixing classical pesto ingredients with buffalo worms. Great concept. I hope it tastes good, and sells!
Photo credit: Zirp
Pills
Ground up crickets contain complete protein, vitamin b12, calcium, magnesium and iron. And there are studies (unfortunately small) showing that cricket powder can be go good for your gut health and contain fibre and prebiotics. So why not put the powder (and maybe some additional ingredients in a pill and sell them us supplements?
Photo credits: In the photo above, you see three examples. Pills from Paradox Protein (USA), Grig (Czech republic) and Ronzo (a Polish kickstarter that didn’t make it).
Powder (sometimes called Flour)
Ground up dried or roasted crickets have often been called ”flour”, which (as one of the pioneers Dr. Aaron T. Dossey often points out) is incorrect, as powdered crickets don’t have the same baking abilities like ordinary flour. But the high protein insect powder (up to around 70 percent protein) can be used in bread, pancakes, waffles, smoothies… well most of the products in this list. At the moment mostly cricket powder and mealworm powder are marketed, but we will see more insects coming. One gamechanger can be the Black Soldier Fly larvae, as BSF can be produced more cheaply than mealworms and crickets.
This is a big product category, and when the prices go down the demand might skyrocket…
Photo credits: Crickster (Denmark), Primal future (New Zeeland), Kreca Foods (Netherlands), Global Bugs (Sweden/Thailand), Eat grub (UK), Quicket (Sweden) (no longer in business), Thailand Unique (Thailand), Grio pro (USA), Mophagy (UK) (no longer in business), Entomo Farms (Canada).
Powder / baking flour
As you can read above ground up insects haven’t got baking abilities and it is a bit misleading calling it ”cricket flour”. But there are products out there that you can bake with. Prepared baking mixes with proper flour mixed with insect powder. This can be a great product for a beginner who doesn’t know what proportions to use. When you buy this readymade baking mix products always check how much insect powder you get. If the product is cheap ,you probably have a pretty low percentage of insects.
Photo credits: All-purpose baking flour from Cricket flours (USA), Seedy paleo loaf mix from Australian The Cricket Bakery and Cricket protein pancake mix from Bud’s Cricket Power (USA).
Protein powder / shakes
Yes, most farmed insects contain a lot of protein. And the protein in crickets and mealworms contains all the essential amino acids. And who likes proteins? Who buys big tins of powder, mixes it with water and drinks litres of it? Body builders. So why not mix cricket powder with some flavouring and call it protein powder?
If you are interested there are a lot of alternatives out there. They come in flavors like cacao, coconut, vanilla, strawberry, and are often a mix of ground up crickets and pea protein. One important part of the sales pitch is that the powder is free from dairy products, and soy, contains iron, zinc and vitamin B12.
Products in the photo: Chirps Cricket Powder, Jump from Bugeater Foods (one of the protein powder pioneers), proteinpulver from German Isaac Nutrition, and Entis Protein Power from Finnish Entis.
Protein Snacks
Yes, the high protein content in edible insects is one of the most frequent selling points. Protein bars could also be called protein snacks, but I have set up ”Protein snacks” as a separate category because there have been a couple of companies who have made this claim. The idea is often a bag of snacks that should boost your energy and help you gain muscles when you are doing sports or exercise. Just like in the protein bars the number of crickets (yes it’s mainly crickets) have been quite low, and in many cases the protein comes from not just the insects but also nuts, and in some cases even soy to boost the protein count. The reason is to keep the costs down.
Photos: Crics, Swedish Eat:ems first product, Bugbites from Finnish Entis, American Seek Foods protein snack bites and Canadian Nääks Cricket Energy Bites.
Ravioli
Why not pack the pasta with even more edible insects making a ravioli with insect stuffing? On the photo you see ravioli from Belgian Nimavert filled with stuffing containing mealworm powder.
Photo credit: Nimavert
Roasted whole insects (with different flavours)
The ”original” insect snack product. You find whole roasted insects of different species sold in markets in South East Asia and Mexico. You have also for a couple of decades been able to buy them in shops or on the Internet. Flavoured roasted crickets, mealworms and grasshopper is a perfect protein packed snack. There are a lot of producers out there, and they are really creative when it comes to flavours/seasonings. Here are some examples:
Apple Pie
BBQ (Smokey BBQ, Texas BBQ, Mexican BBQ)
Cheddar
Chocolate coffee
Cinnamon
Cotton candy
Curry
Dill pickle
Dried pepper and tomatoes
Fingerlime and chilli
Ginger lime
Greek
Honey
Honey mustard
Jalapeño garlic
Kimchi
Lemon myrtle
Lemon pepper
Mango Habanero
Natural
Paprika
Peri-peri
Pizza
Pumpkin Spice
Salt and pepper
Salt and vinegar
Salty Caramel
Salty Liquorice
Saltbush and rosemary
Singaporean salted egg yolk
Sour cream onion
Soy and ginger
Spicy thai
Sriracha
Sundried tomato and basil
Sweet chili and lime
Sweet mango
Wasabi
The photo features snacks from Finnish Partybugs, Thai/Swedish Global Bugs (edible.cricket), French Jiminis, UK based Eat Grub, Cowboy Cricket Farm, Ento Market and Exo from USA. Danish Enorm Food and Finnish Griidy.
Sausages
Just like the burger, the sausage is a well-known food form factor and a great way to introduce novel ingredients. I know there have been a lot of experiments in this area. For instance, Swedish SP Foods worked on a sausage using mealworms for the Vinnova Future Protein competition (2016) but ended up creating something they called ”Tenebrio sticks”. During the Finnish edible insect hype, just after Finland allowed insects as food in 2017, meat company Mattila Bros launched the ”Sirkka nakki”, ”cricket sausage”, which contained 63 percent pork and 5,6 percent cricket powder. In Thailand a young startup have launched the Bricket sausage. Just like the Finnish counterpart it is a pork sausage containing cricket powder.
I am looking forward to the first ento-vegetarian sausage.
Photo credits: Mattila Bros and The Bricket.
Shakes & smoothies
If you have a packet of cricket or mealworm powder at home, and a mixer you know how easy it is to just to add the powder your ordinary smoothie or milkshake recipe. The concept has been commercialised by cafés, restaurants and health bars. But as Finnish Entis showed with their Sirkka smoothie (cricket smoothie) you can of course also bottle the smoothie and sell it in shops.
Photo credits: In the photo you see a cricket smoothie from Swedish health chain Blueberry (never released due to Swedish food security authorities’ decision to stop sales of edible insect products awaiting directives from EU), Entis Sirkka smoothie, and the Cricket milkshake marketed as a flavour at the American hamburger chain Wayback Burgers in 2015.
Shots
Just like the market for energy bars that boost your energy have exploded the last ten years, the market for small bottles filled with healthy colourful juices containing ginger/turmeric/kale/beetroot/spirulina etc, have grown each year. Adding crickets to these products makes sense if you want to enrich them with protein, vitamin b12, iron and other minerals. Entis product (placed in the smoothie section above) could almost have made it in the shots section. But Danish Syngjas ”Bugs’n shot” wins the prize as the first insect shot on the market. Every 60 millilitre bottle contains healthy juices and 6 (yes just six) house crickets.
Photo credit: Syngja
Spices & seasoning
The tradition of adding ground up insects to salt goes way back to the pre-conquistador times in Mexico. Sal de gusano, is usually a mixture of salt, chili and ground up agave worms, ”Gusano de Maguey” (called Chinicuil by the Aztecs) , and is used just like a spicey salt, and added to dishes like tamales and mixiotes, and salsas. Outside of Mexico the use of Sal de gusano has spread with the increasing popularity of the agave based distilled alcoholic drink Mezcal. You drink a glass of mezcal and take a bite in a slice of orange covered in sal de gusano.
The insects give the salt an umami flavour, and producers have come up with several alternatives using other insects like crickets and grasshoppers.
Traditionally insects have been used for flavour in many ways. For instance, ants have been used for their extreme sour taste. Some ants for their taste of lemongrass, and other for their sweetness.
Australian Grilo Protein have come up with an interesting product idea: A seasoning that includes various spices and 13 percent cricket powder. Sprinkle it on rice, pasta, popcorn anything that needs flavour and an immunity boost!
Photos: Sal de gusano from Gran Mitla, cricket salt from cricketflours.com and sal the gusano from the mezcal brand MarcaNegra. All-purpose seasoning from Grilo Protein.
Soft drinks
Okay there are a couple of drinks on this list already (beer, smoothies and spirits). This is a category for all the other non-alcoholic soft drinks using insects for taste. The Japanese Tagame Cider from Takeo is an interesting example. I don’t know Japanese but I think it is a soft drink using extract made from Giant Waterbug (correct me if I am wrong). This insect has a very distinct flavour and is for instance in Thailand used for certain Nam phrik sauces. Please let me know if there are other soft drinks using insects as flavour sold.
Photo credit: Takeo
Spirits
If you talk about spirits and insects most people think about Mexican Mezcal and a little insect larvae you can find in bottles of mezcal. But ”the mezcal worm” (often a guasano rojo or gusano del maguey) are not the only insects put in drinks. Various people have copied this habit, and some have used insect to spice up the drink. One example is Nordic Food Labs ”Anty gin”. In Sweden ”myrsnaps” ”ant snaps” is a traditional snaps where you spice your vodka with ants.
Photo credits: Vodka with ants from Thailand Unique, Enorm shot from Danish Enorm, and Anty gin from Nordic Food Lab (no longer active)
Tapenade
”In sandwiches, as an aperitif or as a sauce in pasta, the aubergine cricket tapenade allows you to taste crickets as part of our habits food.”
Belgian Little Food have created a tapenade with 15 percent crickets. The recipe has been taken over by Nimvert.
Photo credits: Litte Food and Nimavert.
Tsukudani
Tsukudani is a traditional Japanese cooking method using soy sauce and mirin or saké, and sugar. It becomes very dark when the sugar caramelize. It also works as a preservative. In Japan you can buy can and jars with hornet larvae and grasshoppers. In the photo you can see a tin can bought in Japan (photographed by Jonas Larsson for my book about eating insects) and two photos from Entomarket that sell these products in the United States. Here is a recipe if you would like to make tsukudani yourself >>
Photo credits: On the left a photo from my book ”Äta insekter” taken by Jonas Larsson. On the right: Photos from Entomarket.
This is the end of the list! If you know about insect product categories that are not on the list. Please write a comment below!
Världens bästa bok om ätbara insekter?Kan du läsa svenska? Grattis då kan du läsa:
Äta insekter: Entomaten och det stora proteinskiftet. Den går att köpa i vanliga bokhandlar, hos förlaget, på Adlibris och Bokus. Läs mer om boken och köpställen här!
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