Cicada Recipes: Bugs Are Low-Carb, Gluten-Free Food
Blanched, boiled, or candied, cicadas are a healthy snack, experts say.
Published May 15, 2013
Anyone hoping to spice up their gluten-free diet need look only at the billions of beady-eyed, shrimp-size cicadas currently emerging from the ground in the eastern United States.
"They definitely would be gluten free ... they do not feed on wheat," said Gene Kritsky, a biologist and cicada expert at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio. The bugs are also high in protein, low in fat, and low in carbohydrates, he added. (Related: "Cicadas as Food: Summer's Low-Fat Snack.")
Members of Brood II,
one of the largest groups of periodical cicadas, have been crawling out
of the ground and carpeting trees from North Carolina to Connecticut
since early May. By July, they will be gone—not to be heard from again
for 17 years.
Cicadas spend most of their lives
underground sucking sap from tree roots. The plant-based diet gives them
a green, asparagus-like flavor, especially when eaten raw or boiled,
according to Kristky, who prefers his Brood II bugs blanched and tossed
into a leafy green salad like chunks of chicken.
Gross? Not really, said Jenna Jadin, an entomologist who wrote the online cookbook Cicada-Licious: Cooking and Enjoying Periodical Cicada in 2004 while a graduate student at the University of Maryland in College Park.
She
notes in her book that crawfish, lobster, crab, and shrimp are part of
the same biological phylum—arthropods—as insects. "So popping a big
juicy beetle, cricket, or cicada into your mouth is only a step away,"
Jadin writes. (Related: "U.N. Urges Eating Insects; 8 Popular Bugs to Try.")
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