Eating Teylu - anyone else tried eating insects?
 

As we do beekeeping I came across the custom of some cultures in the world to eat bee larvae and insects in general. During beekeeping, one has to remove certain larvae (drones) from the hive every week to get rid of the mites that can cause collapse of bee colonies. So I looked it up and found some people were inf act preparing them as food. So we did the same :shock: :

http://i.imgur.com/K1BOP.jpg

(more: Photo Album - Imgur)

This is as close to Teylu I got so far - they are of course not hand-sized, but hey - this is Earth and not Pandora.

Did anyone else here eat insects or larvae before? :cool:

Greetings, Aurora

I have only ever eaten ant pupae, which were surprisingly nice actually. Tastes like potato and I hear are packed full of protein XD

The worst part is putting your hand in a nest of ants, they don't appreciate that.

When I lived in Samoa, I would on rare occasions, eat Pololo, which is a type of marine worm that lives in the corals of the South Pacific. One day each year, they leave their corals, and come to the surface to mate during the full moon night of November, (summer in the Southern Hemisphere). ALL the Samoans, are in the water, which looks in the moonlight like it is boiling, with nets, and 5 gallon buckets, to get enough to freeze for the next year. The first year that I was there, I flipped out the Family that I lived with, (and later legally adopted me), by when I was walking out of the waist deep water to handoff the full buckets, and get two empties, I scooped up a handful of the writhing Pololo, and ate them. My brother to be, looked at me, slapped me on the shoulder, and said "you are one of US now".
They really taste good, I loved them, we would fry them up with eggs in the morning.They taste like Shrimp.
Niri Te

Never had any. Will one day when I have a chance.

How about next week then?

I'm going to be cooking some Zophobas morio larvae ("superworms") at the meetup for anyone who is interested.

*Palolo

The species is Palola viridis. The genus Palola belongs in the phylum annelida, the segmented worms, which also includes leeches and earthworms.

However, worms are not insects, and many other non-european/western cultures also eat them.

Don't give a DAMN, they LOOK like what they said were Teylu, (Did I Type that OK?) in the movie, so that's good enough for me.

Some respect has never hurt anyone, Niri Te. You are entitled to your opinion, but you can make an effort to put it forth in a friendlier manner - I won't hesitate to issue an infraction if you don't.

Enjoy your beetle larvae then next week :) - They look a bit bigger. the bee larvae are only about 1/2 inch or so, those beetle larvae I read are 2 inches.

By the way to get bee larvae is rather easy if you have a beekeeper around. They usually throw away whole combs of them in early summer (May-July) because of the mentioned chemical free way to reduce pressure by mites in the hive. If you ask them nicely, I am sure they will give them to you, though they may look at you oddly and ask what you need them for ;) . If you tell them you lived in Korea or Vietnam where it is food, they may stop looking that way ;) ;)

By the way #2 : It did NOT "taste like chicken"

haha I heard more than once that almost all exotic foods "taste like chicken", even snakes :P I never tried a snake (which is neither an insect nor a worm of course) but an octopus is a rather typical dish here. It tastes a bit like... chicken! :xD: a rubbery chicken with seafood flavour. So in the end it has very little similarity to chicken, after all. :P

When I lived in Dubai I saw a recipee in a local Cosmopolitan magazine, in Exotic Foods section (although most of the foods were more or less exotic there (at least for me), the place is such a potent mix of East & West). That was a South African recipee for grilled worms. I haven't tried it either but maybe with Raiden's haute cuisine I will dare to try something similar.

Did you try anything of the kind when you lived in South Africa, Aurora?

I have an....interesting Vietnamese friend. At his wedding one of the dishes was friend bee larve. Not bad. Of course there are also the days when he brings them into work.....raw so uhm yeah.

Interesting indeed.

I'd try them, at least cooked, anyway. Would have to research them a bit before raw though.

Raiden, epic. Will have to try those.

I have tried mealworms before. They were fried and flavored, but they really didn't have much of a taste.

No, not yet, at least. Too bad I won't be at the meet up because that sounds delicious, Raiden. :)

I think people just have to compare it with something they know and chicken is devoid enough of strong taste (at least the industrially farmed ones) that it can serve as a basis ;) - Bee larvae are then "like chicken, but softer and with a taste of nuts" :xD:
Oh and no - in south Africa what was on the table was for the most part sheep (I was on a sheep farm), antelope (frozen from the last hunting season) and one time we shot two rabbits and ate them. Plus dried meat and some veggies. I guess even though that place was very remote, it was not remote enough for people to eat insects as part of their traditional foods so much ;)

Haha - I tried them raw as well. Those combs are partly full of honey and partly full or larvae, so to chew them is like a mixture of honey, wax and bee larvae - it is a bit like chewing gum with canned lychee (at least from the texture and sweetness) :xD:

But I dont know if I really want to repeat that again.

I do not worry so much about health issues in that though. If a hive is strong and buzzing and full of bees and honey and larvae - it is a healthy hive without any sickness. And bees do not eat dead things, only pollen and honey, so not much risk. Also, the honey is from the same hives - if there would be a problem with the bees that is risky for humans, it would also concern the honey. There are a few issues, I think with Clostridia (?) and bees, but that is mostly an issue for very young children (who are not supposed to eat raw honey) and of course one should not eat bees that died more than a day ago and were not immediately cooled. Just like with any other meat.

Relevant?
The Lion King Grubs - YouTube