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Ento Box
Sesame honey caterpillar mousse cubes, cricket croquettes and carrot and potato en glaze
A team of students believe the perfect food source to prevent hunger in our rapidly expanding world is right under our feet. The staple they’re proposing is rich in protein, low in fat, environmentally friendly and easy to harvest.
The downside? They have six legs, and are, by most Western accounts, the last thing you’d want to find on your dinner plate: insects.
But Aran Dasan, Jacky Chung, Jonathan Fraser and Julene Aguirre-Bielchowsky of the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London are so convinced that insects should be the food of the future that they embarked on a project to make them a bit more gastronomically appealing. (After all, bugs are already considered a culinary delight in many parts of Africa, Asia and South America.)
“There is currently a major cultural taboo against eating insects in the West. They have many negative connotations that are simply not true: People see them as dirty, gooey and unsafe. They certainly don’t see them as an exciting new food!” Jonathan Fraser told TODAY.com.
Ento Box
Snap and share cricket crackers
The students were determined to prove that creepy crawlies could one day be sold at any major Western supermarket, as long as they were somehow presented in a manner that was less, well, creepy and crawly. So they teamed up with a culinary student at Le Cordon Bleu and attempted to find recipes to entice even the most squeamish eaters into eating bugs. The students tested a variety of flavors and ingredients. The only requirement? The food couldn’t look like bugs.
“We made a grasshopper pâté (grasshopper meat, combined with tofu and sesame); cricket bread (tomato puree, basil, and cricket flour); caterpillar mousse (moth caterpillar meat combined with whipped cream); and deep-fried grasshopper croquettes, among others,” Dasan told TODAY.com.
Ento Box
Honey Caterpillar croquettes, with rocket salad, soy sauce and salsa.
They called the final product Ento Box, a wordplay on the Japanese Bento box (a boxed takeout meal popular in Japan) and entomology (the study of insects). The students hope that the food will help challenge Westerners to start thinking outside the box in order to find sustainable food sources for the future.
Admirable in theory, of course, but if the recipes don’t taste good, the Ento Box will be received with, well, crickets. So what does bug pâté actually taste like?
“We were initially surprised to find that that insects are very subtly flavored; most have a nutty, savory taste,” according to Chung.
Dasan adds: “Pan-fried crickets were my other favorite, tasting a bit like sausage.”
Cricket-based sausage: possibly coming someday to a supermarket aisle near you. Would you try eating a bug-based dish if it looked appealing?
July 24, 2009: Crumbled meal worms. Sautéed crickets. Ant eggs. Hungry yet? Marc Dennis, founder of Insects Are Food, explains how eating these dishes could help the environment. Msnbc.com's Becca Field puts it to the test.
More on insect-eating:
- Another scoop of grasshopper? A push for us to eat more bugs
- Crickets and worms: It's what's for dinner!
Leave a Comment:
Interesting and very creative on the part of the students. Job well done. I would try it.
Rats are also very plentiful. An even better source of protein. No doubt we should all be harvesting them. Even better, each household could raise them in the basement.
And other people do eat them. Along with dogs.
The reason I do not eat any of the above may be cultural, but that's ok with me.
I would try it for sure! I always say that it's important to try everything once, and sometimes twice! I can't tell you how many times I've pushed my husband to try new foods that he "hated" but had never tried. Some are his new favorites.
bugs?? I would catch them, string them on a hook and catch me some fish!
Now that's they way to use bugs.
Absolutely would try this! Interesting, new, and kinda fun!
Actually, 2014MD, eating bugs is the same as eating feces. Or, are you telling me someone painstankingly gutted each and every bug? Put them on a water diet to run all the feces out?
...they eat bugs in those countries because they (don't have / can't afford) good food....just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD do something.....feces can be eaten too, but why do it?
Fruits and veggies grow on nutrient rich dirt.....nutrient rich from fertilizer, ie POOP.
All just molecules arranged a bit different in the end.........
Just out of curiosity, what do you consider "good food". Most of the American diet consists of packaged foods processed from corn and little nutritional value. Eating bugs is not equivalent to eating feces so please keep your ignorant remarks to yourself. Most of the world does not have access to clean water and adequate amounts of good quality food. This is in stark contrast to America where clean water is taken for granted (calculate how much you use to flush the toilet) and where 66% of the population is overweight. In reality eating a hot dog is more disgusting than eating bugs cultivated for human consumption.
2014MD.....sorry you got your panties in a bunch over my remark, but I do not consider eating bugs as "good food"....if you do, knock yourself out....but do not try to convince everyone that they should be eating bugs too....also I never said bugs were equivalent to feces....so please review your reading comprehension skills, before trying to be a doctor......
Why on earth would you think that insects are not "good food"? I've eaten grasshoppers and worms in Mexico regularly and they're not only delicious but full of fiber and protein! Just because you've grown to culturally reject eating insects, but having your mouth water over a steak, it doesn't mean one is good food and other one isn't. By the way, many very wealthy Mexicans eat insects regularly--so it is not about not being able to afford it. In fact, "escamoles" which is ant eggs, is considered a delicacy and will cost you at least 30-40 dollars at a restaurant.
....and raw monkey brains is a delicacy in Cambodia, but is that what you want to eat??????...go ahead and have my portion too......
You clearly said "feces can be eaten too"! In reality though, some droppings from herbivores can be eaten.
...if you have only a choice of eating feces or crickets, I would choose crickets, but why bother eating either of them....it's disgusting.....
...and I don't want any of you guys whining the next time you find a roach in your soup....the restaurant should charge you more.......
if you knew all the stuff that happens to your beef,pork,fish and chicken from birth to the plate bugs would sound great have you ever had a fish stick i want a mccricket with fried chicken feet
I ate locusts/grasshoppers in Uganda, and there they are considered a DELICACY! Fried up with some peppers and onions, they were DELICIOUS! Heck yeah, I'd eat bugs again! And, they're everywhere.
nycguy, you need to look up what some of the things you eat have in them. red velvet cake gets its red from a bug in south america and the fda allows so many maggots into your tomato sauce look up the fda guidelines you might quit eatting all together because whats in your food
If we ate enough bugs to sustain an modern society the bugs would go the way of the buffalo. How many bugs does it take to make a meal?"
Funny, insects are considered not "good food." Do you eat lobster/shrimp/crab?
Because when I see those animals, I immediately think of silverfish, millipedes, and spiders...
I am 100% with NYCGUY. It's his opinion, and I share it. You like your food, knock yourself out. I can accept that there are tolerances for insect particles in my Western diet. That's inevitable.
But to actually seek out eating bugs? Eff it. CATEGORICALLY I will reject this new food source. Sue me.
If I go to a restaurant and any of this crap is on the menu, I will exercise my right never to eat in that restaurant again. I don't want that kind of stuff sharing any pot/pan time with my entrees. More power to the restaurant if it makes money for 'em, but they won't have my business.
Why not? If they taste good, I'd be into them.
This IS the future. The only option is Soylent Green.
Soylent Green is made out of..... People!
or we could recognize that infinite human population growth is impossible- we have too many people and yes some need to die, this can happen either due to attrition by lower birth rates, famine, warfare or disease- take your pick. when we discuss mass marketing insects as food to feed ourselves we are rapidly approaching the bottom. the problem is also not the western world- we have a below replacement level of birth. immigrants and the third world however.....
As long as there was no associated "crunch" when biting into any bug concoction. That would be a show stopper for me.
Not to get "crunch" confused with "crispy" ? Lol.
Did a class ages ago in a summer program where the final 'project' was to munch on some toasted bugs. Not terrible, really. No worse than eating cow tongue or sea cucumber, or pigs feet, which are way more disgusting in my mind.
I had grasshopper tacos at a restaurant in New York recently (Toloache). They were delicious. (And, in this case, they really did look like bugs, and the tacos were packed full of them.) I'd certainly eat them again, as it was a pleasant flavor (nutty/meaty) and texture (similar to meatloaf). The fact that they're good for me, and for the environment, makes the dish even more enticing.
The bug thing creeps me out a little, but the plating is so beautiful.
If Salma Hayek can eat a cricket taco, so can I.
In Hayek's Mexico they are called "chapulines".....very delicious, indeed.
Insect Pate and Bento could prevent starvation? Sure why not. Now we just have to get all those humble, philanthropic French and Japanese chefs to go into impoverished nations and teach them all how to prepare those insects on a no-string budget......
Awesome job, kids!!
I bought some crickets from a pet store not too long ago and ate them raw, just to try it out. Not bad at all! (No, I didn't eat them in the pet store - I waited until I got home.)
They can be raised at home, though I understand they can be quite noisey. Mealworms, on the other hand, are edible AND quiet. Though I haven't tried them yet.
Crab and lobster are basically giant, ocean-dwelling insects. Same body plan, just much bigger.
If you have ever had that Japanese dish of wok-fried miniature crabs roughly the size of a nickel, you have eaten wok-fried insects. And you paid good money for them too. Personally, I love those.
An insect is an insect and a cruestation (lobsters, crabs) are not. Not an argument for eating insects, which I would if I had to or they were presented in a palatable way.
Ronco, most of what we consider "insects" are in the phylum arthropoda. So are crabs and lobsters. Exoskeleton, jointed appendages, and a segmented body are the only requirements to be in this particular club. So Ellen's comment was at least partially accurate, at least in a colloquial sense. A lobster is not strictly an insect, but it is an arthropod, same as insects.
Eat Bugs: You Know It Makes Sense.
Eating bugs in the U.S. will catch on as quickly as the metric system.
I'd give it a try. Would not enjoy it though if it tasted like sausage! Cannot stand the taste of the stuff, excpet for real mild Greek sausage.
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth...
You guys can have it. I'd honestly rather starve. I'll be vegetarian before I eat bugs. I have an unnatural fear of them and tend to freak out when I don't have a reason to. It's a good idea to sotp hunger if you can take it, but there's a lot of other things I'd try first before insects.
I've eaten crickets, ants and those worms they show in the picture, all good. Tried them plain and flavored, barbecue worms are great.
OK, picture this,two people standing in a yard, a chicken walks in front of them and lays an egg, one of them says, "wow, I want to eat that". Get the picture?
"If you can kill it you can grill it." (Ted Nugent).
“If you want to save a species, simply decide to eat it. Then it will be managed - like chickens, like turkeys, like deer, like Canadian geese.” ~ Ted Nugent
If you are in US (Especially the south), and you find yourself with little money, you can always catch junebugs. You take out the wings, and sautee them with a bit of oil on a pan. THey are absolutely delicious and one of the best foods you could ever eat. Not to mention, there's a few billion of them!!
Why not? The Japanese like fried bumble bees. The Kalahari bushmen consider the abdomens of sugar ants(bitten off the live ant) a treat. Years ago I saw a young woman on the Today show who was working on a master's degree in home economics. One dish she had developed was an earthworm cassarole. Food is as much cultural as it is edible. One thng they taught in SERE training was if you have to eat something really repulsive, just close your eyes and think "Steak!". It sorta works.
I guess it's a good back up plan if the food supply goes to hell. If I had to fry up some crickets to keep myself and family from starving, then guess what? I will. Though while I still can, I'm going to enjoy my chicken, veggies and fruit. :)