But many insects are highly seasonal, and when you are able to harvest them, you often find yourself with surplus - for example, people can allegedly gather more than 100kg of grasshoppers per day in September, just after the rice harvest! Admittedly you need a motorbike and some level of expertise to do so…but you get the idea.
Recently, in the absence of any level of expertise and not even a motorbike to help me, I managed to acquire many, many more insects than I could possibly eat or even give away to friends. This is mainly thanks to the kindness of others, and hopefully I can repay them in some way, some day. Anyway - what should I do with these insects?
The Japanese method is to make them into 'tsukudani' - simmer them with soy sauce, mirin and sugar until they harden, and the high salt and sugar content will preserve them for weeks or months. But…could I preserve them without using these condiments?
Recently, when offering samples of traditionally prepared Japanese insects at international conferences, I have received the same feedback any number of times 'Delicious, but too sweet'; 'Tasty, but a bit too salty', 'Can't taste the insect' ...
All fair points, & I've had the same thoughts myself. So you want to taste the insect? Well, in my limited experience of these things, I've definitely come across a few ways of preserving things that mean they keep their original taste, and can be kept without refrigeration/freezing for a fairly long time - 1. smoking, 2. sun-drying, and 3. making pate.
So, I figured that I'd give these three a go.
Meanwhile, I have also been experimenting (today & today only! I'm not intending to go into business just yet..) with the other two methods I mentioned - sun drying and making pate. With temperatures averaging 29-30C, sun drying is fairly simple, apart from the ant problem.As shown in the photos on the right, I put these silkworm (above right) and, yesterday, grasshoppers (below right)) on sheets of newspaper under a grate atop a tray placed on a brick that was put in a box that was lined with plastic sheeting and then filled with water… and if that doesn't sound convoluted i don't know what is. but it seemed to work. i put them out at ~7.30am and after shuffling them twice (at 11am and 4pm, perhaps/?), by 6pm they were dry enough to be ground into flour if so inclined. | For the first method, smoking, I am fortunate to have the help of Gobar, a local factory that makes (allegedly) excellent ham/sausages/salami/etc and various other (definitely) delicious things including smoked tofu, herb/spice mixes, mustard… and last but not least, they have very good taste in wine. Today's activity involved preparing the insects for the smoker - this photo shows me and Susu-san wrapping various insects (silkworm, wasp larvae, giant hornet larvae, grasshoppers) in gauze or 'houba' leaves. The plan is that they will be smoked at a low temperature for at least 3 days. Finally, pate. When I was a child, I'm pretty sure that I liked pate. It deserves a place on the list of wonderful English foods - something that was rich, savoury, and could be spread on all sorts of things. And yet, it is, i believe, very much French in origin... Anyway. After becoming vegetarian, I remember buying mushroom pate and not understanding why on earth anyone would want to buy this mushroom pate in place of actual mushrooms... (when meat pate had been a very welcome substitute for actual pieces of meat) What, then, would insect pate be like? This photo (left) shows the ingredients for (in my fairly subjective opinion) a fine pate. The garlic as been slow roasted in the oven (~40 minutes at 200C degrees) while the chilli is my very last home-grown pod, frozen fairly soon after the first frost killed my chilli plant last year and chopped finely to use in this pate. (Last Autumn, I froze a bag of chilis that took up my entire freezer. Needless to say I've planted more than one plant this year..) |
And there ends my summary of ways to preserve insects, as far as I've been told or shown. If any turn out to be particularly delicious and/or long lived, I'll post the recipes here, but meanwhile - please let me know if you've any other suggestions for preservation methods! I've got a whole lot of insects to experiment with :)