Woman on all-bug diet claims crickets taste like ‘fried chicken’
She’s not averse to grabbing some grub.
Most people would balk at finding a bug in their food; however, one South African woman likes adorning her dishes with an array of creepy crawlies straight out of an insect zoo.
“I’m obsessed with insects,” Joanne Techow, 30, told NeedtoKnow.online of her penchant for entomophagy — the practice of eating creepy crawlies — which she claims is both delicious and good for the environment.
As such, the Johannesburg native likes spicing up her daily diet by seasoning her salads with cricket powder and adorning kiwis with mealworms — among other entomological eats worthy of “Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom,” Jam Press reported. Other treats include insect tacos, cricket-based pigs-in-a-blanket and bug-laced biscuits.
“Mealworms taste like chicken, ants are salty, crickets taste like nuts if they’re roasted but if you fry them they taste like fried chicken and smell like popcorn,” the former zoologist describes. “Bamboo worms taste salty, but they are absolutely delicious. Oh my word, I could eat those like chips.”
Contrary to the “Hakuna Matata” mantra of the “Lion King,” not all creepy crawlies are slimy yet satisfying. Techow claims that chocolate-covered scorpions are crunchy “with no real flavor” while stink bugs taste like “dirt.”
Techow’s first foray into entomophagy came in 2017, when her dad brought back the culinary curiosities from a trip to Asia.
“The first time I was dipping my finger into some cricket powder and put it on my tongue and thought ‘Oh it’s nutty,'” the human aardvark described.
Since then, Techow says she’s become “much more adventurous.”
“My dad would travel to Asia and bring back scorpions, bamboo worms, chocolate-covered silkworms and the obsession grew,” she said. “My parents got used to seeing dead bugs in the freezer.”
Not content to merely consume the critters, the entomophagist decided to put her money where her mouth is and take up cricket farming. She even launched her own company, called Ensekta, which “produce[s] edible bugs as a sustainable food source,” per the site.
Specifically, they raise both mealworms and crickets in a bid to promote “insect-based food solutions,” according to the firm’s Instagram page.
Techow stores the critters in her garage, which she’s converted into an insect warehouse, and euthanizes them by putting them in the freezer so their body temperature gradually decreases — allegedly the most humane option.
Techow’s interest in entomophagy isn’t just due to flavor. She feels that supplementing our diet with bugs is becoming increasingly crucial due to environmental concerns.
“The thing is cattle use a lot of land, water and food to produce a small amount of protein,” the insectivore explains. “And cows use a lot of methane gas, which is accelerating climate change.”
On the contrary, insects pack more protein than per pound than beef and require at least six times less feed, the Atlantic reported.
Insects also take up a lot less space and are more numerous — offering more bug for your buck. “It helps [that] they occur in naturally high numbers and reproduce quickly, so you can have several generations in a year,” she said. “[It] also helps for societies if they can utilize the insects that already exist in the environment as a food source.”
Despite entomophagy’s environmental benefits, Techow finds that most people find the idea of crunching on crickets “intimidating.” In fact, when the South African first started insect eating, she said people were “horrified” and deemed it a “taboo” practice.
In order to acclimate squeamish eaters to insects, Techow recommends including plenty of chasers as a gateway bug. “We make cookies, cricket brownies, chocolate-covered silkworms, mealworm flapjacks, pigs-in-a-blanket made with crickets, flapjacks with cricket powder on top,” she explained.
The cricket cruncher also advised opting for farm-raised insects over the wild-caught variety. “It’s worth pointing out to people not to catch their own insects from the wild as you don’t know what they have been eating.”
Perhaps the one exception is the 17-year cicadas, which have to be foraged in the forest as they only emerge every decade and a half or so.
After trying these cyclical critters in May 2021, the Post can safely say they’re worth the trouble; they’re “plump and nutty” and the perfect accompaniment to a crisp lager.
